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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 5, 2009
Barack Obama's White House has its publicity machine running smoothly. The President invited 150-or-so leaders of the medical-industrial complex to a summit on healthcare reform. Citizens could watch it televised on C-SPAN or videostreamed on healthreform.gov. Or they could watch a summary from any of the three White House correspondents on the nightly newscasts, qualifying the summit as the Story of the Day. Yet the White House's PR team is not omnipotent. It was unable to persuade any of the three newscasts to lead with its talking shop. Corporations in crisis grabbed the leadoff spots instead. ABC and NBC chose the nearly bankrupt General Motors. CBS chose the nearly worthless Citigroup.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 5, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SEE HARRY & LOUISE ON WHITE HOUSE VIDEOSTREAM Barack Obama's White House has its publicity machine running smoothly. The President invited 150-or-so leaders of the medical-industrial complex to a summit on healthcare reform. Citizens could watch it televised on C-SPAN or videostreamed on healthreform.gov. Or they could watch a summary from any of the three White House correspondents on the nightly newscasts, qualifying the summit as the Story of the Day. Yet the White House's PR team is not omnipotent. It was unable to persuade any of the three newscasts to lead with its talking shop. Corporations in crisis grabbed the leadoff spots instead. ABC and NBC chose the nearly bankrupt General Motors. CBS chose the nearly worthless Citigroup.
Obama is not the first President to try to reform the healthcare system to provide affordable, universal coverage, NBC's Chuck Todd reminded us: "Reform is something that has bedeviled Presidents on both sides of the aisle," he claimed at first, before offering a different view later in his report: "Every Democratic President since Harry Truman has vowed to tackle healthcare in a comprehensive way and somehow fallen short." So were there really any bedeviled Republicans?
Most of the contrasts were drawn between Obama and his immediate Democratic predecessor. NBC's Todd and ABC's Jake Tapper even ran soundbites from a Harry & Louise ad to remind us of 1994. CBS' Chip Reid reported that Obama claimed to have "learned the lessons" from Hillary Rodham Clinton's defeat 15 years ago when she "worked behind closed doors and put together a plan full of mandates. Instead of doing battle with insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals and doctors, this time all those groups are in the room." The President urged Congress to pass a plan by the end of the year. "Congress should start drafting legislation in the early summer," ABC's Tapper predicted.
TV news doctors are powerful voices in the medical-industrial complex too. ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson was invited to participate in the White House session. He confessed he was "blown away" by President Obama's grasp of the issue. CNN's in-house physician Sanjay Gupta has decided not to play an insider role, according to NBC's Todd. Dr Gupta has withdrawn his job application to be Surgeon General. Todd reported that Gupta would have had to take "a massive paycut" to don the surgeon's uniform.
SALARIES AND CACTUS ARE GOOD FOR ONE’S HEALTH NBC had prepared us for the healthcare summit Wednesday with Robert Bazell's approving profile of the Kaiser-Permanente healthcare system. Its staff of 14,000 physicians cares for 8.6m patients with modern electronic recordkeeping and "one of the less expensive" schedule of premium fees. The explanation for its affordability, according to Bazell, is that physicians "work for a salary" so they have no financial incentive to order unnecessary care. The American Medical Association "was appalled at the idea of salaried physicians" when the plan was created in the 1930s. "That attitude has changed. The AMA fully supports the Kaiser model."
Now Bazell follows up with a feature on community healthcare for NBC's We The People series. He profiled Healthy South Chicago, a program that offers preventive medicine in the home and nutrition guidance in the stores for the city's huge Latino community. Many health problems for immigrants, Bazell explained, arise from the culture shock of juggling a cuisine from one's homeland with unfamiliar foodstuffs. It helps when cactus is on sale at the Windy City bodega on the corner.
