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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 12, 2009
"I am so deeply sorry and ashamed," declared the disgraced financier Bernard Madoff as he entered a guilty plea to a $64bn fraud. "I am painfully aware that I have deeply hurt many, many people." Even before he was formally sentenced, his bail was revoked so the 70-year-old Madoff began what will surely be a lifelong incarceration. All three networks led from the judicial district of downtown Manhattan. The Story of the Day accounted for a full third of the three-network newshole (34%--19 min of 57) with CBS spending the most time (11 min v ABC 5, NBC 3) as anchor Katie Couric sat down for a post-trial q-&-a with nine of Madoff's defrauded investors. ABC had Charles Gibson anchor from Washington DC even though his newscast contained no special inside-the-Beltway reporting by him.
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BERNARD MADOFF GOES DIRECTLY TO JAIL "I am so deeply sorry and ashamed," declared the disgraced financier Bernard Madoff as he entered a guilty plea to a $64bn fraud. "I am painfully aware that I have deeply hurt many, many people." Even before he was formally sentenced, his bail was revoked so the 70-year-old Madoff began what will surely be a lifelong incarceration. All three networks led from the judicial district of downtown Manhattan. The Story of the Day accounted for a full third of the three-network newshole (34%--19 min of 57) with CBS spending the most time (11 min v ABC 5, NBC 3) as anchor Katie Couric sat down for a post-trial q-&-a with nine of Madoff's defrauded investors. ABC had Charles Gibson anchor from Washington DC even though his newscast contained no special inside-the-Beltway reporting by him.
The courthouse correspondents clearly had plenty of time to polish their copy. "Madoff went from the penthouse to the jailhouse in one morning and tonight he lives in another highrise, this one run by the federal prison system," was how ABC's Jim Avila put it. From CBS' Armen Keteyian we heard a similar theme: "Madoff's final day of freedom began before dawn, a light flickering on in this $7m penthouse apartment; tonight it will end with lights out at 11pm at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center." On NBC, CNBC's Scott Cohn told us that tonight "Madoff is behind bars. The man who rigged the numbers for years is now inmate #61727054…his wife Ruth is back at the couple's luxury penthouse where now, tonight, she lives alone."
In his guilty plea, Madoff told the court that he never made any stock market investments on behalf of his clients. He simply deposited their money in the Chase Manhattan Bank and had done so since the early '90s. It was "a classic Ponzi scheme," CNBC's Cohn shrugged. ABC's Dan Harris caught up with some swindled investors at the courthouse steps. He called them "victims." He advised that they are eligible for up to $500,000 in investment insurance and may be able to write off losses against taxes.
REMEMBERING BERNIE’S AURA In a throwback to her morning show roots, CBS anchor Katie Couric convened a Today-style panel of nine of Bernard Madoff's dupes for a half-hour discussion of which the evening newscast played more than six minutes. "How many of you believe Bernard Madoff acted alone?" she asked. None did. "Too comprehensive, too much paperwork that came every quarter…He could not generate all that himself," answered Robin Lieberman, a retired schoolteacher. Diane Peskin, an author and stay-at-home mother, invested $3.2m in the scam: "My husband is suffering from severe depression now. He just cannot get over it. He is really not functioning well. That is why he is not here." Accountant Sheryl Stein said she knew Madoff personally: "Obviously not very well," she added ruefully, "but then you know I am not alone in that…Bernie did not really ask for money. His thing was to be asked. There was a whole aura and people were just grateful to be able to place their money with him."
SMIDGEON OF GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS "A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great; a little bit of bad news and--Oh!--we are down in the dumps," thus NBC White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie quoted President Barack Obama's sardonic complaint about economic indicators being used as a barometer of his performance even as ABC's Betsy Stark was asked by anchor Charles Gibson to examine fluctuations in the stock market as a barometer for the health of the economy. A rise of 700 points in three days on the Dow Jones Industrial Average "really is classic bear market rally," she warned. "Maybe at least things have stopped getting worse."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on Capitol Hill for his seventh session of Congressional testimony. ABC's Jonathan Karl gave us a blow-by-blow…"hammered hardest by Republicans"…"Geithner pushed back hard"…"he got an earful"…"seemed more interested in berating him than in listening to his answers"…"almost two hours of grilling." Karl came away impressed: "For all the anger and frustration over the financial bailout, today he held his own, earning grudging admiration from several senators, including the top Republican on the committee."
THE BOTTOM RUNG OF THE HOUSING MARKET NBC's Chris Jansing showed us the tent city for California's homeless growing in Sacramento on Monday. To the south, in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, the residence of choice for those without a residence is the recreational vehicle. "Neighborhoods look like RV parks," is the beachfront complaint in toney Venice. Jansing showed us Santa Barbara's solution is a so-called safe parking program: "People living in their cars or RVs get permits to park in designated lots overnight for up to twelve hours. It keeps them out of residential neighborhoods and they do not get tickets."
Anthony Mason introduced us to the place where "the tragedy of foreclosure turns into new hope." The business of the Real Estate Disposition Corporation is "booming," Mason showed us on CBS as he covered the auction action last Sunday, homes sold off at 60c on the dollar. REDC holds an auction somewhere around the nation almost every day. In 2008, they sold 30,000 foreclosed homes; this year they plan to bring the gavel down on 50,000.
