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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM DECEMBER 7, 2009
A pair of angles about climate change combined to make global warming the Story of the Day. NBC led from Copenhagen where the United Nations convened its global warming conference. CBS and ABC led from Washington, where the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing the agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. Both NBC and CBS followed up with travelogue features on low-lying nations threatened by climate change. CBS took a jocular approach on the tourist beaches of The Maldives; NBC portrayed the desperate straits facing the peasants of the Bangladesh Delta.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR DECEMBER 7, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE WORLD IS GETTING WARMER A pair of angles about climate change combined to make global warming the Story of the Day. NBC led from Copenhagen where the United Nations convened its global warming conference. CBS and ABC led from Washington, where the Environmental Protection Agency ruled that greenhouse gases endanger human health, allowing the agency to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. Both NBC and CBS followed up with travelogue features on low-lying nations threatened by climate change. CBS took a jocular approach on the tourist beaches of The Maldives; NBC portrayed the desperate straits facing the peasants of the Bangladesh Delta.
NBC's Anne Thompson and ABC's Bob Woodruff filed from Copenhagen, where diplomats from close to 200 nations met to negotiate a treaty to cut carbon levels in the atmosphere. NBC's Thompson called it a matter of "life or death." ABC's Woodruff pointed out that finance was as big an issue as science: "The United Nations says poor nations need tens of billions of dollars every year to help adapt to everything from rising sea levels to dying crops."
As for the science, both correspondents covered the reaction to the hacked e-mails by climatologists at the University of East Anglia in England. ABC's Woodruff said the messages revealed that the scientists appeared to "fudge data." NBC's Thompson cited the insistence of "skeptics" that the messages show data manipulation. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia used the e-mails in "an effort to derail the talks," ABC's Woodruff reported. "Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is resisting carbon cuts," noted NBC's Thompson.
CARBON DIOXIDE IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH The EPA's finding that carbon dioxide emissions are a form of air pollution has "huge implications," claimed ABC's David Wright. "Think of it like the Surgeon General's warning about cigarettes all those years ago." CBS' Wyatt Andrews noted that limits on CO2 are already in the works for the automobile industry, for power plants and for steel mills. The timing of the announcement has a "political edge," he explained. In his talks in Copenhagen, Barack Obama "can now promise the world that if Congress does not cut CO2 in energy legislation, he will do it in regulation."
The two correspondents had opposing takeaways on the impact of the EPA ruling on the debate over carbon emissions on Capitol Hill. ABC's Wright focused on Republican criticism that the administration is "doing an end run around Congress, which is still debating a climate bill." CBS' Andrews interpreted it as a move designed to push major corporations "into supporting a climate change law because business has more clout in Congress than it has at EPA."
CONTRASTING STYLES FROM THE RISING INDIAN OCEAN Mark Phillips, in his Eye on… feature for CBS, offered a quirky approach to the dangers of climate change from the sun-soaked beaches of The Maldives. He walked barefoot along the sands washed by the Indian Ocean…he snorkeled over depleted coral reefs…he stood chest deep in warm seawater to illustrate the threat of rising waters from melting ice caps. President Mohamed Nasheed of the archipelago nation has taken a similarly zany approach towards his people's peril: he "decided to make as big a splash as possible to publicize the threat. He held a cabinet meeting under water."
Ian Williams' approach for NBC's A Perfect Storm series was less cute, more searing--and more effective. He showed us "makeshift huts of bamboo and twigs squeezed on top of the broken sea walls" of the Delta of Bangladesh on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. The encroaching sea is contaminating drinking water and destroying crops. Millions of delta dwellers are forced to move to the squalid slums of Dhaka. "The threat of millions on the move, mostly poor and desperate, is one reason why India is building a frontier barrier, fencing off Bangladesh."
TEHERAN, MUMBAI, NOW ZAD Besides the features from the rising Indian Ocean, it was a heavy day of international news. The western news media were not allowed to report from Iran, so Elizabeth Palmer in CBS' London bureau voiced over videotape from the student demonstrators of Teheran as they took to the streets in continued protests, accusing the Islamic Republic of rigging this summer's presidential election: "Police fought back with tear gas, stun guns and even hurled rocks."
Both CBS and NBC used their Washington bureaus to file an update on last year's raid in downtown Mumbai by ten gunmen from the Pakistan-based Lakshar-e-Taiba that killed as many as 170 people. CBS' Bob Orr and NBC's Pete Williams both covered charges by federal prosecutors that a Pakistani-American from Chicago had personally scouted targets, including photographic boat trips around Mumbai Harbor looking for landings for the raid's rubber rafts. David Headley had been arrested in October for an alleged plot against the newspaper in Denmark that published inflammatory cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed, CBS' Orr told us. "Once in jail, Headley started talking" about Mumbai.
Miguel Marquez continued his embedded tour of duty with the Marine Corps for ABC in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. Friday, he told us about their attack on the ghost town of Now Zad. Now he shows us the cache of rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and bombmaking materiel that the Taliban guerrillas left behind when they decided not to put up a fight.