COLON FACT CHECK Instead of the healthcare system, CBS covered a specific disease. There is no surprise that it should be colon cancer, since anchor Katie Couric is a national spokeswoman for its prevention and awareness. She assigned in-house physician Jon LaPook to publicize a nationwide survey--in which her activist group participated--on state-by-state legislation concerning colonoscopies: 21 states require insurers to pay for preventive screening; 19 have no such requirement.
A couple of years ago Tyndall Report challenged a claim by Couric that colonoscopies not only save lives but they also save money by preventing the costly care for full blown cancer. Now in LaPook's report David Johnson, a past president of the American College of Gastroenterology, makes the same money-saving claim. This makes no sense. If insurers could indeed save money by paying $3,000 for a colonoscopy for every single fiftysomething, why does there need to be state laws to oblige them to cover the procedure?
Fact check please.
JUST A HARSH WORD FOR RESTRUCTURING "It is hard to imagine a more grim report," was how ABC's Eric Horng put it. "This is a sobering report," declared CNBC's Phil LeBeau on NBC. The auditor's report on General Motors found that "current factors raise substantial doubt about GM's ability to continue as a going concern." Grim and sobering perhaps but hardly newsworthy: last year, LeBeau reminded us, GM lost money at the rate of $85m a day. So does that mean the automaker will go bankrupt? Such a filing "is not going out of business," ABC's John Berman pointed out (at the tail of the Horng videostream). "Continental, Delta and United Airlines all did it and are flying now. It is restructuring." Berman offered examples of what the "restructuring" euphemism entails: cuts in pension payments, reduced healthcare benefits, firings of the executive suite, closed dealerships and a new line of credit from the government. "General Motors does not want to do that," CNBC's LeBeau assured us, implying that it has a choice.
A PENNY FOR YOUR BANK? The bad news for Citigroup came not from auditors but from Wall Street traders. "Only two years ago a $55 stock," CNBC's David Faber reminded NBC anchor Brian Williams. "Now $1." As the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 281 points to 6594, CBS' Anthony Mason pointed out that five of its 30 names have a share value in single digits: Citigroup, General Motors, General Electric, Bank of America, Alcoa--with American Express "threatening to join them." Mason talked to traders who told him "the banks need stability before stocks can stage a turnaround." For that, ABC's Betsy Stark (no link) explained to anchor Charles Gibson, they are relying on Uncle Sam's Treasury Department: "They see trillions being sent to rescue the banks but they do not see a plan to get toxic assets off the banks' books, which is what would give them confidence that the banking problem has been fixed."
MADOFF KEEPS INVESTIGATORS BUSY The Bernard Madoff story is becoming the specialty beat of the networks' investigative units. Of the last ten stories about Madoff on the nightly newscasts, seven have been filed by NBC's Lisa Myers or ABC's Brian Ross or CBS' Armen Keteyian. ABC's Ross used his telephoto lens Wednesday to spy on Ruth Madoff in the couple's Manhattan penthouse apartment. Now CBS' Investigation sends Keteyian to the Orthopedic Specialty Group clinic in Fairfield Ct to sit down with some of Madoff's defrauded investors. Madoff handled $33m for the clinic's retirement fund so now its 140 workers have applied to the federal Securities Investor Protection Corporation for their promised $500,000 compensation. Keteyian found the fly in that ointment. SIPC insures investment accounts not individual investors. So the $500K has to be split 140 ways.
BEIJING IS MONTREAL Be careful what you wish for, seemed to be the moral of Adrienne Mong's report from Beijing. NBC decided to remind us of the eyepopping architecture that had crowned that city's $40bn effort to host the Olympic Games last summer. Mong recalled Beijing "welcoming the world with a shiny new version of itself in anticipation of a boom in business and tourism." Welcome to Montreal! The Bird's Nest Stadium sits unused. The Water Cube may be revamped as an amusement park "in an effort to help revitalize the area." Office buildings stand empty and luxury hotel lobbies are silent. Construction cranes, the joke went, had been China's national bird. They are no longer busy, Mong wrapped up with a neat pun, "leaving behind an empty Nest."