PASS THE KIDNEY The New England Journal of Medicine inspired CBS' Michelle Miller to cover a live donor organ swap program. The donor volunteers to live with just one kidney, freeing the second one for transplant. "Other donor chains require the donor swaps to happen at the same time in the same hospital," she noted. The program organized by Dr Michael Rees of the University of Toledo does not. A transplant recipient merely has to promise to pass forward the next donation to a matching stranger at some time in the future. "Is there a risk to doing it this way?" "Absolutely. The big risk is that somebody might renege." "Has someone broken the chain?" "Nope. Nobody has done that yet."
EMERGENCY! INCOMING JUNK Space junk found itself in the news last month when ABC's Dan Harris told us about the couple of satellites that collided in orbit above Siberia, scattering debris. It was something much smaller than a satellite--an object "about the size of my fist, part of an old United States rocket," ABC's Ned Potter told us--that now makes news. It forced crew members Michael Fincke, Sandra Magnus and Yuri Lonchakov to take refuge in the Soyuz spacecraft as it zoomed towards the International Space Station. It may not have been big, Potter conceded "but even small things traveling at 17K mph can pulverize." The junk missed the station by less than three miles.
STUDS TURKEL’S GHOST ON THE LONG GRAY LINE The history department at the United States Military Academy is going digital, ABC's Bob Woodruff told us. It is compiling an oral history videostream archive of war stories from West Point graduates "in a new effort to preserve military history." Former cadets from every conflict since World War II are invited to recount what they did in their wars. "American society is not as connected to its military as it was a couple of generations ago and this gives us an opportunity to help reestablish that connection," historian Matt Moten explained.
GANGS, NOT GIRLS, GONE WILD Congressional hearings into Mexican narcoviolence allowed NBC's George Lewis to replay the same sensational footage from TV Mexcanal that CBS' Bill Whitaker aired last month. It showed reporter Miguel Turriza caught in the crossfire on the bridge between Reynosa and McAllen in a shootout with traffickers that left ten dead. Lewis used it to illustrate the debate over US-Mexico border security: "There is a seemingly never ending supply of the contraband that fuels the drug war--narcotics from Mexico moving into the United States; money and arms from the United States moving into Mexico." The Mayor of San Diego is even suggesting that US border guards should start searching traffic leaving the country as well as that entering it.
At first glance it would seem that Lewis' colleague Mark Potter landed the plum assignment in NBC's narcocoverage, being assigned to Cancun to monitor the impact on students' spring break. Naturally, he could not resist some sexy shots of beach parties and girls gone not especially wild. To his credit, he filed a story that was serious not salacious. "There are actually two Cancuns," he explained--the tourist zone on a peninsula and, miles away, a downtown separated by Caribbean waters. Potter's story was about the other Cancun "where the drug-related violence and corruption are all present."
Mauro Tello, a retired army general, was kidnapped and murdered, his body dumped on a Quintana Roo roadside. "Dozens of Cancun police officers--including the chief--were detained for questioning," Potter told us, and a prison riot broke out when authorities interrogated inmates. He interviewed Mayor Greg Sanchez about the violence: "Cancun is safer than ever and more beautiful."
The courthouse correspondents clearly had plenty of time to polish their copy. "Madoff went from the penthouse to the jailhouse in one morning and tonight he lives in another highrise, this one run by the federal prison system," was how ABC's Jim Avila put it. From CBS' Armen Keteyian we heard a similar theme: "Madoff's final day of freedom began before dawn, a light flickering on in this $7m penthouse apartment; tonight it will end with lights out at 11pm at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center." On NBC, CNBC's Scott Cohn told us that tonight "Madoff is behind bars. The man who rigged the numbers for years is now inmate #61727054…his wife Ruth is back at the couple's luxury penthouse where now, tonight, she lives alone."
In his guilty plea, Madoff told the court that he never made any stock market investments on behalf of his clients. He simply deposited their money in the Chase Manhattan Bank and had done so since the early '90s. It was "a classic Ponzi scheme," CNBC's Cohn shrugged. ABC's Dan Harris caught up with some swindled investors at the courthouse steps. He called them "victims." He advised that they are eligible for up to $500,000 in investment insurance and may be able to write off losses against taxes.
REMEMBERING BERNIE’S AURA In a throwback to her morning show roots, CBS anchor Katie Couric convened a Today-style panel of nine of Bernard Madoff's dupes for a half-hour discussion of which the evening newscast played more than six minutes. "How many of you believe Bernard Madoff acted alone?" she asked. None did. "Too comprehensive, too much paperwork that came every quarter…He could not generate all that himself," answered Robin Lieberman, a retired schoolteacher. Diane Peskin, an author and stay-at-home mother, invested $3.2m in the scam: "My husband is suffering from severe depression now. He just cannot get over it. He is really not functioning well. That is why he is not here." Accountant Sheryl Stein said she knew Madoff personally: "Obviously not very well," she added ruefully, "but then you know I am not alone in that…Bernie did not really ask for money. His thing was to be asked. There was a whole aura and people were just grateful to be able to place their money with him."
