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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 27, 2009
The first day of reaction to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court made her the Story of the Day again. The coverage of the judge was less intense than day one, however (12 min v 25) and nothing was newsworthy enough to warrant making her the lead of any of the three network newscasts. They all led with the economy: NBC and CBS with the looming bankruptcy of General Motors; ABC with signs of revival in the housing market.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 27, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SOTOMAYOR MAKES FEW WAVES ON SECOND DAY The first day of reaction to the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court made her the Story of the Day again. The coverage of the judge was less intense than day one, however (12 min v 25) and nothing was newsworthy enough to warrant making her the lead of any of the three network newscasts. They all led with the economy: NBC and CBS with the looming bankruptcy of General Motors; ABC with signs of revival in the housing market.
The major development in the General Motors story was the bondholders' rejection of a deal that would trade their $27bn in debt for a 10% share of ownership in the restructured company. CBS' Anthony Mason talked to Jim Modica, one of those bondholders, whose $700,000 purchase of paper was about to be wiped out. Modica calculated that GM's stock price would have to climb to $329 in order for him to be made whole by the deal. The stock currently sells for $1.15.
"It now appears inevitable that General Motors will declare bankruptcy," CNBC's Phil LeBeau announced on NBC. He called the collapse of the bonds-to-stocks deal "the final straw." Altogether the automaker has $88bn in debt and obligations, he reckoned, including $20bn in loans from the federal government. ABC's Chris Bury anticipated that the USTreasury would pony up a further $50bn if bankruptcy happens, ending up with a firm that is 70% nationalized. The healthcare plan for retired union workers has already given up $10bn: "Dental and vision coverage ends June 1st."
STARS ALIGN FOR FIRST-TIME BUYERS Only ABC decided that the latest statistics from the housing market were worth covering. Betsy Stark led off her newscast with April's 3% increase in sales of previously-owned homes. "The stars have aligned for buyers," she concluded: the federal government is offering an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homeowners; interest rates remain below 5% for a 30-year mortgage; and prices are 15% lower than they were this time last year. "Realtors estimate that foreclosures accounted for a whopping 45% of sales in April."
THE INCOMPETENT PARAPHRASE "If all we are really focusing on is one sentence in one speech that goes back to 2001 we are in pretty good shape." That is how Savannah Guthrie's unidentified sources at the White House spun day one of the reaction to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination on NBC. CBS' Sandra Hughes actually quoted the sentence in full, the one that inspired Republican Newt Gingrich to dub the judge a "Latina racist woman."
This is the quote that Hughes read: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life." Gingrich's tweeted insight that this was the sentiment of a racist seems unhinged. Yet both CBS' Wyatt Andrews and NBC's Pete Williams lent a semblance of credibility to the former Speaker by misquoting the judge in ways that made her claim sound like a more blatant racial comparison than it was.
NBC's Williams paraphrased Sotomayor as claiming that "a Latina woman's life experiences would more often than not make her a better judge than a white man." Note how Williams turns Sotomayor's "hope" into a certainty; how the Latina is no longer "wise;" how it is no longer her conclusions that are better but her overall capacity to be a "judge;" and how her superiority would be over every white man not just those white men with straitened experience.
For his part, CBS' Andrews rendered Sotomayor this way: "A wise Latina woman can reach a better conclusion than a white man." So Andrews, properly, captured the qualifier "wise" and noted the Sotomayor was talking about superior conclusions not superior judges. He misstated the fact that this was Sotomayor's aspiration not her assertion; he missed the base of the comparison, namely "richness of experiences;" and he overstated her suggested frequency of difference--that it was "more often than not" rather than all the time.
Meanwhile, John Berman covered the enthusiastic response to Sotomayor's nomination from the Hispanics of The Bronx. He sat down with students at her old junior high school for ABC's A Closer Look. Sotomayor, if confirmed, would turn the Supreme Court from 0% to 11% Hispanic; in Congress he noted, that statistic is lower than6%.
ROD & I ARE BOTH GOING TO CATCH HELL Roland Burris, the junior Senator from Illinois, replaced Barack Obama. He was named to the seat by the now-impeached Gov Rod Blagojevich. "Back in January he denied under oath having any discussions with the Blagojevich team about the Senate seat," ABC's Jonathan Karl reminded us even as he played wiretapped audiotapes of Burris having precisely such a discussion with the then-governor's brother Robert. "Incriminating," was how Karl called it.
Yet there was one clip in which Burris flat out insisted that he personally could not raise campaign funds for Blagojevich: "I guarantee you that that will get out. And people will say: 'Oh, Burris is doing a fundraiser." And then Rod and I are both going to catch hell. And if I do get appointed that means I bought it. If I do not get appointed, then my people, who I am trying to raise money from, are going to look at me like: 'What was that all about, Roland?'"
