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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 06, 2009
Gloom enveloped the labor market for the third straight month. December and January and now February saw job monthly job losses in excess of 600,000. The unemployment rate now stands at 8.1%, the worst since 1983. Add in those who want full-time jobs yet have to work part time and those who have left the labor force because they are discouraged by a lack of prospects, and the underemployment rate is 14.8%. Since the recession started in November 2007, 4.4m jobs have disappeared from the labor market. There are now 12.5m unemployed nationwide. This depressing Story of the Day was the lead on all three newscasts.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 06, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MONTHLY LABOR STATISTICS THROW LONG GLOOMY SHADOW Gloom enveloped the labor market for the third straight month. December and January and now February saw job monthly job losses in excess of 600,000. The unemployment rate now stands at 8.1%, the worst since 1983. Add in those who want full-time jobs yet have to work part time and those who have left the labor force because they are discouraged by a lack of prospects, and the underemployment rate is 14.8%. Since the recession started in November 2007, 4.4m jobs have disappeared from the labor market. There are now 12.5m unemployed nationwide. This depressing Story of the Day was the lead on all three newscasts.
"This is what a freefall looks like," exclaimed CBS' Anthony Mason, calculating that this is the worst three months in the labor market since 1939. ABC's Betsy Stark extrapolated from the last six months to project a 10% unemployment rate by June, 12% by December: "We are in the teeth of this thing." On NBC, Mara Schiavocampo pointed out that men have been hurt disproportionately by this recession, since more layoffs have occurred in male-dominated construction and manufacturing while female-friendly education and healthcare have been more stable. "Because of that imbalance women are poised to surpass men in the workforce for the first time in history."
"It is the government that is going to have to pull us out of this recession," CBS' Mason concluded, since businesses have stopped hiring. CBS, accordingly, dispatched Jeff Glor and Ben Tracy to look at the job prospects arising from fiscal stimulus. Tracy visited a healthcare clinic treating the working poor of Los Angeles. There he found that a federal $1.3m check will not hire any new staff but it will save the jobs of ten of the 20 workers that were recently laid off. Glor was in Philadelphia where $191m in federal mass transit funds will find work for 5,000.
NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd followed Barack Obama to Ohio, where the President gave credit to the stimulus for putting 25 new cops on the beat in Columbus. The plan "did not create these jobs it saved them," Todd pointed out. "Without the money these folks would be looking for a new line of work." Just 12,499,975 more slots to fill.
ANTICIPATING NEXT WEEK’S NEWS Word leaked out about a couple of stories that will break next week. ABC and CBS gave us a heads up on the President's plan to rescind George Bush's ban on federal funding for some stem cell biotech research. NBC and ABC reported straws in the wind that Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier, would plead guilty to fraud in federal court.
Beyond that, the Madoff tea leaves revealed pure confusion. CNBC's Scott Cohn anticipated a plea agreement so that "he could delay his sentencing as long as he is cooperating with prosecutors. That means Bernie Madoff could stay in his luxury penthouse a while longer even after he is a convicted felon." On ABC, Brian Ross had the opposite take: "New evidence apparently indicates several co-conspirators who were involved with Madoff, despite his plea that he acted alone in an effort, apparently, to save his accomplices and his family." Ross predicted that "certainly" his guilty plea "will end his luxurious house arrest in his $7m Manhattan penthouse."
There was subtler disagreement about the preview of Barack Obama's decision to permit the National Institutes of Health to fund more stem cell biotech research. At issue was the precise ethical objection that inspired the ban in the first place. The cells would be derived from the test tube embryos that human fertility clinics produce. CBS' Chip Reid overstated: "Opponents equate that with abortion." Not even the pro-life Family Research Council does that. Its statement in opposition, which Reid quoted, worries about government spending rather than terminated pregnancies: "Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for experiments that require the destruction of human life." ABC's Lisa Stark avoided the abortion comparison too, confining her description to controversies concerning the "altering or destroying" of embryos.
I SAY PEREGUZKA, YOU SAY PEREZAGUZKA The State Department's reset button snafu was so delicious that it was a surprise that only NBC decided to assign a reporter to cover it. Andrea Mitchell showed us the meeting between the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister of Russia "to warm up relations that had nearly frozen into a Cold War during the Bush years." The gift to symbolize a fresh start was a button inscribed with the word reset and its Russian translation. "We worked hard to get the right Russian word," grinned Madame Secretary. "You have got it wrong," the minister replied. Perezaguzka means restart; the button said pereguzka, overcharge. ABC did decide to play the video as a voiceover. CBS did not mention the snafu.