SMIDGEON OF GOOD ECONOMIC NEWS "A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great; a little bit of bad news and--Oh!--we are down in the dumps," thus NBC White House correspondent Savannah Guthrie quoted President Barack Obama's sardonic complaint about economic indicators being used as a barometer of his performance even as ABC's Betsy Stark was asked by anchor Charles Gibson to examine fluctuations in the stock market as a barometer for the health of the economy. A rise of 700 points in three days on the Dow Jones Industrial Average "really is classic bear market rally," she warned. "Maybe at least things have stopped getting worse."
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was on Capitol Hill for his seventh session of Congressional testimony. ABC's Jonathan Karl gave us a blow-by-blow…"hammered hardest by Republicans"…"Geithner pushed back hard"…"he got an earful"…"seemed more interested in berating him than in listening to his answers"…"almost two hours of grilling." Karl came away impressed: "For all the anger and frustration over the financial bailout, today he held his own, earning grudging admiration from several senators, including the top Republican on the committee."
THE BOTTOM RUNG OF THE HOUSING MARKET NBC's Chris Jansing showed us the tent city for California's homeless growing in Sacramento on Monday. To the south, in Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, the residence of choice for those without a residence is the recreational vehicle. "Neighborhoods look like RV parks," is the beachfront complaint in toney Venice. Jansing showed us Santa Barbara's solution is a so-called safe parking program: "People living in their cars or RVs get permits to park in designated lots overnight for up to twelve hours. It keeps them out of residential neighborhoods and they do not get tickets."
Anthony Mason introduced us to the place where "the tragedy of foreclosure turns into new hope." The business of the Real Estate Disposition Corporation is "booming," Mason showed us on CBS as he covered the auction action last Sunday, homes sold off at 60c on the dollar. REDC holds an auction somewhere around the nation almost every day. In 2008, they sold 30,000 foreclosed homes; this year they plan to bring the gavel down on 50,000.
PASS THE KIDNEY The New England Journal of Medicine inspired CBS' Michelle Miller to cover a live donor organ swap program. The donor volunteers to live with just one kidney, freeing the second one for transplant. "Other donor chains require the donor swaps to happen at the same time in the same hospital," she noted. The program organized by Dr Michael Rees of the University of Toledo does not. A transplant recipient merely has to promise to pass forward the next donation to a matching stranger at some time in the future. "Is there a risk to doing it this way?" "Absolutely. The big risk is that somebody might renege." "Has someone broken the chain?" "Nope. Nobody has done that yet."
EMERGENCY! INCOMING JUNK Space junk found itself in the news last month when ABC's Dan Harris told us about the couple of satellites that collided in orbit above Siberia, scattering debris. It was something much smaller than a satellite--an object "about the size of my fist, part of an old United States rocket," ABC's Ned Potter told us--that now makes news. It forced crew members Michael Fincke, Sandra Magnus and Yuri Lonchakov to take refuge in the Soyuz spacecraft as it zoomed towards the International Space Station. It may not have been big, Potter conceded "but even small things traveling at 17K mph can pulverize." The junk missed the station by less than three miles.
STUDS TURKEL’S GHOST ON THE LONG GRAY LINE The history department at the United States Military Academy is going digital, ABC's Bob Woodruff told us. It is compiling an oral history videostream archive of war stories from West Point graduates "in a new effort to preserve military history." Former cadets from every conflict since World War II are invited to recount what they did in their wars. "American society is not as connected to its military as it was a couple of generations ago and this gives us an opportunity to help reestablish that connection," historian Matt Moten explained.
GANGS, NOT GIRLS, GONE WILD Congressional hearings into Mexican narcoviolence allowed NBC's George Lewis to replay the same sensational footage from TV Mexcanal that CBS' Bill Whitaker aired last month. It showed reporter Miguel Turriza caught in the crossfire on the bridge between Reynosa and McAllen in a shootout with traffickers that left ten dead. Lewis used it to illustrate the debate over US-Mexico border security: "There is a seemingly never ending supply of the contraband that fuels the drug war--narcotics from Mexico moving into the United States; money and arms from the United States moving into Mexico." The Mayor of San Diego is even suggesting that US border guards should start searching traffic leaving the country as well as that entering it.
At first glance it would seem that Lewis' colleague Mark Potter landed the plum assignment in NBC's narcocoverage, being assigned to Cancun to monitor the impact on students' spring break. Naturally, he could not resist some sexy shots of beach parties and girls gone not especially wild. To his credit, he filed a story that was serious not salacious. "There are actually two Cancuns," he explained--the tourist zone on a peninsula and, miles away, a downtown separated by Caribbean waters. Potter's story was about the other Cancun "where the drug-related violence and corruption are all present."
Mauro Tello, a retired army general, was kidnapped and murdered, his body dumped on a Quintana Roo roadside. "Dozens of Cancun police officers--including the chief--were detained for questioning," Potter told us, and a prison riot broke out when authorities interrogated inmates. He interviewed Mayor Greg Sanchez about the violence: "Cancun is safer than ever and more beautiful."
