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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 17, 2009
For the fourth time in the past eight weekdays the Somali pirates were Story of the Day. This time the focus was not the Indian Ocean but smalltown Underhill in landlocked Vermont. All three newscasts had a reporter on hand for their lead as Captain Richard Phillips flew into his hometown to be reunited with his family. This was no hero's welcome, the onetime hostage insisted: "I am just a bit part in this story. I have got a small part. I am a seaman doing the best he can like all the other seamen out there. The first people I would like to thank are the SEALs. They are the superheroes. They are the titans."
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 17, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
HOMEWARDBOUND HOSTAGE CAPTAIN DISAVOWS HERO’S LAURELS For the fourth time in the past eight weekdays the Somali pirates were Story of the Day. This time the focus was not the Indian Ocean but smalltown Underhill in landlocked Vermont. All three newscasts had a reporter on hand for their lead as Captain Richard Phillips flew into his hometown to be reunited with his family. This was no hero's welcome, the onetime hostage insisted: "I am just a bit part in this story. I have got a small part. I am a seaman doing the best he can like all the other seamen out there. The first people I would like to thank are the SEALs. They are the superheroes. They are the titans."
Accordingly, ABC designated the three unidentified USNavy SEAL snipers who rescued Captain Phillips from his pirate captors as its Persons of the Week. CBS' Kimberly Dozier and NBC's Chris Jansing had both profiled the SEALs on Monday when the rescue story broke. ABC held off until the end of the week. Anchor Charles Gibson called the secretive, elite commandos "one tough group." The sailors operate in mountains and deserts and jungles as well as oceans. "Normally their work would go unnoticed." Not this week.
ABC apparently paid attention to its own Exclusive reporting by Jim Sciutto in Mombasa. In his Wednesday interview with First Mate Shane Murphy and Second Mate Colin Wright of the Maersk Line's Alabama, they insisted that their captain never agreed to be taken prisoner in an exchange to keep his crew safe. Phillips had been captured while he was showing the pirates how to operate the lifeboat in which they were to make their getaway. So ABC's John Berman, at the Vermont ceremony, noted that Phillips "would not take an ounce of credit"--and did not try to award him any either.
Not so NBC's Mike Taibbi and CBS' Jim Axelrod. They gave no credence to Sciutto's account. "Phillips gave himself up to those Somali pirates in exchange for his crew's freedom…a regular guy who rose to the most uncommon challenge…a pure and selfless hero and a reluctant celebrity," gushed Axelrod. Taibbi called the 53-year-old Phillips "a career seaman who volunteered his life to save his crew and his ship."
CARBON DIOXIDE IS POLLUTION The week closed with a major pronouncement from the Environmental Protection Agency. Carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are classified under the Clean Air Act as polluters because they endanger the public health. ABC's David Kerley explained the agency's convoluted reasoning thus: "contributing to climate change; leading to more heatwaves, droughts and flooding; threatening our food and water supplies." The EPA already had a green light from the Supreme Court to issue such a ruling, noted NBC's Anne Thompson, but "for two years the Bush Administration refused to do anything." She found the ruling written in "blunt, forceful language." Theoretically, the designation enables EPA reduce fossil fuel emissions from vehicles, smokestacks and power plants. In practice, CBS' Bob Orr told us, those regulations "could take years and face likely court challenges." Instead the Obama Administration would like to hold off "and allow Democrats on Capitol Hill a chance to ram through tough new laws curbing emissions. Republicans are calling that an energy tax and are pledging a fight."
CASTRO IS THE TALK OF THE CARIBBEAN The three White House correspondents arrived on the Caribbean island of Trinidad for the 34-nation Summit of the Americas only to find the agenda set by the hemisphere's uninvited regime. "US-Cuban relations are front and center," found ABC's Jake Tapper, with "widespread support for the US to lift the embargo against Cuba enacted in 1962, six months after Barack Obama was born." President Raul Castro "has hijacked this summit," noted NBC's Chuck Todd, elevating Cuba to top talking point with a message to his US counterpart. "He is ready to talk about everything," reported CBS' Bill Plante, including human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners. "We could be wrong, we admit it. We are human beings," was how ABC quoted Castro.