TURN TARP TOWARDS STIMULUS George Bush's $700bn bailout of the financial industry, known as TARP, turns out to have been larger than needed. So many banks have now repaid funds to the Treasury Department that the outstanding cost is now just $141bn. That latest estimate was covered from the White House by both ABC's Jake Tapper and CBS' Chip Reid. ABC's Tapper predicted that $80bn will never be repaid, money spent on AIG, the insurance conglomerate, and on General Motors and Chrysler. CBS' Reid expected some of the TARP to be spent on aid to state and local governments, on tax breaks for small businesses, on energy efficiency programs and on infrastructure projects: "Critics say it is nothing more than a second stimulus at a time when the first one still has not proven its long-term value," CBS' Reid asserted, invoking a straw man, since the rationale for stimulus spending is to have value in the short run, never the long term.
BIG C GETS SMALLER The annual report by the National Cancer Institute showing progress in the War on Cancer was covered by Robert Bazell on NBC and John McKenzie on ABC. Fewer Americans are getting tumors; fewer Americans are dying from cancer. Cancer kills 562,000 people each year nationwide, a death rate that is 12% lower in women and 20% lower in men than 15 years ago. Cancers of the colon, the prostate, the breast and the lung are all killing fewer people--except for lung cancer in women, "because of smoking patterns in the '60s and '70s," Bazell's expert sources told him.
In his A Closer Look, ABC's McKenzie focused on the improvement in colon cancer deaths, which now stand at 50,000 annually. He reported that half of the improvement derives from lifestyle changes--eating less red meat, fewer people smoking, more calcium and folate in the diet, medication with aspirin--and half derives from increased colonoscopy screening.
CBS anchor Katie Couric, who was widowed by colon cancer, is a colonoscopy activist. She invited Dr Mark Pocaphin into the studio to extol the virtues of colonoscopy, compared with PSA tests for prostate cancer and mammograms for breast cancer. "We are finding something before it turns cancerous," Pochapin explained. "Most cancer screening is looking for an early cancer." Pochapin was identified as representing the Jay Monahan Center for Gastro-Intestinal Health. Monahan is the name of Couric's late husband, although she did not inform us of that fact.
HAMSTER HICCUP CBS' Anthony Mason was the first nightly news correspondent with the scoop on Zhu-Zhu Pets' robotic hamsters last month. Now a report from Good Guide, a for-profit consumer product ratings firm, allowed ABC's Andrea Canning and NBC's Tom Costello to jump on the Zhu-Zhu bandwagon. Good Guide released a warning that it found dangerous levels of the heavy metal antimony in the robot rodents. "Suddenly the must-have toy of the year turned into a point of worry," exclaimed NBC's Costello. It turns out that Good Guide's X-ray gun analyzer, which found the metal, was not testing for the risk of antimony contamination. For that test, ABC's Canning explained, the toys should be soaked in a chemical bath. "We regret the error," Good Guide conceded. Lavish free publicity for Zhu-Zhu can now resume safely.
NBC's Anne Thompson and ABC's Bob Woodruff filed from Copenhagen, where diplomats from close to 200 nations met to negotiate a treaty to cut carbon levels in the atmosphere. NBC's Thompson called it a matter of "life or death." ABC's Woodruff pointed out that finance was as big an issue as science: "The United Nations says poor nations need tens of billions of dollars every year to help adapt to everything from rising sea levels to dying crops."
As for the science, both correspondents covered the reaction to the hacked e-mails by climatologists at the University of East Anglia in England. ABC's Woodruff said the messages revealed that the scientists appeared to "fudge data." NBC's Thompson cited the insistence of "skeptics" that the messages show data manipulation. Diplomats from Saudi Arabia used the e-mails in "an effort to derail the talks," ABC's Woodruff reported. "Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is resisting carbon cuts," noted NBC's Thompson.
CARBON DIOXIDE IS DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH The EPA's finding that carbon dioxide emissions are a form of air pollution has "huge implications," claimed ABC's David Wright. "Think of it like the Surgeon General's warning about cigarettes all those years ago." CBS' Wyatt Andrews noted that limits on CO2 are already in the works for the automobile industry, for power plants and for steel mills. The timing of the announcement has a "political edge," he explained. In his talks in Copenhagen, Barack Obama "can now promise the world that if Congress does not cut CO2 in energy legislation, he will do it in regulation."
The two correspondents had opposing takeaways on the impact of the EPA ruling on the debate over carbon emissions on Capitol Hill. ABC's Wright focused on Republican criticism that the administration is "doing an end run around Congress, which is still debating a climate bill." CBS' Andrews interpreted it as a move designed to push major corporations "into supporting a climate change law because business has more clout in Congress than it has at EPA."
CONTRASTING STYLES FROM THE RISING INDIAN OCEAN Mark Phillips, in his Eye on… feature for CBS, offered a quirky approach to the dangers of climate change from the sun-soaked beaches of The Maldives. He walked barefoot along the sands washed by the Indian Ocean…he snorkeled over depleted coral reefs…he stood chest deep in warm seawater to illustrate the threat of rising waters from melting ice caps. President Mohamed Nasheed of the archipelago nation has taken a similarly zany approach towards his people's peril: he "decided to make as big a splash as possible to publicize the threat. He held a cabinet meeting under water."
