 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 4, 2009
Anxiety about the Mexican swine 'flu is abating but no big news story came along to supplant it. So for the sixth weekday out of the last seven, influenza was Story of the Day, this time by default. With just eight minutes of airtime, the 'flu had its lightest weekday of coverage since April 23rd. Only NBC considered the 'flu important enough to lead its newscast. CBS, with substitute anchor Jeff Glor, selected President Barack Obama's proposal to close corporate tax loopholes. ABC started with so-called green shoots, economic indicators that may, or may not, presage the end of the recession.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 4, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
‘FLU LEADS NEWS BY DEFAULT Anxiety about the Mexican swine 'flu is abating but no big news story came along to supplant it. So for the sixth weekday out of the last seven, influenza was Story of the Day, this time by default. With just eight minutes of airtime, the 'flu had its lightest weekday of coverage since April 23rd. Only NBC considered the 'flu important enough to lead its newscast. CBS, with substitute anchor Jeff Glor, selected President Barack Obama's proposal to close corporate tax loopholes. ABC started with so-called green shoots, economic indicators that may, or may not, presage the end of the recession.
NBC's Robert Bazell reminded us that it has been ten days now since public health officials worldwide started preparing "for a potential health disaster. We can say tonight, fortunately, the worst case scenario is certainly not unfolding." A pandemic of the Mexican swine 'flu may yet occur--but it may turn out to be a very mild one. CBS' Nancy Cordes talked to public health officials in the federal government and they "seem more and more convinced that the threat here is declining."
NBC's Kerry Sanders (as part of the Bazell videostream) felt the same feeling of relief in Mexico City, where the health ministry announced that the worst is over and "four days into a five-day shutdown the city is returning to its busy ways." The country's tourism industry however "is on life support," CBS' Cordes noted, with 70% of all hotel reservations in Cancun canceled and cruise ships sailing past Mexican ports of calls.
China turned out to be an exception to this relaxation. ABC's Lama Hasan was in Hong Kong to show us the hotel in which some 300 guests have been quarantined for four straight days because one of them tested positive for the H1N1 virus. "So far not one of them is showing signs of being sick." Also healthy are passengers escorted off an airline flight from Mexico to Shanghai. "They too are under quarantine." Hasan offered the explanation for this apparent overreaction that "six years ago the Chinese government was criticized for being slow to react to the SARS outbreak" that killed almost 300 in Hong Kong.
So has the Mexican swine 'flu gone away? NBC's Bazell reminded us that the mild influenza of 1917 returned a year later to kill millions. "The problem is that viruses do not read history books. Each epidemic, each outbreak is different. We just do not know: it could come back worse; it could come back milder. Who knows?"--refreshing candor from our correspondent.
SPOOKS LOSE TRACK OF PAK NUKES CBS' David Martin filed from the Pentagon on the spooks' murky assessment of the security of Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons. "Pakistan guards its doomsday secrets as jealously as the United States guards its own," Martin shrugged. Juan Zarate, a onetime Bush Administration official who worked with the Pakistani nuclear program at its Khushab base, is now a CBS News Consultant: "The United States is not sure exactly how many weapons the Pakistanis have or where they all are." Martin also talked to a former spy "who knows as much about Pakistan's nuclear complex as any American." Rolf Mowatt-Larssen told him that Pakistan's Achilles' heel is not the risk that its government might fall to Taliban guerrillas but that Taliban sympathizers may already be working on the nuclear weapons program and may be ready to spill its secrets.
BURIED TREASURE, AFTER A MARK-UP NBC's claimed an Exclusive for Jim Maceda's videotape from the valleys of eastern Afghanistan. He joined a ten-hour helicopter-borne raid along with "a new and unique mix" of narcs, as he put it: Afghan paramilitaries, veteran Colombia-based DEA agents, soldiers from NATO and commandos from the United States. We followed the raid through a couple of villages until the team uncovered "a motherlode, bag after bag of dry morphine base" buried in a wheat field. A single bag sells for only $500 in Afghanistan but Maceda calculated that it contains the raw material to manufacture heroin that can be marked up to $60,000 in an American city. The team claimed to have unearthed three tons of the base.