MAKING PROFITS FROM FREE MONEY CBS' Anthony Mason explained Thursday how the Federal Reserve's 0% interest rates enable the major banks to make free money, lending the central bank's funds out to customers at 3%. Now that sweet deal is turning into profits. Mason reported on JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. CBS' Kelly Wallace and ABC's David Muir now cover the next bailout recipient, Citigroup, which was $1.6bn in the black in the first quarter of this year. Does that mean that the banking crisis is over and the Treasury Department's TARP funds can be repaid? Not so fast. CBS' Wallace found that an increase in mortgage lending has not been accompanied by car loans, student loans and small business loans: "It is still difficult for banks to sell their consumer loans to other investors--so banks are being choosier about who they lend to." ABC's Muir pointed to the "changes in accounting rules" that turned Citigroup's red numbers black: "Out of the woods? Not even close!"
THE GENERAL HAS FRIENDS Oddly, CBS decided to carve out a full 30% of its newshole (6 min out of 19) for anchor Katie Couric's inquiry into whether the troops-out schedule for the US military in Iraq was still on course. She filed a reassuring, but not very newsworthy, q-&-a with Gen Raymond Odierno. Will his troops pull out of every Iraqi city by June as scheduled? "Except for probably Mosul." Could the timetable for total withdrawal by the end of 2010 be rendered null and void? "The chances of that happening are much less today that they were a year ago." How ready are local forces to take over? "We still have some work to do in helping them with logistics, with aviation, with some planning and still a little bit in working some large scale operations."
Then, unaccountably, Couric's conversation with the general veered into trivia. Did you know that he has 4200 friends on Facebook? Did you know that his one-armed son has landed a job with the New York Yankees? Why would you care?
FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, TWITTER & CRAIGSLIST Raymond Odierno's Facebook page was not included in Chris Jansing's celebrity social networking round-up on NBC. She surveyed online stories that had already been covered on the nightly newscasts this week--ABC's David Muir had the cheese-up-the-nose pizza at Domino's and CBS' Mark Phillips had Susan Boyle the singing Scottish spinster-- and then she added the Twitter onslaught from Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher and David Gregory--"instant gratification for short attention spans," was how she teased the Meet the Press anchor. Jansing's colleague Jeff Rossen was assigned to a seamier online story, the murder of Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old "aspiring model and actress," in her upscale hotel room in Boston. Her killer may have contacted her through her advertisement for "massage therapy and exotic dancing" on Craigslist.
THE REST IS SILENCE National Day of Silence was marked by ABC's Dan Harris. "Students at high schools across the country refrain from speaking to draw attention to anti-gay discrimination." Specifically teachers and administrators are criticized for being reluctant to crack down on bullies who use anti-gay bigotry in their taunts "whether the targets are gay or not." Such bullying presumably outrages Christians and inspires their solidarity. Not so. "Some Christian groups are organizing school walkouts arguing this day forces acceptance of immoral behavior." Immoral, as in being sexually attracted to those of one's own gender--not immoral, as in refusing to punish bullies.
The reason why Harris' report is worth watching is not because of that meanspirited hairsplitting. It is because of the sad story of Carl Walker-Hoover. He was gay-baited at his new school and hanged himself with an extension cord. He was eleven years old.
COLLEGE DAYS The high cost of college tuition was addressed by ABC and NBC. Tom Costello landed a trip to Montreal for NBC's In Depth to cover the 50% increase in the enrolment in the last seven years of students who are United States citizens at Canadian seats of learning. Tuition at Canadian colleges is at least 30% cheaper than at private schools in this country. McGill University alone has 2,200 American undergraduates, fully 12% of the student body. ABC's Chris Bury told us about $45m in fresh donations to university endowments to fund scholarships. The money has been given under a cloak of secrecy to nine institutions--"UNC-Asheville called Homeland Security just to see if the funds are legitimate"--all of which happen to have a female president.
