 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 30, 2009
Detroit's woes dominated the day's news. President Barack Obama's decision to reject the applications by General Motors and Chrysler for an extension of federal loans were the lead item on all three newscasts. He sent both moneylosing firms back to the drawing board to fix their restructuring plans, with GM firing its boss Rick Wagoner in the process. Each newscast kicked off from the White House and followed up with the reactions of autoworkers to their bosses' looming bankruptcies. CBS added an interview with Wagoner's replacement CEO Frederick Henderson. In all the Story of the Day occupied fully 39% (22 min out of 58) of the three-network newshole.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 30, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
DETROIT’S BAD NEWS DOMINATES DAY’S NEWS Detroit's woes dominated the day's news. President Barack Obama's decision to reject the applications by General Motors and Chrysler for an extension of federal loans were the lead item on all three newscasts. He sent both moneylosing firms back to the drawing board to fix their restructuring plans, with GM firing its boss Rick Wagoner in the process. Each newscast kicked off from the White House and followed up with the reactions of autoworkers to their bosses' looming bankruptcies. CBS added an interview with Wagoner's replacement CEO Frederick Henderson. In all the Story of the Day occupied fully 39% (22 min out of 58) of the three-network newshole.
"Bad news" was how ABC's Jake Tapper characterized Obama's message to the two firms. He gave GM a 60-day deadline to fix its restructuring plan to make it "one more realistic about slumping sales and more aggressive about debt." Chrysler was given 30 days to finalize a deal with Fiat, the Italian automaker: "Merge or Die," was how Tapper put it. CBS' Chip Reid noted the incentives Obama offered if the firms could deliver. The Fiat-Chrysler merger would receive a $6bn loan; GM would receive a $17bn second tranche of a $30bn total. NBC's Chuck Todd called Obama's decision to request that CEO Wagoner be fired "a big moment, a pivotal moment." In effect, Todd interpreted, "he said that the auto industry is going to be taken over by Washington."
LINDLAND GOES THREE-FOR-CHAPTER-11 CNBC's automotive correspondent Phil LeBeau filed from the White House for NBC. He noted that "for the first time the federal government is endorsing the idea of using bankruptcy to clean up GM's massive debt." On ABC, George Stephanopoulos picked up on the same shift. Not only is bankruptcy "very much on the table right now," his unidentified official sources in the Obama Administration told him it is "likely the leading option."
Rebecca Lindland, automobile specialist at the economic analysis firm IHS Global Insight scored a threefer on the bankruptcy question, being quoted by CNBC's LeBeau and ABC's Jake Tapper and by Anthony Mason on CBS. "From a consumer standpoint bankruptcy is really a huge flag," she told LeBeau. The threat of bankruptcy is "information that they really needed to be able to show their stakeholders," was her soundbite for Tapper. "A company the size of GM has never gone bankrupt…we still do not really know all of the ripple effects," was the line Mason used.
GM's new boss Henderson was spinning the bankruptcy line too in his interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric: "A 60-day period is what they outlined for doing this out of court and if we are not successful doing it out of court, we will do it in court."
CONCESSIONS, DOWNSIZING, PAIN, SACRIFICE "Detroit was in shock today," stated CBS' Anthony Mason. He weighed General Motors' fate: it did sell more than 8m vehicles worldwide in 2008 and is "still the world's second biggest automaker;" on the other hand it has posted losses of $80bn over the past four years. Detroit auto critic Mark Phelan told NBC's Pete Alexander that, unlike Chrysler, GM has "demonstrated that it has a future. It needs a bridge to get from here to there." Yet even the union hall for the workers who build prototypes for GM's future models has seen downsizing that has "already gutted the membership," ABC's Chris Bury (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) pointed out. "The clock is running. Even more concessions may not be enough if car sales continue their dismal spiral." Bury asked GM's new CEO Frederick Henderson whether there is "more pain and sacrifice ahead for the employees." "There is more pain and sacrifice ahead for all of us. Yes."
FROM FARGO TO WINNIPEG Floodwater crested along the Red River over the weekend without inundating Fargo ND. All three networks updated us from the sandbagged dikes that had led their newscasts Friday. CBS' Dean Reynolds chose the angle of a late season blizzard heading in from the high plains, threatening 30 mph winds and a possible 14" snowfall. "High winds could accelerate the river current, now 16 mph instead of the usual 4 mph. The faster the river goes, the harder it is to hold within its banks along its tight twists and turns."