CAYMAN HAVENS & LUXURY AUTOS President Barack Obama's initiative to increase corporate tax collections by $21bn a year over the next decade was considered newsworthy enough to warrant a reporter only by CBS. ABC and NBC mentioned the plan in passing but CBS treated it as its lead story, from White House correspondent Chip Reid. Reid showed us a single building in the Cayman Islands that houses the global headquarters of "nearly 19,000 corporations" to dramatize the tax haven loopholes Obama wants to close.
Reid reminded us that Obama's plan had been "a major applause line for the President on the campaign trail" even as it is opposed by 200 major corporations, for fear that it will "impair" their global competitiveness. "Business lobbyists are expected to pull out all the stops in an effort to defeat it." He quoted unidentified critics of the plan on Capitol Hill as predicting that these taxes will lead to American-based multinationals being bought out by foreigners. Yet under the current tax code, Anheuser-Busch, Lucent Technologies and John Hancock have already been purchased.
CBS' Anthony Mason also covered foreign firms taking over American assets. Fiat, the Italian automaker, is already planning to buy Chrysler. Next may be the Opel brand from General Motors. Those two additions would turn Fiat into the world's fourth largest automobile manufacturer. "International mergers can be tricky," Mason warned. "Chrysler's previous marriage ended in divorce after Daimler lost billions." If you want to buy a Fiat-made car in this country right now, Mason showed us that your choices are limited--but luxurious. Do you want a Maserati? Or a Ferrari?
GREEN SHOOTS AND BLIND ORACLES Recovering prices on the stock exchange…the best levels of consumer confidence so far this year…a marginal increase in home building. ABC's Betsy Stark consulted her economist sources and they told her that "the picture has gone from being completely black to mixed with shades of gray." She warned about unemployment, however, as she mixed her color metaphors. If the economy continues to lose jobs "those green shoots could get burned out and this tentative progress could be reversed." Green Shoots, CNBC's managing editor Tyler Mathisen reminded us on NBC, was a phrase coined by Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board to depict intimations of recovery. To Stark's list, Mathisen added a revival of the manufacturing sector in China. Billionaire financier Warren Buffett was asked by ABC's Bianna Golodryga when he thought the recession will be over. His answer was most unoracular: "We do not know when that will be over. We do know it will be over but I cannot predict the timing. I would say that we have got a ways to know. Who knows?"
BLOWING BUBBLE A storm headed through the south from Dallas to northern Florida and NBC's Ron Mott provided the round-up: a tornado in Louisiana, a lethal downed tree in Mississippi, fears of floods in Tennessee, a sinkhole in Arkansas, power outages in Alabama and Georgia. Both ABC's Ryan Owens and Dave Price, weathercaster on CBS' Early Show, concentrated on the Texan start to the storm. Wind collapsed the bubble training facility of the NFL Dallas Cowboys leaving a team scout paralyzed. Owens focused on the failure of the bubble, erected in 2003 by Summit Structures of Pennsylvania. Price concentrated on the meteorology, "a rare weather pattern of high winds and pouring rain called a microburst."
GREEN JOBS FAIL TO MATERIALIZE CBS' substitute anchor Jeff Glor filed a report from Tornado Alley in Kansas, where precisely two years ago Greensburg, population 1,500, was wiped off the map. ABC's Bob Woodruff had preceded Glor, showcasing Greensburg just three months after the twister hit, when the town announced its rebuilding plans. Now that decision to make Greensburg "ground zero for the green movement" is confronting obstacles. The plan was to make each replacement building energy efficient and to "capitalize on the town's name by luring in green businesses, places that build products for wind and solar and other clean energy products." In his update Glor reported that the efficient buildings have turned out to be "not inexpensive" and the new jobs "so far have not materialized."