THE WORM TURNS On the Road Again is the title of Steve Hartman's occasional series of tributes to his predecessor at CBS, the master traveling feature reporter. Last year's Charles Kuralt follow-up favorites included the giant-ball-of-twine wars and birch bark canoes in the Minnesota woods. Now Hartman takes us to Sopchoppy in the Florida Panhandle, home of worm grunting. Since Kuralt unearthed the practice in 1972, the Internal Revenue Service has come calling, Vanderbilt University has come studying and an annual festival celebrates the great reporter's legacy.
Accordingly, ABC designated the three unidentified USNavy SEAL snipers who rescued Captain Phillips from his pirate captors as its Persons of the Week. CBS' Kimberly Dozier and NBC's Chris Jansing had both profiled the SEALs on Monday when the rescue story broke. ABC held off until the end of the week. Anchor Charles Gibson called the secretive, elite commandos "one tough group." The sailors operate in mountains and deserts and jungles as well as oceans. "Normally their work would go unnoticed." Not this week.
ABC apparently paid attention to its own Exclusive reporting by Jim Sciutto in Mombasa. In his Wednesday interview with First Mate Shane Murphy and Second Mate Colin Wright of the Maersk Line's Alabama, they insisted that their captain never agreed to be taken prisoner in an exchange to keep his crew safe. Phillips had been captured while he was showing the pirates how to operate the lifeboat in which they were to make their getaway. So ABC's John Berman, at the Vermont ceremony, noted that Phillips "would not take an ounce of credit"--and did not try to award him any either.
Not so NBC's Mike Taibbi and CBS' Jim Axelrod. They gave no credence to Sciutto's account. "Phillips gave himself up to those Somali pirates in exchange for his crew's freedom…a regular guy who rose to the most uncommon challenge…a pure and selfless hero and a reluctant celebrity," gushed Axelrod. Taibbi called the 53-year-old Phillips "a career seaman who volunteered his life to save his crew and his ship."
CARBON DIOXIDE IS POLLUTION The week closed with a major pronouncement from the Environmental Protection Agency. Carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases are classified under the Clean Air Act as polluters because they endanger the public health. ABC's David Kerley explained the agency's convoluted reasoning thus: "contributing to climate change; leading to more heatwaves, droughts and flooding; threatening our food and water supplies." The EPA already had a green light from the Supreme Court to issue such a ruling, noted NBC's Anne Thompson, but "for two years the Bush Administration refused to do anything." She found the ruling written in "blunt, forceful language." Theoretically, the designation enables EPA reduce fossil fuel emissions from vehicles, smokestacks and power plants. In practice, CBS' Bob Orr told us, those regulations "could take years and face likely court challenges." Instead the Obama Administration would like to hold off "and allow Democrats on Capitol Hill a chance to ram through tough new laws curbing emissions. Republicans are calling that an energy tax and are pledging a fight."
CASTRO IS THE TALK OF THE CARIBBEAN The three White House correspondents arrived on the Caribbean island of Trinidad for the 34-nation Summit of the Americas only to find the agenda set by the hemisphere's uninvited regime. "US-Cuban relations are front and center," found ABC's Jake Tapper, with "widespread support for the US to lift the embargo against Cuba enacted in 1962, six months after Barack Obama was born." President Raul Castro "has hijacked this summit," noted NBC's Chuck Todd, elevating Cuba to top talking point with a message to his US counterpart. "He is ready to talk about everything," reported CBS' Bill Plante, including human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners. "We could be wrong, we admit it. We are human beings," was how ABC quoted Castro.
MAKING PROFITS FROM FREE MONEY CBS' Anthony Mason explained Thursday how the Federal Reserve's 0% interest rates enable the major banks to make free money, lending the central bank's funds out to customers at 3%. Now that sweet deal is turning into profits. Mason reported on JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs. CBS' Kelly Wallace and ABC's David Muir now cover the next bailout recipient, Citigroup, which was $1.6bn in the black in the first quarter of this year. Does that mean that the banking crisis is over and the Treasury Department's TARP funds can be repaid? Not so fast. CBS' Wallace found that an increase in mortgage lending has not been accompanied by car loans, student loans and small business loans: "It is still difficult for banks to sell their consumer loans to other investors--so banks are being choosier about who they lend to." ABC's Muir pointed to the "changes in accounting rules" that turned Citigroup's red numbers black: "Out of the woods? Not even close!"