Both NBC's Kevin Tibbles and ABC's Barbara Pinto turned to the future. "Fargo needs $800m for permanent flood protection," Pinto pointed out. "The city's success at staving off disaster pushes it to the end when it comes to federal funds." Down river Grand Forks was flooded in 1997 and received its $400m floodwall. Canadian Tibbles showed us Winnipeg's solution, yet farther downstream along the Red River. In the '60s they built a 30-mile floodway "costing $300m in today's dollars" to divert the flow when waters rise. "Winnipeg says it saved $10bn in damages."
PLAYING WITH POLYPILL STATISTICS The heart polypill was covered on all three newscasts. NBC and CBS filed a brief mention by their in-house physicians, Nancy Snyderman and Jon LaPook respectively. ABC assigned John McKenzie to a full report. He predicted that the combo-medication--a single pill containing aspirin plus statin plus blood pressure relief--could "dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease" and be prescribed for more than 60m patients with healthy hearts nationwide. To qualify they would have to exhibit just one risk factor for eventual disease, thus also receiving treatment for symptoms they did not have. McKenzie cited the statistic that the polypill "could reduce the risk of heart disease by up to 62% and of strokes by 48%." NBC's Snyderman used the statistic "by 50% to 60%." CBS' LaPook said it could cut "your risk factors" in half, not the risk itself.
Again, Tyndall Report pleads with medical correspondents to use statistics less sloppily. As we asked when ABC's McKenzie filed his story on alcohol last month, risk is changed from what to what? A 60% reduction in risk from taking a polypill could mean improving one's odds dramatically--from 75% to 45% for example--or marginally--from, say, 14% to 8%. Without the odds, the percentage means nothing.
WHEN WILL REPUBLICANS RESURGE? "Both national parties are heavily invested," so ABC decided to treat a special election in a rural Congressional District in upstate New York as a national story too. John Berman warned that "special elections are often poor predictors of bigger trends: turnout is small; media coverage is small." Yet the race between Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy is hinging on national issues. Murphy "is going all-in on the stimulus;" Tedisco is "betting on the bailout backlash." If Tedisco wins, Republicans will claim it as "the first victory in their resurgence," Berman predicted.
MOUNTAIN DEW OFF THE HOOK; DENNY’S PICKS UP FREE PR Amy Robach proves she is no Diane Sawyer. Last month Sawyer aired the grueling documentary A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains for ABC's 20/20 (previewed here) and followed up with an expose of Mountain Dew Mouth, the rot that destroys Appalachian dentistry because the caffeine-acid-sugar soda eats enamel off toddlers' teeth. Now Robach travels to the same creeks and hollows for NBC's Making a Difference as wealthy Connecticut suburbanites work with the Christian Appalachian Project to improve family nutrition. The closest Robach came to showing us those Mountain Dew horrors was an open can of Coca-Cola on a porch where children were at play.
Last week, Robach's Making a Difference feature brought us a Massachusetts beauty salon offering free haircuts to the unemployed. Now Kelly Cobiella files an equivalent survey for CBS' Bright Spots series. Cobiella told us about discount 'dos and free yoga classes but spent most of her time on free publicity for Denny's, the fast food chain. Its Grand Slam breakfast giveaway fed 2m diners gratis in 1,500 restaurants at a cost of $5m: "They will do it again next month, this time with a new twist. Those who ate free before are encouraged to pay the good deed forward. Bring a friend in need and Denny's will pick up the tab."
ROSS RETRACES PALMER’S FOOTSTEPS ABC attached an Investigates logo to Brian Ross' report on Joseph Cassano, the 54-year-old London-based trader even though there was little evidence of anything newly investigated. Give Ross credit for his clear use of layman's terms to describe Credit Default Swaps: Cassano committed American International Group "to cover or insure what turned out to be more than $1tr of junk-quality loans held by banks," which is no bad effort. However, his coverage of the FBI's attempts to nail Cassano down on fraud charges did little to advance the story. It included the same stakeout of Cassano's London townhouse that Elizabeth Palmer used for CBS two weeks ago and Ross even ran the same excellent "without being flippant" soundbite that Palmer quoted.
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS All three anchors prepared to jet to London to attend the G20 Financial Summit to be hosted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. CBS' Mark Phillips handicapped Brown's chances of securing his "global New Deal" consisting of "further financial stimulus and tighter market regulation" and concluded that his plan looks like a House of Cards. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy (commenter bkavfa at CBS accurately notes that Sarkozy is represented by the wrong flag) both reject further public debt. Premier Wen Jiabao is unwilling to increase lending. The European Union's current president Mirek Topolanek calls Brown's plan the Road to Hell. NBC offered free publicity to Joshua Cooper Ramo's new book The Age of the Unthinkable when it asked him to preview G20 in its In His Own Words feature. He called G20 "possibly as important a summit as we have had since Yalta" and predicted an end to liberty itself if it failed to become "a real hot pot of innovation."
