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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 06, 2009
Finally the fixation with the swine 'flu has ended. After qualifying as Story of the Day for seven out of the previous eight weekdays, foreign policy took over. All three newscasts led with trilateral diplomacy at the White House as Barack Obama hosted two other presidents, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. CBS anchor Katie Couric happened to be on the road in Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Robert Gates so Harry Smith of CBS' Early Show was her substitute.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 06, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
TRILATERAL TALKS TO OPPOSE THE TALIBAN Finally the fixation with the swine 'flu has ended. After qualifying as Story of the Day for seven out of the previous eight weekdays, foreign policy took over. All three newscasts led with trilateral diplomacy at the White House as Barack Obama hosted two other presidents, Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. CBS anchor Katie Couric happened to be on the road in Afghanistan with Defense Secretary Robert Gates so Harry Smith of CBS' Early Show was her substitute.
NBC and CBS both used their chief foreign correspondents--Richard Engel in New York and Lara Logan in the DC bureau--to cover the three-way talks. ABC assigned the task Jake Tapper, its man at the White House. The purpose of the meeting, noted NBC's Engel, was "to launch a new coordinated strategy to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban." He dubbed Pakistan and Afghanistan with the dubious title "the world's most volatile nations," which must have come as a crumb of comfort to, say, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Georgia, Congo…
The fact that Obama persuaded Karzai and Zardari to sit down together counted as an achievement, NBC's Andrea Mitchell (at the tail of the Chuck Todd videostream) noted. The last time those two nations' leaders met at the White House, with George Bush, "they would not even shake hands." ABC's Tapper told us that "neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan has historically a record of working well with the other." "Relations have been tense," was the way NBC's Engel put it.
CBS' Logan aired some dynamic propaganda video from a Taliban Website showing attacks on US military supply lines inside Pakistan and a teenage bomber's attack on the Information Ministry of Afghanistan last fall that killed eight people. However there was precious little reporting about the Taliban itself. What is its ideology? What are its war aims? What is its base of support? Instead we heard mostly vague labels. ABC's Tapper referred to the Taliban variously as "terrorists" and "extremists." NBC's Engel called them al-Qaeda's "extremist allies," as if the Taliban was the junior partner, and "militants." "Militants" was the description chosen by CBS' Logan.
NBC SEES OUTREACH; CBS SEES ERADICATION CBS and NBC both chose Afghanistan for their follow-up to the White House talks. Jim Maceda filed an In Depth report from Wardak Province for NBC where he told us of "a flurry of secret diplomacy in Saudi Arabia and Dubai" as an ex-Taliban politician, now chief negotiator for the Kabul government, is reaching out to moderate, "not ideologically driven," elements in the Taliban leadership. CBS anchor Katie Couric, with US military brass in Kabul, had a diametrically opposite report. She found a "new strategy to eradicate the Taliban." She called its insurgency "increasingly brazen" and aired speculation by Gen David McKiernan that the recent deaths of up to 100 civilians in Farah Province at the site of a US airstrike may have been "purposely caused" by Taliban guerrillas and later staged in a propaganda stunt. "The United States is at a distinct disadvantage in the propaganda war with the Taliban," McKiernan told Couric.
PAKISTAN URGED TO PAY LESS ATTENTION TO INDIA ABC chose the eastern side of the Khyber Pass as Nick Schifrin filed from Islamabad on the looming offensive by the Pakistani military in the Swat Valley. Refugees have already left, forming "makeshift tent camps" in the nation's capital, "no electricity, no running water and little food." Schifrin called the valley itself "a ghost town" as the army prepares to attack. "It is the third operation in the Swat in the last two years. After the previous battles failed the Pakistani government signed a peace deal with the Taliban hoping they would lay down their arms. They did not."