A WOMAN’S WORK NBC's Amy Robach and ABC's Dan Harris came up with quite different concepts of the worth of domestic labor. Robach publicized the annual report by salary.com that estimates the market wage for stay-at-home childrearing--combination chauffeur, gardener, chef, maidservant, launderer, housekeeper--at an annual $123,000. Robach assumed all those valuable tasks are women's work. Harris kicked off ABC's New Gender Rules series by pointing out that those chores are now often performed by newly laid-off househusbands. Far from receiving the respect that $123K worth of work would command, "many couples are now engaged in wrenching renegotiations over gender roles." Harris even persuaded bread-winner wife Eleanor Hemmert to publicly insult her apron-wearing husband Rick on camera: "I wish I could say something different but I have lost so much respect for him."
NBC's Robert Bazell reminded us that it has been ten days now since public health officials worldwide started preparing "for a potential health disaster. We can say tonight, fortunately, the worst case scenario is certainly not unfolding." A pandemic of the Mexican swine 'flu may yet occur--but it may turn out to be a very mild one. CBS' Nancy Cordes talked to public health officials in the federal government and they "seem more and more convinced that the threat here is declining."
NBC's Kerry Sanders (as part of the Bazell videostream) felt the same feeling of relief in Mexico City, where the health ministry announced that the worst is over and "four days into a five-day shutdown the city is returning to its busy ways." The country's tourism industry however "is on life support," CBS' Cordes noted, with 70% of all hotel reservations in Cancun canceled and cruise ships sailing past Mexican ports of calls.
China turned out to be an exception to this relaxation. ABC's Lama Hasan was in Hong Kong to show us the hotel in which some 300 guests have been quarantined for four straight days because one of them tested positive for the H1N1 virus. "So far not one of them is showing signs of being sick." Also healthy are passengers escorted off an airline flight from Mexico to Shanghai. "They too are under quarantine." Hasan offered the explanation for this apparent overreaction that "six years ago the Chinese government was criticized for being slow to react to the SARS outbreak" that killed almost 300 in Hong Kong.
So has the Mexican swine 'flu gone away? NBC's Bazell reminded us that the mild influenza of 1917 returned a year later to kill millions. "The problem is that viruses do not read history books. Each epidemic, each outbreak is different. We just do not know: it could come back worse; it could come back milder. Who knows?"--refreshing candor from our correspondent.
SPOOKS LOSE TRACK OF PAK NUKES CBS' David Martin filed from the Pentagon on the spooks' murky assessment of the security of Pakistan's arsenal of nuclear weapons. "Pakistan guards its doomsday secrets as jealously as the United States guards its own," Martin shrugged. Juan Zarate, a onetime Bush Administration official who worked with the Pakistani nuclear program at its Khushab base, is now a CBS News Consultant: "The United States is not sure exactly how many weapons the Pakistanis have or where they all are." Martin also talked to a former spy "who knows as much about Pakistan's nuclear complex as any American." Rolf Mowatt-Larssen told him that Pakistan's Achilles' heel is not the risk that its government might fall to Taliban guerrillas but that Taliban sympathizers may already be working on the nuclear weapons program and may be ready to spill its secrets.
BURIED TREASURE, AFTER A MARK-UP NBC's claimed an Exclusive for Jim Maceda's videotape from the valleys of eastern Afghanistan. He joined a ten-hour helicopter-borne raid along with "a new and unique mix" of narcs, as he put it: Afghan paramilitaries, veteran Colombia-based DEA agents, soldiers from NATO and commandos from the United States. We followed the raid through a couple of villages until the team uncovered "a motherlode, bag after bag of dry morphine base" buried in a wheat field. A single bag sells for only $500 in Afghanistan but Maceda calculated that it contains the raw material to manufacture heroin that can be marked up to $60,000 in an American city. The team claimed to have unearthed three tons of the base.
CAYMAN HAVENS & LUXURY AUTOS President Barack Obama's initiative to increase corporate tax collections by $21bn a year over the next decade was considered newsworthy enough to warrant a reporter only by CBS. ABC and NBC mentioned the plan in passing but CBS treated it as its lead story, from White House correspondent Chip Reid. Reid showed us a single building in the Cayman Islands that houses the global headquarters of "nearly 19,000 corporations" to dramatize the tax haven loopholes Obama wants to close.