ATHLETES, NOT SUPERMEN The Gulf of Mexico fishing accident off Tampa last weekend only made national news because two of the four men on the capsized boat were NFL players--just as Pat Tillman's death was more newsworthy than other friendly fire incidents in Afghanistan and Michael Vick's pitbull ring was more than just any other dog fight. Part of the fascination with NFL players is that, in popular imagination, they are endowed with superhuman attributes of strength, determination and stamina. So the heroic image of Marquis Cooper, the missing Raider, and Corey Smith, the missing Lion, was undercut when the surviving fisherman from the quartet was quoted in the St Petersburg Times. As CBS' Kelly Cobiella recounted Wednesday, Nick Schuyler reportedly said his two shipmates "gave up hope their first night in the water, took off their life vests and drifted away."
Now NBC's Ron Mott reports that the Cooper and Smith families "are having a tough time accepting the notion" that their heroes would not have fought more tenaciously to save their own lives. Mott consulted his sources at the US Coast Guard. They told him "Schuyler's account is consistent with similar water emergencies." In those 60F Gulf of Mexico waters, hypothermia "can dramatically alter mental capacities--even for elite athletes."
FREE PUBLICITY FOR CRAIGSLIST’S PROSTITUTES Thomas Dark, the Sheriff of Cook County Ill, appeared to be trying to harm craigslist when he sued the Website for being "the largest source of prostitution in America." Yet there is no way his lawsuit does not amount to free publicity for what is on offer on the Website. "Just a glance at the erotic services ads leaves little to the imagination," ABC's Barbara Pinto assured us. As for the prospect of the sexual listings being removed, as Sheriff Dark wants, Pinto reckoned there is no chance: "With only 38 employees and more than 30m new classified ads every month, it is nearly impossible to monitor."
WAS THE GIPPER’S FORMULA GRECIAN? The New York Times thought it was newsworthy. So did Washington Post. So CBS sent Jim Axelrod out to see if he too could find something interesting in the phenomenon that a middle aged man like Barack Obama "is adding salt to his pepper." Axelrod mused about a reverse Grecian Formula. "There was talk during the campaign that maybe he was dying his hair gray to look more seasoned," was his culinary pun. He pinned down Zariff, the First Barber, who swore that the First Locks were "100% natural." So Axelrod turned his story into an opportunity to tease Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton went gray while in office as did both George Bushes--but not The Gipper. "Did he get any help from the bottle?" Axelrod grilled Reagan's onetime Chief of Staff: "To the very, very best of my knowledge, Hell No!" came Kenneth Duberstein's non-denial denial.
Obama is not the first President to try to reform the healthcare system to provide affordable, universal coverage, NBC's Chuck Todd reminded us: "Reform is something that has bedeviled Presidents on both sides of the aisle," he claimed at first, before offering a different view later in his report: "Every Democratic President since Harry Truman has vowed to tackle healthcare in a comprehensive way and somehow fallen short." So were there really any bedeviled Republicans?
Most of the contrasts were drawn between Obama and his immediate Democratic predecessor. NBC's Todd and ABC's Jake Tapper even ran soundbites from a Harry & Louise ad to remind us of 1994. CBS' Chip Reid reported that Obama claimed to have "learned the lessons" from Hillary Rodham Clinton's defeat 15 years ago when she "worked behind closed doors and put together a plan full of mandates. Instead of doing battle with insurance companies, drug companies, hospitals and doctors, this time all those groups are in the room." The President urged Congress to pass a plan by the end of the year. "Congress should start drafting legislation in the early summer," ABC's Tapper predicted.
TV news doctors are powerful voices in the medical-industrial complex too. ABC's in-house physician Timothy Johnson was invited to participate in the White House session. He confessed he was "blown away" by President Obama's grasp of the issue. CNN's in-house physician Sanjay Gupta has decided not to play an insider role, according to NBC's Todd. Dr Gupta has withdrawn his job application to be Surgeon General. Todd reported that Gupta would have had to take "a massive paycut" to don the surgeon's uniform.