YES WE CAN "His vocabulary can be tough. His delivery makes him easy to understand." Thus ABC's Clarissa Ward summed up Barack Obama's performance as a teaching tool for the English workshop at Tokyo's Kaplan school of language. Each week 200 students recite Obama's oratory line by line, inflection included, to learn how to speak English aloud…"to win the war; secure the peace; and earn the respect of the world."
"Bad news" was how ABC's Jake Tapper characterized Obama's message to the two firms. He gave GM a 60-day deadline to fix its restructuring plan to make it "one more realistic about slumping sales and more aggressive about debt." Chrysler was given 30 days to finalize a deal with Fiat, the Italian automaker: "Merge or Die," was how Tapper put it. CBS' Chip Reid noted the incentives Obama offered if the firms could deliver. The Fiat-Chrysler merger would receive a $6bn loan; GM would receive a $17bn second tranche of a $30bn total. NBC's Chuck Todd called Obama's decision to request that CEO Wagoner be fired "a big moment, a pivotal moment." In effect, Todd interpreted, "he said that the auto industry is going to be taken over by Washington."
LINDLAND GOES THREE-FOR-CHAPTER-11 CNBC's automotive correspondent Phil LeBeau filed from the White House for NBC. He noted that "for the first time the federal government is endorsing the idea of using bankruptcy to clean up GM's massive debt." On ABC, George Stephanopoulos picked up on the same shift. Not only is bankruptcy "very much on the table right now," his unidentified official sources in the Obama Administration told him it is "likely the leading option."
Rebecca Lindland, automobile specialist at the economic analysis firm IHS Global Insight scored a threefer on the bankruptcy question, being quoted by CNBC's LeBeau and ABC's Jake Tapper and by Anthony Mason on CBS. "From a consumer standpoint bankruptcy is really a huge flag," she told LeBeau. The threat of bankruptcy is "information that they really needed to be able to show their stakeholders," was her soundbite for Tapper. "A company the size of GM has never gone bankrupt…we still do not really know all of the ripple effects," was the line Mason used.
GM's new boss Henderson was spinning the bankruptcy line too in his interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric: "A 60-day period is what they outlined for doing this out of court and if we are not successful doing it out of court, we will do it in court."
CONCESSIONS, DOWNSIZING, PAIN, SACRIFICE "Detroit was in shock today," stated CBS' Anthony Mason. He weighed General Motors' fate: it did sell more than 8m vehicles worldwide in 2008 and is "still the world's second biggest automaker;" on the other hand it has posted losses of $80bn over the past four years. Detroit auto critic Mark Phelan told NBC's Pete Alexander that, unlike Chrysler, GM has "demonstrated that it has a future. It needs a bridge to get from here to there." Yet even the union hall for the workers who build prototypes for GM's future models has seen downsizing that has "already gutted the membership," ABC's Chris Bury (at the tail of the Tapper videostream) pointed out. "The clock is running. Even more concessions may not be enough if car sales continue their dismal spiral." Bury asked GM's new CEO Frederick Henderson whether there is "more pain and sacrifice ahead for the employees." "There is more pain and sacrifice ahead for all of us. Yes."
FROM FARGO TO WINNIPEG Floodwater crested along the Red River over the weekend without inundating Fargo ND. All three networks updated us from the sandbagged dikes that had led their newscasts Friday. CBS' Dean Reynolds chose the angle of a late season blizzard heading in from the high plains, threatening 30 mph winds and a possible 14" snowfall. "High winds could accelerate the river current, now 16 mph instead of the usual 4 mph. The faster the river goes, the harder it is to hold within its banks along its tight twists and turns."
Both NBC's Kevin Tibbles and ABC's Barbara Pinto turned to the future. "Fargo needs $800m for permanent flood protection," Pinto pointed out. "The city's success at staving off disaster pushes it to the end when it comes to federal funds." Down river Grand Forks was flooded in 1997 and received its $400m floodwall. Canadian Tibbles showed us Winnipeg's solution, yet farther downstream along the Red River. In the '60s they built a 30-mile floodway "costing $300m in today's dollars" to divert the flow when waters rise. "Winnipeg says it saved $10bn in damages."