By the time dinner had ended, Mitchell concluded "its was the Sergei and Hillary Show. Lavrov and Rodham Clinton "agreed to work on issues that have divided the two countries for years--nuclear arms reduction, missile defense in eastern Europe, Iran and Afghanistan."
SCANDINAVIANS MAKE A BIANNUAL IRRITATION NEWSWORTHY The northerly Swedes, presumably, treat the rotation of the seasons more seriously than those closer to the tropics. If any nation's public health service were to study the difference between the start of spring and the final days of fall, Sweden would be a likely candidate. Why should NBC's Robert Bazell be interested in a Swedish study of heart attacks in those two seasons? Because this is the weekend when Daylight Savings Time kicks in. Any reporter who can make the biannual irritation of changing the clocks newsworthy has earned his assignment, however tenuous its findings might be. In this instance, the Swedes found a 5% increase in heart attacks in the two weeks after we spring forward and a 5% reduction in the two weeks after falling back. Correlation, not cause and effect.
INK ON THE MENU Want to see some eerie ocean video? Check out the Humboldt Squid, courtesy of researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The squid's "usual territory from Chile to Mexico has expanded dramatically over the last seven years," declared CBS' John Blackstone as he joined Pacific fishermen off the coast of California. Accustomed to landing salmon, they were grappling with the six-foot-long 100 lbs omnivores. "The squid are not picky eaters," devouring marine life up and down the food chain from krill to salmon. "Our one defense against this giant squid invasion may be to eat them as quickly as they are eating everything else."
BIGGER THAN LIBERACE Not Elvis Presley, not Wayne Newton, not Cirque du Soleil, not Frank Sinatra, not Liberace. The most popular entertainers in the history of Las Vegas were Siegfried & Roy, ABC's Elizabeth Vargas reported, until that fateful night in October 2003 when Montecore, the white tiger, mauled Roy Horn on stage. After five years of grueling rehab, Roy--with Siegfried and Montecore--returned to the stage for a single night's comeback. Vargas marked their encore with a 20/20 documentary The Magic Returns.
CBS countered with an altogether more conceptual artistic achievement, yet in its way no less flamboyant. The Astounding Problem of Andrew Novick is an installation in Denver that features a display of 8,000 items of the 39-year-old electrical engineer's stuff. "He collects everything you could imagine," Steve Hartman assured us on Assignment America. Everything? What about dust from the bottom of cereal boxes? Yup. What about dental retainers? Yup. Bellybutton lint? Only joking. "Smithsonian, eat your heart out."
"This is what a freefall looks like," exclaimed CBS' Anthony Mason, calculating that this is the worst three months in the labor market since 1939. ABC's Betsy Stark extrapolated from the last six months to project a 10% unemployment rate by June, 12% by December: "We are in the teeth of this thing." On NBC, Mara Schiavocampo pointed out that men have been hurt disproportionately by this recession, since more layoffs have occurred in male-dominated construction and manufacturing while female-friendly education and healthcare have been more stable. "Because of that imbalance women are poised to surpass men in the workforce for the first time in history."
"It is the government that is going to have to pull us out of this recession," CBS' Mason concluded, since businesses have stopped hiring. CBS, accordingly, dispatched Jeff Glor and Ben Tracy to look at the job prospects arising from fiscal stimulus. Tracy visited a healthcare clinic treating the working poor of Los Angeles. There he found that a federal $1.3m check will not hire any new staff but it will save the jobs of ten of the 20 workers that were recently laid off. Glor was in Philadelphia where $191m in federal mass transit funds will find work for 5,000.
NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd followed Barack Obama to Ohio, where the President gave credit to the stimulus for putting 25 new cops on the beat in Columbus. The plan "did not create these jobs it saved them," Todd pointed out. "Without the money these folks would be looking for a new line of work." Just 12,499,975 more slots to fill.
ANTICIPATING NEXT WEEK’S NEWS Word leaked out about a couple of stories that will break next week. ABC and CBS gave us a heads up on the President's plan to rescind George Bush's ban on federal funding for some stem cell biotech research. NBC and ABC reported straws in the wind that Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier, would plead guilty to fraud in federal court.