WAR RESUMES--ALL CALM It is now Day Three of the repercussions from North Korea's underground test of a nuclear bomb. "The United States have now threatened to intercept North Korean ships at sea if they carry illegal weapons," NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported. In response North Korea has threatened "to restart its war with South Korea after a 56-year truce." As scary as that sounds, only NBC thought it newsworthy enough to assign a correspondent to it--and Mitchell's job was mostly to remain calm: "US spy satellites have detected no signs Pyongyang's army is on the move," she reassured us.
BLOWBACK FROM KASHMIR ABC's was the only newscast to have a correspondent on the spot for the terrorist attack in Lahore. Nick Schifrin, one of ABC's new generation of single-person foreign bureaus, ventured into what "used to be Pakistan's safest city" to show us two gutted downtown blocks. A carbomb took out the city's emergency services building, a hospital emergency room and "the local office for Pakistan's premier spy agency," leaving as many as 30 people dead. "Ironically it was that spy agency that helped create militant groups in the first place to fight India in Kashmir."
KILLER CANCERS HAVE FEWER SURVIVOR-ADVOCATES All three network anchors participated in Stand Up To Cancer, a primetime TV fundraiser last fall. NBC's Brian Williams and CBS' Katie Couric both announced that the $73m raised has now been distributed to five research teams. CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook backed up the grant by crunching the numbers from the National Cancer Institute. Using the statistic of basic research dollars spent per death from a tumor of each organ, the cervix and the breast are best funded; the stomach, the lung and the esophagus the worst. Advocacy groups for cancers that are specific to women are more aggressive at raising awareness, Dr LaPook reported. Anchor Couric added that for the most lethal cancers there are "not that many survivors--they are not a built-in advocacy group."
OF HIS BONES ARE CORAL MADE CBS offered pretty Cousteauesque footage from the Florida Keys to illustrate Kelly Cobiella's story about the USNS Vandenberg. It cost $8m to clean the rusty 523-foot warship before it was scuttled off Key West. The plan is that coral for coral to grow on the steel, creating a scuba tourist attraction. "Artificial reefs are a growth industry," Cobiella told us.
GIRTHY GOES VIRAL ABC closed with David Wright's anecdote of "irony and the Internet." He recounted the tale of the viral marketing success of the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt. The turnaround started at amazon.com where Brian Govern posted a tongue-in-cheek review in praise of the garment: "It fit my girthy frame!" Since then 750 other posters have offered their own "over-the-top testimonials." Mountain Tees in New Hampshire had sold two shirts with the lupine design a day; now they sell 100 an hour.
The major development in the General Motors story was the bondholders' rejection of a deal that would trade their $27bn in debt for a 10% share of ownership in the restructured company. CBS' Anthony Mason talked to Jim Modica, one of those bondholders, whose $700,000 purchase of paper was about to be wiped out. Modica calculated that GM's stock price would have to climb to $329 in order for him to be made whole by the deal. The stock currently sells for $1.15.
"It now appears inevitable that General Motors will declare bankruptcy," CNBC's Phil LeBeau announced on NBC. He called the collapse of the bonds-to-stocks deal "the final straw." Altogether the automaker has $88bn in debt and obligations, he reckoned, including $20bn in loans from the federal government. ABC's Chris Bury anticipated that the USTreasury would pony up a further $50bn if bankruptcy happens, ending up with a firm that is 70% nationalized. The healthcare plan for retired union workers has already given up $10bn: "Dental and vision coverage ends June 1st."
STARS ALIGN FOR FIRST-TIME BUYERS Only ABC decided that the latest statistics from the housing market were worth covering. Betsy Stark led off her newscast with April's 3% increase in sales of previously-owned homes. "The stars have aligned for buyers," she concluded: the federal government is offering an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homeowners; interest rates remain below 5% for a 30-year mortgage; and prices are 15% lower than they were this time last year. "Realtors estimate that foreclosures accounted for a whopping 45% of sales in April."
THE INCOMPETENT PARAPHRASE "If all we are really focusing on is one sentence in one speech that goes back to 2001 we are in pretty good shape." That is how Savannah Guthrie's unidentified sources at the White House spun day one of the reaction to Sonia Sotomayor's nomination on NBC. CBS' Sandra Hughes actually quoted the sentence in full, the one that inspired Republican Newt Gingrich to dub the judge a "Latina racist woman."
This is the quote that Hughes read: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who has not lived that life." Gingrich's tweeted insight that this was the sentiment of a racist seems unhinged. Yet both CBS' Wyatt Andrews and NBC's Pete Williams lent a semblance of credibility to the former Speaker by misquoting the judge in ways that made her claim sound like a more blatant racial comparison than it was.