PLAYING WITH POLYPILL STATISTICS The heart polypill was covered on all three newscasts. NBC and CBS filed a brief mention by their in-house physicians, Nancy Snyderman and Jon LaPook respectively. ABC assigned John McKenzie to a full report. He predicted that the combo-medication--a single pill containing aspirin plus statin plus blood pressure relief--could "dramatically reduce the risk of heart disease" and be prescribed for more than 60m patients with healthy hearts nationwide. To qualify they would have to exhibit just one risk factor for eventual disease, thus also receiving treatment for symptoms they did not have. McKenzie cited the statistic that the polypill "could reduce the risk of heart disease by up to 62% and of strokes by 48%." NBC's Snyderman used the statistic "by 50% to 60%." CBS' LaPook said it could cut "your risk factors" in half, not the risk itself.
Again, Tyndall Report pleads with medical correspondents to use statistics less sloppily. As we asked when ABC's McKenzie filed his story on alcohol last month, risk is changed from what to what? A 60% reduction in risk from taking a polypill could mean improving one's odds dramatically--from 75% to 45% for example--or marginally--from, say, 14% to 8%. Without the odds, the percentage means nothing.
WHEN WILL REPUBLICANS RESURGE? "Both national parties are heavily invested," so ABC decided to treat a special election in a rural Congressional District in upstate New York as a national story too. John Berman warned that "special elections are often poor predictors of bigger trends: turnout is small; media coverage is small." Yet the race between Republican Jim Tedisco and Democrat Scott Murphy is hinging on national issues. Murphy "is going all-in on the stimulus;" Tedisco is "betting on the bailout backlash." If Tedisco wins, Republicans will claim it as "the first victory in their resurgence," Berman predicted.
MOUNTAIN DEW OFF THE HOOK; DENNY’S PICKS UP FREE PR Amy Robach proves she is no Diane Sawyer. Last month Sawyer aired the grueling documentary A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains for ABC's 20/20 (previewed here) and followed up with an expose of Mountain Dew Mouth, the rot that destroys Appalachian dentistry because the caffeine-acid-sugar soda eats enamel off toddlers' teeth. Now Robach travels to the same creeks and hollows for NBC's Making a Difference as wealthy Connecticut suburbanites work with the Christian Appalachian Project to improve family nutrition. The closest Robach came to showing us those Mountain Dew horrors was an open can of Coca-Cola on a porch where children were at play.
Last week, Robach's Making a Difference feature brought us a Massachusetts beauty salon offering free haircuts to the unemployed. Now Kelly Cobiella files an equivalent survey for CBS' Bright Spots series. Cobiella told us about discount 'dos and free yoga classes but spent most of her time on free publicity for Denny's, the fast food chain. Its Grand Slam breakfast giveaway fed 2m diners gratis in 1,500 restaurants at a cost of $5m: "They will do it again next month, this time with a new twist. Those who ate free before are encouraged to pay the good deed forward. Bring a friend in need and Denny's will pick up the tab."
ROSS RETRACES PALMER’S FOOTSTEPS ABC attached an Investigates logo to Brian Ross' report on Joseph Cassano, the 54-year-old London-based trader even though there was little evidence of anything newly investigated. Give Ross credit for his clear use of layman's terms to describe Credit Default Swaps: Cassano committed American International Group "to cover or insure what turned out to be more than $1tr of junk-quality loans held by banks," which is no bad effort. However, his coverage of the FBI's attempts to nail Cassano down on fraud charges did little to advance the story. It included the same stakeout of Cassano's London townhouse that Elizabeth Palmer used for CBS two weeks ago and Ross even ran the same excellent "without being flippant" soundbite that Palmer quoted.
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS All three anchors prepared to jet to London to attend the G20 Financial Summit to be hosted by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. CBS' Mark Phillips handicapped Brown's chances of securing his "global New Deal" consisting of "further financial stimulus and tighter market regulation" and concluded that his plan looks like a House of Cards. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy (commenter bkavfa at CBS accurately notes that Sarkozy is represented by the wrong flag) both reject further public debt. Premier Wen Jiabao is unwilling to increase lending. The European Union's current president Mirek Topolanek calls Brown's plan the Road to Hell. NBC offered free publicity to Joshua Cooper Ramo's new book The Age of the Unthinkable when it asked him to preview G20 in its In His Own Words feature. He called G20 "possibly as important a summit as we have had since Yalta" and predicted an end to liberty itself if it failed to become "a real hot pot of innovation."
YES WE CAN "His vocabulary can be tough. His delivery makes him easy to understand." Thus ABC's Clarissa Ward summed up Barack Obama's performance as a teaching tool for the English workshop at Tokyo's Kaplan school of language. Each week 200 students recite Obama's oratory line by line, inflection included, to learn how to speak English aloud…"to win the war; secure the peace; and earn the respect of the world."