Back in Washington, ABC's Martha Raddatz (at the tail of the Schifrin videostream) reported that the United States had pressured the Pakistani military to make "a sustained shift in emphasis away from India to the Afghan border area" and to increase training in counterinsurgency. Her unidentified sources in the Obama Administration "are very, very skeptical that this will happen." From the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd cited "two questions hanging over the summit that US officials were ducking all over the place." Will the United States send troops into Pakistan? Is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal secure? "The whole point of this summit," Todd observed, is to get President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan "focused on his fight so that we do not have to deal with those two questions."
YOUTH ATTACK Only NBC stayed on the waning influenza beat. Robert Bazell followed up on the second swine 'flu death in Texas, a 33-year-old pregnant schoolteacher, to mention "the growing concern that this new virus is a disease mostly of young people." Even a thirtysomething is on the elderly side, with 15 being a patient's average age. Public health officials are puzzled. Were young people more likely to have been tourists in Mexico during the outbreak? Or are older people more likely to have immunity to the H1N1 strain?
FROM MODEL A TO HYBRID FOCUS The public relations department at Ford Motors scored a hat trick with the unveiling of a new compact car factory in Michigan. All three newscasts sent a correspondent along to publicize the "not so hidden agenda," as ABC's Chris Bury put it, that "Ford is expanding while General Motors and Chrysler are slashing…Ford is aiming to overtake GM as the #1 US automaker, a spot it has not seen since the 1930 Model A." The retooled $500m factory used to build 6,000lb Sports Utility Vehicles but will now hire 3,200 workers to make electric-hybrid versions of the 2,000lb Ford Focus. Ford is a company "that made a fortune selling gigantic SUVs," CBS' Dean Reynolds reminded us. CNBC's Phil LeBeau noted on NBC that going green by making fuel-efficient smaller cars is no surefire formula: "The success of electric models is dependent on gas prices."
TECHNOLOGY, COSMETICS, APPETITE Driving drunk is a criminal offence but driving distracted is a mere traffic violation. ABC's Barbara Pinto told us that Illinois and four other states are debating whether to make distractions behind the wheel criminal too. Pinto's hair-raising examples included technology--drivers talking on cell phones, texting messages, downloading ringtones--and cosmetics--painting their nails, fixing their make-up--and eating-while-driving. "Distracted drivers caused more than one third of all auto accidents."
THE KNOB OF THE MATTER Medicare's fraud problem is reportedly huge, accounting for fully 3% of all healthcare spending nationwide. The Inspector General estimates that $60bn is spent annually on fraudulently billed medical equipment and supplies. In Miami, an estimated 31% of the area's 1,500 medical supply firms are phony. Instead of trying to report on the huge numbers, NBC's Pierre Thomas decided to have the part illustrate the whole. He teamed up with the FBI's medical fraud squad in Miami. Together they visited five different firms and "four showed no sign of being in business." The office of a single company that billed Medicare for more than $400,000 in April did not even have a doorknob on its front door. Thus an anecdotal knob stands for $60bn.
GREAT BARRIER PUBLICITY A stunt by the Australian tourist board claims to have generated $80m in free advertising. A portion of that total was contributed by ABC with its closer from Nick Watt. The scheme was called the Best Job in the World. It invited 60-second video resumes to apply for a caretaker's job on Hamilton Island. The post received 35,000 applications out of which a reality gameshow competition was created and Ben Southwell, a 34-year-old Englishman, was hired as the winner. The free visual publicity consisted of Edenic shots of the island off the coast of Queensland. The free editorial plug came from Watt's endorsement of the job's desirability: "Jealous in London."
POLLY WANTS A FLOCK The closing feature on CBS served as a cautionary, although visually charming, tale for petlovers. "They are loud. They poop incessantly. They love to chew. What you have got is a three-year-old child running around with a can opener on its face." Thus Mira Tweti, author of the book Of Parrots and People described the dubious charms of owning a parrot as a pet. The birds are beautiful and talkative and intelligent and can do tricks, Bill Whitaker pointed out. They are third only to dogs and cats in pet popularity, with some 40m owned nationwide. The trouble is that the birds need to fly in flocks. Alone with a human they can be incessantly demanding or, worse, self-mutilating in their craving for company. Thus Whitaker explained the flocks of parrots multiplying in cities from San Francisco to Brooklyn "set loose by frustrated owners." Yes, Tweti. That is her real name.