Beyond that, the Madoff tea leaves revealed pure confusion. CNBC's Scott Cohn anticipated a plea agreement so that "he could delay his sentencing as long as he is cooperating with prosecutors. That means Bernie Madoff could stay in his luxury penthouse a while longer even after he is a convicted felon." On ABC, Brian Ross had the opposite take: "New evidence apparently indicates several co-conspirators who were involved with Madoff, despite his plea that he acted alone in an effort, apparently, to save his accomplices and his family." Ross predicted that "certainly" his guilty plea "will end his luxurious house arrest in his $7m Manhattan penthouse."
There was subtler disagreement about the preview of Barack Obama's decision to permit the National Institutes of Health to fund more stem cell biotech research. At issue was the precise ethical objection that inspired the ban in the first place. The cells would be derived from the test tube embryos that human fertility clinics produce. CBS' Chip Reid overstated: "Opponents equate that with abortion." Not even the pro-life Family Research Council does that. Its statement in opposition, which Reid quoted, worries about government spending rather than terminated pregnancies: "Taxpayers should not have to foot the bill for experiments that require the destruction of human life." ABC's Lisa Stark avoided the abortion comparison too, confining her description to controversies concerning the "altering or destroying" of embryos.
I SAY PEREGUZKA, YOU SAY PEREZAGUZKA The State Department's reset button snafu was so delicious that it was a surprise that only NBC decided to assign a reporter to cover it. Andrea Mitchell showed us the meeting between the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister of Russia "to warm up relations that had nearly frozen into a Cold War during the Bush years." The gift to symbolize a fresh start was a button inscribed with the word reset and its Russian translation. "We worked hard to get the right Russian word," grinned Madame Secretary. "You have got it wrong," the minister replied. Perezaguzka means restart; the button said pereguzka, overcharge. ABC did decide to play the video as a voiceover. CBS did not mention the snafu.
By the time dinner had ended, Mitchell concluded "its was the Sergei and Hillary Show. Lavrov and Rodham Clinton "agreed to work on issues that have divided the two countries for years--nuclear arms reduction, missile defense in eastern Europe, Iran and Afghanistan."
SCANDINAVIANS MAKE A BIANNUAL IRRITATION NEWSWORTHY The northerly Swedes, presumably, treat the rotation of the seasons more seriously than those closer to the tropics. If any nation's public health service were to study the difference between the start of spring and the final days of fall, Sweden would be a likely candidate. Why should NBC's Robert Bazell be interested in a Swedish study of heart attacks in those two seasons? Because this is the weekend when Daylight Savings Time kicks in. Any reporter who can make the biannual irritation of changing the clocks newsworthy has earned his assignment, however tenuous its findings might be. In this instance, the Swedes found a 5% increase in heart attacks in the two weeks after we spring forward and a 5% reduction in the two weeks after falling back. Correlation, not cause and effect.
INK ON THE MENU Want to see some eerie ocean video? Check out the Humboldt Squid, courtesy of researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The squid's "usual territory from Chile to Mexico has expanded dramatically over the last seven years," declared CBS' John Blackstone as he joined Pacific fishermen off the coast of California. Accustomed to landing salmon, they were grappling with the six-foot-long 100 lbs omnivores. "The squid are not picky eaters," devouring marine life up and down the food chain from krill to salmon. "Our one defense against this giant squid invasion may be to eat them as quickly as they are eating everything else."
BIGGER THAN LIBERACE Not Elvis Presley, not Wayne Newton, not Cirque du Soleil, not Frank Sinatra, not Liberace. The most popular entertainers in the history of Las Vegas were Siegfried & Roy, ABC's Elizabeth Vargas reported, until that fateful night in October 2003 when Montecore, the white tiger, mauled Roy Horn on stage. After five years of grueling rehab, Roy--with Siegfried and Montecore--returned to the stage for a single night's comeback. Vargas marked their encore with a 20/20 documentary The Magic Returns.
CBS countered with an altogether more conceptual artistic achievement, yet in its way no less flamboyant. The Astounding Problem of Andrew Novick is an installation in Denver that features a display of 8,000 items of the 39-year-old electrical engineer's stuff. "He collects everything you could imagine," Steve Hartman assured us on Assignment America. Everything? What about dust from the bottom of cereal boxes? Yup. What about dental retainers? Yup. Bellybutton lint? Only joking. "Smithsonian, eat your heart out."
