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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 29, 2009
For the third time this week, Sonia Sotomayor was Story of the Day. This time the news was made at the White House, which decided to defend its Supreme Court nominee against accusations of racism. President Barack Obama did so in person on NBC in an Exclusive sitdown with anchor Brian Williams for his documentary Inside the Obama White House, which will air in primetime next week. ABC and CBS covered the White House defense of Sotomayor by using the words of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Both CBS and NBC led with Sotomayor. ABC chose the looming bankruptcy of General Motors. With NBC's Williams at the White House preparing for his documentary, his newscast used Lester Holt as substitute anchor.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 29, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
WOULD A WISE SOTOMAYOR BE BETTER THAN A WHITE MALE? For the third time this week, Sonia Sotomayor was Story of the Day. This time the news was made at the White House, which decided to defend its Supreme Court nominee against accusations of racism. President Barack Obama did so in person on NBC in an Exclusive sitdown with anchor Brian Williams for his documentary Inside the Obama White House, which will air in primetime next week. ABC and CBS covered the White House defense of Sotomayor by using the words of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Both CBS and NBC led with Sotomayor. ABC chose the looming bankruptcy of General Motors. With NBC's Williams at the White House preparing for his documentary, his newscast used Lester Holt as substitute anchor.
At issue was the now infamous single sentence that Sotomayor uttered at the University of California in 2001: "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." NBC's Savannah Guthrie and CBS' Wyatt Andrews both pointed out that this one sentence was enough for the judge to be branded a racist by talkradio host Rush Limbaugh. ABC's Jake Tapper did not portray Limbaugh as being quite that harsh, characterizing his criticism as merely finding "evidence of racism." Tapper is understating the facts. "Racist," was indeed Limbaugh's insult--and former Speaker Newt Gingrich's too.
After two days of sloppy representation of Sotomayor's convoluted sentence, all three newscasts did the right thing and quoted it in full. The White House was not so straightforward. Far from defending the nominee's sentiments, Obama and Gibbs claimed they were paraphrasing her while in truth they baldly contradicted her. This is how President Obama "restated" Sotomayor's words for NBC's Williams: "Her life experiences will give her information…that will make her a good judge." ABC's Tapper quoted Gibbs' inaccurate paraphrase thus: "She was simply making the point that personal experiences are relevant to the process of judging."
No! That is not the point she was making. She was expressing the hope that rich personal experiences--the kind that wise Hispanic women enjoy--might tend to be superior to narrow ones, which white men may be confined by.
CBS' Andrews, meanwhile, referred us to Sotomayor's decisions from the bench, as analyzed by scotusblog.com, "a neutral Website." It studied the 50 cases concerning discrimination against racial minorities on which she ruled to see if there is evidence of prejudice against white people. "The judge ruled against minorities in 45 out of 50 cases."
ARE SUBCOMPACTS IN OUR FUTURE? All three newscasts covered the financial plight of the automobile industry, each with a different angle. CBS' Anthony Mason looked at Chrysler, soon to emerge from bankruptcy under the management of Italy's Fiat. ABC's Chris Bury summarized the concessions agreed to by the United Autoworkers as General Motors heads for bankruptcy: "At union halls across the country the era of gold-plated wages and benefits ended." Under the bankruptcy plan, the company will emerge 72% nationalized. Quipped Bury, "from Generous Motors to Government Motors."
On NBC, Tom Costello noted that GM will produce subcompact cars in one of the 14 American plants that it planned to close and that Chrysler dealerships will be selling Fiat's European-made subcompacts. What makes Detroit think that there will be a market for them? "With 3m more cars being scrapped each year than are being bought, experts see tremendous pent-up demand."
Or there could be a boom in bicycles, mass transit and telecommuting instead.
BOETTCHER’S BACK Mike Boettcher, veteran foreign correspondent at NBC and CNN, filed his first report for ABC World News. Boettcher was at Camp Bostick in Afghanistan, where he discovered the same spin about civilian casualties that CBS anchor Katie Couric found when she was in country earlier in the month. The dispute concerns airstrikes that killed as many as 140 civilians in Farah Province five weeks ago. Boettcher reported the charge by US military brass that "Taliban fighters devised a deliberate plan to create a civilian casualty crisis" by forcing villagers to surround them while the attack was under way. Boettcher did not report on the Taliban's version of events, observing merely that the war in Afghanistan is now being fought "with words and deeds, truth and lies, not just bombs and bullets."