Ian Williams' approach for NBC's A Perfect Storm series was less cute, more searing--and more effective. He showed us "makeshift huts of bamboo and twigs squeezed on top of the broken sea walls" of the Delta of Bangladesh on the shores of the Bay of Bengal. The encroaching sea is contaminating drinking water and destroying crops. Millions of delta dwellers are forced to move to the squalid slums of Dhaka. "The threat of millions on the move, mostly poor and desperate, is one reason why India is building a frontier barrier, fencing off Bangladesh."
TEHERAN, MUMBAI, NOW ZAD Besides the features from the rising Indian Ocean, it was a heavy day of international news. The western news media were not allowed to report from Iran, so Elizabeth Palmer in CBS' London bureau voiced over videotape from the student demonstrators of Teheran as they took to the streets in continued protests, accusing the Islamic Republic of rigging this summer's presidential election: "Police fought back with tear gas, stun guns and even hurled rocks."
Both CBS and NBC used their Washington bureaus to file an update on last year's raid in downtown Mumbai by ten gunmen from the Pakistan-based Lakshar-e-Taiba that killed as many as 170 people. CBS' Bob Orr and NBC's Pete Williams both covered charges by federal prosecutors that a Pakistani-American from Chicago had personally scouted targets, including photographic boat trips around Mumbai Harbor looking for landings for the raid's rubber rafts. David Headley had been arrested in October for an alleged plot against the newspaper in Denmark that published inflammatory cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed, CBS' Orr told us. "Once in jail, Headley started talking" about Mumbai.
Miguel Marquez continued his embedded tour of duty with the Marine Corps for ABC in Afghanistan's Helmand Province. Friday, he told us about their attack on the ghost town of Now Zad. Now he shows us the cache of rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and bombmaking materiel that the Taliban guerrillas left behind when they decided not to put up a fight.
TURN TARP TOWARDS STIMULUS George Bush's $700bn bailout of the financial industry, known as TARP, turns out to have been larger than needed. So many banks have now repaid funds to the Treasury Department that the outstanding cost is now just $141bn. That latest estimate was covered from the White House by both ABC's Jake Tapper and CBS' Chip Reid. ABC's Tapper predicted that $80bn will never be repaid, money spent on AIG, the insurance conglomerate, and on General Motors and Chrysler. CBS' Reid expected some of the TARP to be spent on aid to state and local governments, on tax breaks for small businesses, on energy efficiency programs and on infrastructure projects: "Critics say it is nothing more than a second stimulus at a time when the first one still has not proven its long-term value," CBS' Reid asserted, invoking a straw man, since the rationale for stimulus spending is to have value in the short run, never the long term.
BIG C GETS SMALLER The annual report by the National Cancer Institute showing progress in the War on Cancer was covered by Robert Bazell on NBC and John McKenzie on ABC. Fewer Americans are getting tumors; fewer Americans are dying from cancer. Cancer kills 562,000 people each year nationwide, a death rate that is 12% lower in women and 20% lower in men than 15 years ago. Cancers of the colon, the prostate, the breast and the lung are all killing fewer people--except for lung cancer in women, "because of smoking patterns in the '60s and '70s," Bazell's expert sources told him.
In his A Closer Look, ABC's McKenzie focused on the improvement in colon cancer deaths, which now stand at 50,000 annually. He reported that half of the improvement derives from lifestyle changes--eating less red meat, fewer people smoking, more calcium and folate in the diet, medication with aspirin--and half derives from increased colonoscopy screening.
CBS anchor Katie Couric, who was widowed by colon cancer, is a colonoscopy activist. She invited Dr Mark Pocaphin into the studio to extol the virtues of colonoscopy, compared with PSA tests for prostate cancer and mammograms for breast cancer. "We are finding something before it turns cancerous," Pochapin explained. "Most cancer screening is looking for an early cancer." Pochapin was identified as representing the Jay Monahan Center for Gastro-Intestinal Health. Monahan is the name of Couric's late husband, although she did not inform us of that fact.
HAMSTER HICCUP CBS' Anthony Mason was the first nightly news correspondent with the scoop on Zhu-Zhu Pets' robotic hamsters last month. Now a report from Good Guide, a for-profit consumer product ratings firm, allowed ABC's Andrea Canning and NBC's Tom Costello to jump on the Zhu-Zhu bandwagon. Good Guide released a warning that it found dangerous levels of the heavy metal antimony in the robot rodents. "Suddenly the must-have toy of the year turned into a point of worry," exclaimed NBC's Costello. It turns out that Good Guide's X-ray gun analyzer, which found the metal, was not testing for the risk of antimony contamination. For that test, ABC's Canning explained, the toys should be soaked in a chemical bath. "We regret the error," Good Guide conceded. Lavish free publicity for Zhu-Zhu can now resume safely.