SALARIES AND CACTUS ARE GOOD FOR ONE’S HEALTH NBC had prepared us for the healthcare summit Wednesday with Robert Bazell's approving profile of the Kaiser-Permanente healthcare system. Its staff of 14,000 physicians cares for 8.6m patients with modern electronic recordkeeping and "one of the less expensive" schedule of premium fees. The explanation for its affordability, according to Bazell, is that physicians "work for a salary" so they have no financial incentive to order unnecessary care. The American Medical Association "was appalled at the idea of salaried physicians" when the plan was created in the 1930s. "That attitude has changed. The AMA fully supports the Kaiser model."
Now Bazell follows up with a feature on community healthcare for NBC's We The People series. He profiled Healthy South Chicago, a program that offers preventive medicine in the home and nutrition guidance in the stores for the city's huge Latino community. Many health problems for immigrants, Bazell explained, arise from the culture shock of juggling a cuisine from one's homeland with unfamiliar foodstuffs. It helps when cactus is on sale at the Windy City bodega on the corner.
COLON FACT CHECK Instead of the healthcare system, CBS covered a specific disease. There is no surprise that it should be colon cancer, since anchor Katie Couric is a national spokeswoman for its prevention and awareness. She assigned in-house physician Jon LaPook to publicize a nationwide survey--in which her activist group participated--on state-by-state legislation concerning colonoscopies: 21 states require insurers to pay for preventive screening; 19 have no such requirement.
A couple of years ago Tyndall Report challenged a claim by Couric that colonoscopies not only save lives but they also save money by preventing the costly care for full blown cancer. Now in LaPook's report David Johnson, a past president of the American College of Gastroenterology, makes the same money-saving claim. This makes no sense. If insurers could indeed save money by paying $3,000 for a colonoscopy for every single fiftysomething, why does there need to be state laws to oblige them to cover the procedure?
Fact check please.
JUST A HARSH WORD FOR RESTRUCTURING "It is hard to imagine a more grim report," was how ABC's Eric Horng put it. "This is a sobering report," declared CNBC's Phil LeBeau on NBC. The auditor's report on General Motors found that "current factors raise substantial doubt about GM's ability to continue as a going concern." Grim and sobering perhaps but hardly newsworthy: last year, LeBeau reminded us, GM lost money at the rate of $85m a day. So does that mean the automaker will go bankrupt? Such a filing "is not going out of business," ABC's John Berman pointed out (at the tail of the Horng videostream). "Continental, Delta and United Airlines all did it and are flying now. It is restructuring." Berman offered examples of what the "restructuring" euphemism entails: cuts in pension payments, reduced healthcare benefits, firings of the executive suite, closed dealerships and a new line of credit from the government. "General Motors does not want to do that," CNBC's LeBeau assured us, implying that it has a choice.
A PENNY FOR YOUR BANK? The bad news for Citigroup came not from auditors but from Wall Street traders. "Only two years ago a $55 stock," CNBC's David Faber reminded NBC anchor Brian Williams. "Now $1." As the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 281 points to 6594, CBS' Anthony Mason pointed out that five of its 30 names have a share value in single digits: Citigroup, General Motors, General Electric, Bank of America, Alcoa--with American Express "threatening to join them." Mason talked to traders who told him "the banks need stability before stocks can stage a turnaround." For that, ABC's Betsy Stark (no link) explained to anchor Charles Gibson, they are relying on Uncle Sam's Treasury Department: "They see trillions being sent to rescue the banks but they do not see a plan to get toxic assets off the banks' books, which is what would give them confidence that the banking problem has been fixed."