ALL QUIET ON THE ADEN FRONT CBS' London-based Sheila MacVicar filed her second Exclusive report from the Gulf of Aden on the threat from Somali pirates. As she was last week, MacVicar is on board the Canadian warship Winnipeg as it patrols the sea lanes along with representatives from the navies of China, Iran, Italy, Japan, France and the United States. Unfortunately for MacVicar's newsgathering--fortunately for merchant seamen--the naval patrols turn out to be effective: "As the number of warships has grown the number of attacks has dropped and in the last three weeks there has not been one successful hijacking."
HACK ATTACK President Barack Obama ordered a coordinated effort to protect computer networks from hackers, sabotage that is estimated to have caused $8bn in damage nationwide over the past two years. To illustrate the problem, CBS' Armen Keteyian obtained Exclusive access to the Office of Special Investigations of the USAir Force. The global operation has eleven centers where it plays "a hi-tech game of cat and mouse, running traces, tracking IP addresses, assessing damage, plugging security holes in the network, erasing viruses and fixing programs." For all the damage that hackers do to civilian networks, the Pentagon is largely invulnerable, suffering just $100m in damage over the past six months.
FORGET TV--GET A RADIO The start of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season saw an alphabet soup of federal agencies engaged in public relations outreach to get residents in the zone to stock up on emergency supplies. NBC took the bait, assigning Kerry Sanders to worry about "complacency" with soundbites from FEMA and NOAA and the National Hurricane Center. He even managed to get a television angle into his story. Traditionally, battery operated TV sets have been used to receive storm warnings; but they have analog antennae and warnings will turn to white noise when signals go digital. Sanders' advice was lo-tech: "Get a portable radio."
CBS WAS NOT WILD ABOUT HARRY "His celebrity reaches well across the pond," gushed NBC's Peter Alexander. No, he was not talking about the finals of the Britain's Got Talent contest. His colleague Stephanie Gosk had the thankless task of delivering the latest boring Susan Boyle update. The star of Alexander's story was a polo-playing 24-year-old prince: "There is something about a royal that dazzles Americans," he asserted unconvincingly. Prince Harry visited New York City on his first foreign trip in which he officially represented his grandmother. ABC's David Wright was also on the job, getting vox pop from flirtatious Jersey girls and telling us about the "twinkle in his eye he gets from his mother."
Thumbs up for the republican news judgment at CBS. Harry Windsor did not even rate a mention.
At issue was the now infamous single sentence that Sotomayor uttered at the University of California in 2001: "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." NBC's Savannah Guthrie and CBS' Wyatt Andrews both pointed out that this one sentence was enough for the judge to be branded a racist by talkradio host Rush Limbaugh. ABC's Jake Tapper did not portray Limbaugh as being quite that harsh, characterizing his criticism as merely finding "evidence of racism." Tapper is understating the facts. "Racist," was indeed Limbaugh's insult--and former Speaker Newt Gingrich's too.
After two days of sloppy representation of Sotomayor's convoluted sentence, all three newscasts did the right thing and quoted it in full. The White House was not so straightforward. Far from defending the nominee's sentiments, Obama and Gibbs claimed they were paraphrasing her while in truth they baldly contradicted her. This is how President Obama "restated" Sotomayor's words for NBC's Williams: "Her life experiences will give her information…that will make her a good judge." ABC's Tapper quoted Gibbs' inaccurate paraphrase thus: "She was simply making the point that personal experiences are relevant to the process of judging."
No! That is not the point she was making. She was expressing the hope that rich personal experiences--the kind that wise Hispanic women enjoy--might tend to be superior to narrow ones, which white men may be confined by.
CBS' Andrews, meanwhile, referred us to Sotomayor's decisions from the bench, as analyzed by scotusblog.com, "a neutral Website." It studied the 50 cases concerning discrimination against racial minorities on which she ruled to see if there is evidence of prejudice against white people. "The judge ruled against minorities in 45 out of 50 cases."