THE GENERAL HAS FRIENDS Oddly, CBS decided to carve out a full 30% of its newshole (6 min out of 19) for anchor Katie Couric's inquiry into whether the troops-out schedule for the US military in Iraq was still on course. She filed a reassuring, but not very newsworthy, q-&-a with Gen Raymond Odierno. Will his troops pull out of every Iraqi city by June as scheduled? "Except for probably Mosul." Could the timetable for total withdrawal by the end of 2010 be rendered null and void? "The chances of that happening are much less today that they were a year ago." How ready are local forces to take over? "We still have some work to do in helping them with logistics, with aviation, with some planning and still a little bit in working some large scale operations."
Then, unaccountably, Couric's conversation with the general veered into trivia. Did you know that he has 4200 friends on Facebook? Did you know that his one-armed son has landed a job with the New York Yankees? Why would you care?
FACEBOOK, YOUTUBE, TWITTER & CRAIGSLIST Raymond Odierno's Facebook page was not included in Chris Jansing's celebrity social networking round-up on NBC. She surveyed online stories that had already been covered on the nightly newscasts this week--ABC's David Muir had the cheese-up-the-nose pizza at Domino's and CBS' Mark Phillips had Susan Boyle the singing Scottish spinster-- and then she added the Twitter onslaught from Oprah Winfrey and Ashton Kutcher and David Gregory--"instant gratification for short attention spans," was how she teased the Meet the Press anchor. Jansing's colleague Jeff Rossen was assigned to a seamier online story, the murder of Julissa Brisman, a 26-year-old "aspiring model and actress," in her upscale hotel room in Boston. Her killer may have contacted her through her advertisement for "massage therapy and exotic dancing" on Craigslist.
THE REST IS SILENCE National Day of Silence was marked by ABC's Dan Harris. "Students at high schools across the country refrain from speaking to draw attention to anti-gay discrimination." Specifically teachers and administrators are criticized for being reluctant to crack down on bullies who use anti-gay bigotry in their taunts "whether the targets are gay or not." Such bullying presumably outrages Christians and inspires their solidarity. Not so. "Some Christian groups are organizing school walkouts arguing this day forces acceptance of immoral behavior." Immoral, as in being sexually attracted to those of one's own gender--not immoral, as in refusing to punish bullies.
The reason why Harris' report is worth watching is not because of that meanspirited hairsplitting. It is because of the sad story of Carl Walker-Hoover. He was gay-baited at his new school and hanged himself with an extension cord. He was eleven years old.
COLLEGE DAYS The high cost of college tuition was addressed by ABC and NBC. Tom Costello landed a trip to Montreal for NBC's In Depth to cover the 50% increase in the enrolment in the last seven years of students who are United States citizens at Canadian seats of learning. Tuition at Canadian colleges is at least 30% cheaper than at private schools in this country. McGill University alone has 2,200 American undergraduates, fully 12% of the student body. ABC's Chris Bury told us about $45m in fresh donations to university endowments to fund scholarships. The money has been given under a cloak of secrecy to nine institutions--"UNC-Asheville called Homeland Security just to see if the funds are legitimate"--all of which happen to have a female president.
THE WORM TURNS On the Road Again is the title of Steve Hartman's occasional series of tributes to his predecessor at CBS, the master traveling feature reporter. Last year's Charles Kuralt follow-up favorites included the giant-ball-of-twine wars and birch bark canoes in the Minnesota woods. Now Hartman takes us to Sopchoppy in the Florida Panhandle, home of worm grunting. Since Kuralt unearthed the practice in 1972, the Internal Revenue Service has come calling, Vanderbilt University has come studying and an annual festival celebrates the great reporter's legacy.