MADOFF KEEPS INVESTIGATORS BUSY The Bernard Madoff story is becoming the specialty beat of the networks' investigative units. Of the last ten stories about Madoff on the nightly newscasts, seven have been filed by NBC's Lisa Myers or ABC's Brian Ross or CBS' Armen Keteyian. ABC's Ross used his telephoto lens Wednesday to spy on Ruth Madoff in the couple's Manhattan penthouse apartment. Now CBS' Investigation sends Keteyian to the Orthopedic Specialty Group clinic in Fairfield Ct to sit down with some of Madoff's defrauded investors. Madoff handled $33m for the clinic's retirement fund so now its 140 workers have applied to the federal Securities Investor Protection Corporation for their promised $500,000 compensation. Keteyian found the fly in that ointment. SIPC insures investment accounts not individual investors. So the $500K has to be split 140 ways.
BEIJING IS MONTREAL Be careful what you wish for, seemed to be the moral of Adrienne Mong's report from Beijing. NBC decided to remind us of the eyepopping architecture that had crowned that city's $40bn effort to host the Olympic Games last summer. Mong recalled Beijing "welcoming the world with a shiny new version of itself in anticipation of a boom in business and tourism." Welcome to Montreal! The Bird's Nest Stadium sits unused. The Water Cube may be revamped as an amusement park "in an effort to help revitalize the area." Office buildings stand empty and luxury hotel lobbies are silent. Construction cranes, the joke went, had been China's national bird. They are no longer busy, Mong wrapped up with a neat pun, "leaving behind an empty Nest."
ATHLETES, NOT SUPERMEN The Gulf of Mexico fishing accident off Tampa last weekend only made national news because two of the four men on the capsized boat were NFL players--just as Pat Tillman's death was more newsworthy than other friendly fire incidents in Afghanistan and Michael Vick's pitbull ring was more than just any other dog fight. Part of the fascination with NFL players is that, in popular imagination, they are endowed with superhuman attributes of strength, determination and stamina. So the heroic image of Marquis Cooper, the missing Raider, and Corey Smith, the missing Lion, was undercut when the surviving fisherman from the quartet was quoted in the St Petersburg Times. As CBS' Kelly Cobiella recounted Wednesday, Nick Schuyler reportedly said his two shipmates "gave up hope their first night in the water, took off their life vests and drifted away."
Now NBC's Ron Mott reports that the Cooper and Smith families "are having a tough time accepting the notion" that their heroes would not have fought more tenaciously to save their own lives. Mott consulted his sources at the US Coast Guard. They told him "Schuyler's account is consistent with similar water emergencies." In those 60F Gulf of Mexico waters, hypothermia "can dramatically alter mental capacities--even for elite athletes."
FREE PUBLICITY FOR CRAIGSLIST’S PROSTITUTES Thomas Dark, the Sheriff of Cook County Ill, appeared to be trying to harm craigslist when he sued the Website for being "the largest source of prostitution in America." Yet there is no way his lawsuit does not amount to free publicity for what is on offer on the Website. "Just a glance at the erotic services ads leaves little to the imagination," ABC's Barbara Pinto assured us. As for the prospect of the sexual listings being removed, as Sheriff Dark wants, Pinto reckoned there is no chance: "With only 38 employees and more than 30m new classified ads every month, it is nearly impossible to monitor."
WAS THE GIPPER’S FORMULA GRECIAN? The New York Times thought it was newsworthy. So did Washington Post. So CBS sent Jim Axelrod out to see if he too could find something interesting in the phenomenon that a middle aged man like Barack Obama "is adding salt to his pepper." Axelrod mused about a reverse Grecian Formula. "There was talk during the campaign that maybe he was dying his hair gray to look more seasoned," was his culinary pun. He pinned down Zariff, the First Barber, who swore that the First Locks were "100% natural." So Axelrod turned his story into an opportunity to tease Ronald Reagan. Bill Clinton went gray while in office as did both George Bushes--but not The Gipper. "Did he get any help from the bottle?" Axelrod grilled Reagan's onetime Chief of Staff: "To the very, very best of my knowledge, Hell No!" came Kenneth Duberstein's non-denial denial.