NBC and CBS both used their chief foreign correspondents--Richard Engel in New York and Lara Logan in the DC bureau--to cover the three-way talks. ABC assigned the task Jake Tapper, its man at the White House. The purpose of the meeting, noted NBC's Engel, was "to launch a new coordinated strategy to fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban." He dubbed Pakistan and Afghanistan with the dubious title "the world's most volatile nations," which must have come as a crumb of comfort to, say, Zimbabwe, Myanmar, Sudan, Iraq, Georgia, Congo…
The fact that Obama persuaded Karzai and Zardari to sit down together counted as an achievement, NBC's Andrea Mitchell (at the tail of the Chuck Todd videostream) noted. The last time those two nations' leaders met at the White House, with George Bush, "they would not even shake hands." ABC's Tapper told us that "neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan has historically a record of working well with the other." "Relations have been tense," was the way NBC's Engel put it.
CBS' Logan aired some dynamic propaganda video from a Taliban Website showing attacks on US military supply lines inside Pakistan and a teenage bomber's attack on the Information Ministry of Afghanistan last fall that killed eight people. However there was precious little reporting about the Taliban itself. What is its ideology? What are its war aims? What is its base of support? Instead we heard mostly vague labels. ABC's Tapper referred to the Taliban variously as "terrorists" and "extremists." NBC's Engel called them al-Qaeda's "extremist allies," as if the Taliban was the junior partner, and "militants." "Militants" was the description chosen by CBS' Logan.
NBC SEES OUTREACH; CBS SEES ERADICATION CBS and NBC both chose Afghanistan for their follow-up to the White House talks. Jim Maceda filed an In Depth report from Wardak Province for NBC where he told us of "a flurry of secret diplomacy in Saudi Arabia and Dubai" as an ex-Taliban politician, now chief negotiator for the Kabul government, is reaching out to moderate, "not ideologically driven," elements in the Taliban leadership. CBS anchor Katie Couric, with US military brass in Kabul, had a diametrically opposite report. She found a "new strategy to eradicate the Taliban." She called its insurgency "increasingly brazen" and aired speculation by Gen David McKiernan that the recent deaths of up to 100 civilians in Farah Province at the site of a US airstrike may have been "purposely caused" by Taliban guerrillas and later staged in a propaganda stunt. "The United States is at a distinct disadvantage in the propaganda war with the Taliban," McKiernan told Couric.
PAKISTAN URGED TO PAY LESS ATTENTION TO INDIA ABC chose the eastern side of the Khyber Pass as Nick Schifrin filed from Islamabad on the looming offensive by the Pakistani military in the Swat Valley. Refugees have already left, forming "makeshift tent camps" in the nation's capital, "no electricity, no running water and little food." Schifrin called the valley itself "a ghost town" as the army prepares to attack. "It is the third operation in the Swat in the last two years. After the previous battles failed the Pakistani government signed a peace deal with the Taliban hoping they would lay down their arms. They did not."
Back in Washington, ABC's Martha Raddatz (at the tail of the Schifrin videostream) reported that the United States had pressured the Pakistani military to make "a sustained shift in emphasis away from India to the Afghan border area" and to increase training in counterinsurgency. Her unidentified sources in the Obama Administration "are very, very skeptical that this will happen." From the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd cited "two questions hanging over the summit that US officials were ducking all over the place." Will the United States send troops into Pakistan? Is Pakistan's nuclear arsenal secure? "The whole point of this summit," Todd observed, is to get President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan "focused on his fight so that we do not have to deal with those two questions."