Reid reminded us that Obama's plan had been "a major applause line for the President on the campaign trail" even as it is opposed by 200 major corporations, for fear that it will "impair" their global competitiveness. "Business lobbyists are expected to pull out all the stops in an effort to defeat it." He quoted unidentified critics of the plan on Capitol Hill as predicting that these taxes will lead to American-based multinationals being bought out by foreigners. Yet under the current tax code, Anheuser-Busch, Lucent Technologies and John Hancock have already been purchased.
CBS' Anthony Mason also covered foreign firms taking over American assets. Fiat, the Italian automaker, is already planning to buy Chrysler. Next may be the Opel brand from General Motors. Those two additions would turn Fiat into the world's fourth largest automobile manufacturer. "International mergers can be tricky," Mason warned. "Chrysler's previous marriage ended in divorce after Daimler lost billions." If you want to buy a Fiat-made car in this country right now, Mason showed us that your choices are limited--but luxurious. Do you want a Maserati? Or a Ferrari?
GREEN SHOOTS AND BLIND ORACLES Recovering prices on the stock exchange…the best levels of consumer confidence so far this year…a marginal increase in home building. ABC's Betsy Stark consulted her economist sources and they told her that "the picture has gone from being completely black to mixed with shades of gray." She warned about unemployment, however, as she mixed her color metaphors. If the economy continues to lose jobs "those green shoots could get burned out and this tentative progress could be reversed." Green Shoots, CNBC's managing editor Tyler Mathisen reminded us on NBC, was a phrase coined by Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board to depict intimations of recovery. To Stark's list, Mathisen added a revival of the manufacturing sector in China. Billionaire financier Warren Buffett was asked by ABC's Bianna Golodryga when he thought the recession will be over. His answer was most unoracular: "We do not know when that will be over. We do know it will be over but I cannot predict the timing. I would say that we have got a ways to know. Who knows?"
BLOWING BUBBLE A storm headed through the south from Dallas to northern Florida and NBC's Ron Mott provided the round-up: a tornado in Louisiana, a lethal downed tree in Mississippi, fears of floods in Tennessee, a sinkhole in Arkansas, power outages in Alabama and Georgia. Both ABC's Ryan Owens and Dave Price, weathercaster on CBS' Early Show, concentrated on the Texan start to the storm. Wind collapsed the bubble training facility of the NFL Dallas Cowboys leaving a team scout paralyzed. Owens focused on the failure of the bubble, erected in 2003 by Summit Structures of Pennsylvania. Price concentrated on the meteorology, "a rare weather pattern of high winds and pouring rain called a microburst."
GREEN JOBS FAIL TO MATERIALIZE CBS' substitute anchor Jeff Glor filed a report from Tornado Alley in Kansas, where precisely two years ago Greensburg, population 1,500, was wiped off the map. ABC's Bob Woodruff had preceded Glor, showcasing Greensburg just three months after the twister hit, when the town announced its rebuilding plans. Now that decision to make Greensburg "ground zero for the green movement" is confronting obstacles. The plan was to make each replacement building energy efficient and to "capitalize on the town's name by luring in green businesses, places that build products for wind and solar and other clean energy products." In his update Glor reported that the efficient buildings have turned out to be "not inexpensive" and the new jobs "so far have not materialized."
A WOMAN’S WORK NBC's Amy Robach and ABC's Dan Harris came up with quite different concepts of the worth of domestic labor. Robach publicized the annual report by salary.com that estimates the market wage for stay-at-home childrearing--combination chauffeur, gardener, chef, maidservant, launderer, housekeeper--at an annual $123,000. Robach assumed all those valuable tasks are women's work. Harris kicked off ABC's New Gender Rules series by pointing out that those chores are now often performed by newly laid-off househusbands. Far from receiving the respect that $123K worth of work would command, "many couples are now engaged in wrenching renegotiations over gender roles." Harris even persuaded bread-winner wife Eleanor Hemmert to publicly insult her apron-wearing husband Rick on camera: "I wish I could say something different but I have lost so much respect for him."