ARE SUBCOMPACTS IN OUR FUTURE? All three newscasts covered the financial plight of the automobile industry, each with a different angle. CBS' Anthony Mason looked at Chrysler, soon to emerge from bankruptcy under the management of Italy's Fiat. ABC's Chris Bury summarized the concessions agreed to by the United Autoworkers as General Motors heads for bankruptcy: "At union halls across the country the era of gold-plated wages and benefits ended." Under the bankruptcy plan, the company will emerge 72% nationalized. Quipped Bury, "from Generous Motors to Government Motors."
On NBC, Tom Costello noted that GM will produce subcompact cars in one of the 14 American plants that it planned to close and that Chrysler dealerships will be selling Fiat's European-made subcompacts. What makes Detroit think that there will be a market for them? "With 3m more cars being scrapped each year than are being bought, experts see tremendous pent-up demand."
Or there could be a boom in bicycles, mass transit and telecommuting instead.
BOETTCHER’S BACK Mike Boettcher, veteran foreign correspondent at NBC and CNN, filed his first report for ABC World News. Boettcher was at Camp Bostick in Afghanistan, where he discovered the same spin about civilian casualties that CBS anchor Katie Couric found when she was in country earlier in the month. The dispute concerns airstrikes that killed as many as 140 civilians in Farah Province five weeks ago. Boettcher reported the charge by US military brass that "Taliban fighters devised a deliberate plan to create a civilian casualty crisis" by forcing villagers to surround them while the attack was under way. Boettcher did not report on the Taliban's version of events, observing merely that the war in Afghanistan is now being fought "with words and deeds, truth and lies, not just bombs and bullets."
ALL QUIET ON THE ADEN FRONT CBS' London-based Sheila MacVicar filed her second Exclusive report from the Gulf of Aden on the threat from Somali pirates. As she was last week, MacVicar is on board the Canadian warship Winnipeg as it patrols the sea lanes along with representatives from the navies of China, Iran, Italy, Japan, France and the United States. Unfortunately for MacVicar's newsgathering--fortunately for merchant seamen--the naval patrols turn out to be effective: "As the number of warships has grown the number of attacks has dropped and in the last three weeks there has not been one successful hijacking."
HACK ATTACK President Barack Obama ordered a coordinated effort to protect computer networks from hackers, sabotage that is estimated to have caused $8bn in damage nationwide over the past two years. To illustrate the problem, CBS' Armen Keteyian obtained Exclusive access to the Office of Special Investigations of the USAir Force. The global operation has eleven centers where it plays "a hi-tech game of cat and mouse, running traces, tracking IP addresses, assessing damage, plugging security holes in the network, erasing viruses and fixing programs." For all the damage that hackers do to civilian networks, the Pentagon is largely invulnerable, suffering just $100m in damage over the past six months.
FORGET TV--GET A RADIO The start of the Atlantic Ocean hurricane season saw an alphabet soup of federal agencies engaged in public relations outreach to get residents in the zone to stock up on emergency supplies. NBC took the bait, assigning Kerry Sanders to worry about "complacency" with soundbites from FEMA and NOAA and the National Hurricane Center. He even managed to get a television angle into his story. Traditionally, battery operated TV sets have been used to receive storm warnings; but they have analog antennae and warnings will turn to white noise when signals go digital. Sanders' advice was lo-tech: "Get a portable radio."
CBS WAS NOT WILD ABOUT HARRY "His celebrity reaches well across the pond," gushed NBC's Peter Alexander. No, he was not talking about the finals of the Britain's Got Talent contest. His colleague Stephanie Gosk had the thankless task of delivering the latest boring Susan Boyle update. The star of Alexander's story was a polo-playing 24-year-old prince: "There is something about a royal that dazzles Americans," he asserted unconvincingly. Prince Harry visited New York City on his first foreign trip in which he officially represented his grandmother. ABC's David Wright was also on the job, getting vox pop from flirtatious Jersey girls and telling us about the "twinkle in his eye he gets from his mother."
Thumbs up for the republican news judgment at CBS. Harry Windsor did not even rate a mention.