YOUTH ATTACK Only NBC stayed on the waning influenza beat. Robert Bazell followed up on the second swine 'flu death in Texas, a 33-year-old pregnant schoolteacher, to mention "the growing concern that this new virus is a disease mostly of young people." Even a thirtysomething is on the elderly side, with 15 being a patient's average age. Public health officials are puzzled. Were young people more likely to have been tourists in Mexico during the outbreak? Or are older people more likely to have immunity to the H1N1 strain?
FROM MODEL A TO HYBRID FOCUS The public relations department at Ford Motors scored a hat trick with the unveiling of a new compact car factory in Michigan. All three newscasts sent a correspondent along to publicize the "not so hidden agenda," as ABC's Chris Bury put it, that "Ford is expanding while General Motors and Chrysler are slashing…Ford is aiming to overtake GM as the #1 US automaker, a spot it has not seen since the 1930 Model A." The retooled $500m factory used to build 6,000lb Sports Utility Vehicles but will now hire 3,200 workers to make electric-hybrid versions of the 2,000lb Ford Focus. Ford is a company "that made a fortune selling gigantic SUVs," CBS' Dean Reynolds reminded us. CNBC's Phil LeBeau noted on NBC that going green by making fuel-efficient smaller cars is no surefire formula: "The success of electric models is dependent on gas prices."
TECHNOLOGY, COSMETICS, APPETITE Driving drunk is a criminal offence but driving distracted is a mere traffic violation. ABC's Barbara Pinto told us that Illinois and four other states are debating whether to make distractions behind the wheel criminal too. Pinto's hair-raising examples included technology--drivers talking on cell phones, texting messages, downloading ringtones--and cosmetics--painting their nails, fixing their make-up--and eating-while-driving. "Distracted drivers caused more than one third of all auto accidents."
THE KNOB OF THE MATTER Medicare's fraud problem is reportedly huge, accounting for fully 3% of all healthcare spending nationwide. The Inspector General estimates that $60bn is spent annually on fraudulently billed medical equipment and supplies. In Miami, an estimated 31% of the area's 1,500 medical supply firms are phony. Instead of trying to report on the huge numbers, NBC's Pierre Thomas decided to have the part illustrate the whole. He teamed up with the FBI's medical fraud squad in Miami. Together they visited five different firms and "four showed no sign of being in business." The office of a single company that billed Medicare for more than $400,000 in April did not even have a doorknob on its front door. Thus an anecdotal knob stands for $60bn.
GREAT BARRIER PUBLICITY A stunt by the Australian tourist board claims to have generated $80m in free advertising. A portion of that total was contributed by ABC with its closer from Nick Watt. The scheme was called the Best Job in the World. It invited 60-second video resumes to apply for a caretaker's job on Hamilton Island. The post received 35,000 applications out of which a reality gameshow competition was created and Ben Southwell, a 34-year-old Englishman, was hired as the winner. The free visual publicity consisted of Edenic shots of the island off the coast of Queensland. The free editorial plug came from Watt's endorsement of the job's desirability: "Jealous in London."
POLLY WANTS A FLOCK The closing feature on CBS served as a cautionary, although visually charming, tale for petlovers. "They are loud. They poop incessantly. They love to chew. What you have got is a three-year-old child running around with a can opener on its face." Thus Mira Tweti, author of the book Of Parrots and People described the dubious charms of owning a parrot as a pet. The birds are beautiful and talkative and intelligent and can do tricks, Bill Whitaker pointed out. They are third only to dogs and cats in pet popularity, with some 40m owned nationwide. The trouble is that the birds need to fly in flocks. Alone with a human they can be incessantly demanding or, worse, self-mutilating in their craving for company. Thus Whitaker explained the flocks of parrots multiplying in cities from San Francisco to Brooklyn "set loose by frustrated owners." Yes, Tweti. That is her real name.