NBC's Williams paraphrased Sotomayor as claiming that "a Latina woman's life experiences would more often than not make her a better judge than a white man." Note how Williams turns Sotomayor's "hope" into a certainty; how the Latina is no longer "wise;" how it is no longer her conclusions that are better but her overall capacity to be a "judge;" and how her superiority would be over every white man not just those white men with straitened experience.
For his part, CBS' Andrews rendered Sotomayor this way: "A wise Latina woman can reach a better conclusion than a white man." So Andrews, properly, captured the qualifier "wise" and noted the Sotomayor was talking about superior conclusions not superior judges. He misstated the fact that this was Sotomayor's aspiration not her assertion; he missed the base of the comparison, namely "richness of experiences;" and he overstated her suggested frequency of difference--that it was "more often than not" rather than all the time.
Meanwhile, John Berman covered the enthusiastic response to Sotomayor's nomination from the Hispanics of The Bronx. He sat down with students at her old junior high school for ABC's A Closer Look. Sotomayor, if confirmed, would turn the Supreme Court from 0% to 11% Hispanic; in Congress he noted, that statistic is lower than6%.
ROD & I ARE BOTH GOING TO CATCH HELL Roland Burris, the junior Senator from Illinois, replaced Barack Obama. He was named to the seat by the now-impeached Gov Rod Blagojevich. "Back in January he denied under oath having any discussions with the Blagojevich team about the Senate seat," ABC's Jonathan Karl reminded us even as he played wiretapped audiotapes of Burris having precisely such a discussion with the then-governor's brother Robert. "Incriminating," was how Karl called it.
Yet there was one clip in which Burris flat out insisted that he personally could not raise campaign funds for Blagojevich: "I guarantee you that that will get out. And people will say: 'Oh, Burris is doing a fundraiser." And then Rod and I are both going to catch hell. And if I do get appointed that means I bought it. If I do not get appointed, then my people, who I am trying to raise money from, are going to look at me like: 'What was that all about, Roland?'"
WAR RESUMES--ALL CALM It is now Day Three of the repercussions from North Korea's underground test of a nuclear bomb. "The United States have now threatened to intercept North Korean ships at sea if they carry illegal weapons," NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported. In response North Korea has threatened "to restart its war with South Korea after a 56-year truce." As scary as that sounds, only NBC thought it newsworthy enough to assign a correspondent to it--and Mitchell's job was mostly to remain calm: "US spy satellites have detected no signs Pyongyang's army is on the move," she reassured us.
BLOWBACK FROM KASHMIR ABC's was the only newscast to have a correspondent on the spot for the terrorist attack in Lahore. Nick Schifrin, one of ABC's new generation of single-person foreign bureaus, ventured into what "used to be Pakistan's safest city" to show us two gutted downtown blocks. A carbomb took out the city's emergency services building, a hospital emergency room and "the local office for Pakistan's premier spy agency," leaving as many as 30 people dead. "Ironically it was that spy agency that helped create militant groups in the first place to fight India in Kashmir."
KILLER CANCERS HAVE FEWER SURVIVOR-ADVOCATES All three network anchors participated in Stand Up To Cancer, a primetime TV fundraiser last fall. NBC's Brian Williams and CBS' Katie Couric both announced that the $73m raised has now been distributed to five research teams. CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook backed up the grant by crunching the numbers from the National Cancer Institute. Using the statistic of basic research dollars spent per death from a tumor of each organ, the cervix and the breast are best funded; the stomach, the lung and the esophagus the worst. Advocacy groups for cancers that are specific to women are more aggressive at raising awareness, Dr LaPook reported. Anchor Couric added that for the most lethal cancers there are "not that many survivors--they are not a built-in advocacy group."
OF HIS BONES ARE CORAL MADE CBS offered pretty Cousteauesque footage from the Florida Keys to illustrate Kelly Cobiella's story about the USNS Vandenberg. It cost $8m to clean the rusty 523-foot warship before it was scuttled off Key West. The plan is that coral for coral to grow on the steel, creating a scuba tourist attraction. "Artificial reefs are a growth industry," Cobiella told us.
GIRTHY GOES VIRAL ABC closed with David Wright's anecdote of "irony and the Internet." He recounted the tale of the viral marketing success of the Three Wolf Moon T-shirt. The turnaround started at amazon.com where Brian Govern posted a tongue-in-cheek review in praise of the garment: "It fit my girthy frame!" Since then 750 other posters have offered their own "over-the-top testimonials." Mountain Tees in New Hampshire had sold two shirts with the lupine design a day; now they sell 100 an hour.
