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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 16, 2009
The protests in the wake of Iran's allegedly corrupt presidential election were a unanimous Story of the Day again. CBS and ABC both led their newscasts from Teheran, even though Iranian authorities had banned reporters from covering the action on the streets. NBC led its newscast from its New York studios and followed up with a stand-up from its Teheran-based producer. CBS and ABC again used substitute anchors, Jeff Glor and George Stephanopoulos respectively.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 16, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
COVERING IRAN EVEN AS REPORTING IS BANNED The protests in the wake of Iran's allegedly corrupt presidential election were a unanimous Story of the Day again. CBS and ABC both led their newscasts from Teheran, even though Iranian authorities had banned reporters from covering the action on the streets. NBC led its newscast from its New York studios and followed up with a stand-up from its Teheran-based producer. CBS and ABC again used substitute anchors, Jeff Glor and George Stephanopoulos respectively.
ABC's Jim Sciutto called it "a day of dueling demonstrations" as the supporters of both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the reelected president, and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate who alleges ballot stuffing, held rallies. "The difference," noted Sciutto, was that "the opposition rally was illegal." CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed out that her press credentials were canceled shortly before the rallies began. "These vast rallies and counter-rallies are the public face of a huge power struggle taking place behind the scenes." For example, at least 100 prominent members of the opposition have been arrested, including some senior members of the clergy. NBC producer Ali Arouzi is an Iranian citizen, so was allowed to walk the streets without a camera. He recounted that protestors "do not shout slogans against Ahmadinejad so as not to incite violence from the security forces." Instead they silently wave their hands in a V-sign.
Faced with the ban on coverage, ABC's Sciutto said he was forced to follow most of the day's events from his hotel room "although we did manage to film on our cellphones." NBC's Richard Engel, based in New York, relied on feeds of footage from Reuters and the Associated Press and "thousands of videos on the Internet" which NBC News was unable to verify. "They are using Twitter to exchange tactics and avoid arrest. The tweets--short Internet messages--read like military radio traffic." ABC's Miguel Marquez monitored the same online communiques in London: "It is a political protest wrapped in a technological revolution, protests shot on cellphones then instantly shared online around the world, snippets of information tweeted to those hungry for news."
The United States is keeping a low official profile. ABC's Jake Tapper reported that Barack Obama "does not want to be seen as meddling in Iranian affairs." The President granted an interview to CNBC's John Harwood that NBC's Engel quoted. Obama described the Teheran protests as "amazing ferment" but warned that the policy differences between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi "may not be as great as has been advertised." NBC's Engel added that the State Department did intervene to ask Twitter not to take its Website offline for maintenance overnight so that Iranians could continue to use it for uncensored communication.
NO BOARDING OF KOREAN SLOWPOKES While Barack Obama offered a cautious soundbite on the protests in Teheran, his active diplomacy concerned the Korean peninsula. Only CBS assigned a reporter to cover his talks with President Lee Myung-Bak of South Korea, who is "a hard-liner" in opposition to North Korea's nuclear program, according to David Martin. Martin reminded us that the Security Council of the United Nations has passed a resolution authorizing the world's navies "to confront but not to board" any North Korean ship suspected of carrying arms. Quipped Martin: "North Korean ships poke along at about ten knots so this is not a fast-moving crisis."
NYC MAY NEED NOAA’S ARK The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made a splash by forecasting the impact of global warming on the national climate. All three newscasts relayed its doomsday scenarios. NOAA took us around the country region by region. So, for example, ABC's Bill Blakemore showed how a future New Hampshire will have the same climate as the current Carolinas and how Illinois will be the next Texas. NBC's Anne Thompson told us that New York City can expect a pair of hundred-year floods within just the next 40 years and that the aquifer used by great plains agribusiness will run dry. CBS' Daniel Sieberg promised more intense hurricanes in the southeast and more intense wildfires in the southwest. Only CBS' Sieberg filed a soundbite from a climate change denier. Both Blakemore and Thompson treated NOAA's forecast as frightening…but not controversial.
CO-EQUAL BRANCHES CBS filed both a preview and a follow-up on Barack Obama's domestic policy initiatives. Wyatt Andrews' Reality Check follow-up was on the President's healthcare speech Monday. How will he raise the taxes to pay for his plan? "By limiting the tax deductions of high income wage earners. The fact is most of Congress opposes this idea." White House correspondent Chip Reid previewed the President's proposed reorganization of financial industry regulators. He had considered trying to consolidate the alphabet soup of existing agencies "but decided against it, in part, because there is just too much opposition in Congress."
CNBC's Trish Regan covered the Federal Reserve Board's monitoring of the bank credit card industry for NBC. By March, it found that $61bn out of the $1tr in credit card debt was in default--at least 30 days past due. The upshot is that some customers are successfully clearing their accounts by paying pennies on the dollar. Regan offered the example of a $1,700 Visa bill that was settled for $900 plus a hit on the customer's consumer credit rating. "In the end all Americans will wind up paying the price through bailouts, increased bank fees, higher credit card rates and lower credit limits," financial analysts warned her.
TALK IS CHEAP; TEXT SHOULD BE CHEAPER Do you know how easy it is to send a text message? ABC's Elisabeth Leamy told us: a single minute of voice conversation is equivalent to 600 separate text messages. Yet cellphone operators charge 20c per text--for both sending and receiving--for a transmission that costs them 0.3c. "The major carriers all raised their per-text prices within months of each other and they now charge quadruple what they did four years ago." Leamy was covering Senate hearings into possible price fixing to generate those mark-ups. Her advice was to sign up for an unlimited texting plan instead.
DR ASHTON’S UNCLEAR BEDSIDE MANNER NBC closed with a Robert Bazell feature about people who have lost their sense of sight. CBS and ABC both brought us news about those who have lost their sense of smell. Zicam, the Food & Drug Administration warned, can take one's smell away and "if you cannot smell, you cannot taste," warned ABC's Lisa Stark. The ten-year-old zinc-based over-the-counter remedy for the common cold has been linked to 130 people losing their smell. "Both too little and too much zinc can potentially be harmful," Dr Jennifer Ashton warned CBS anchor Jeff Glor.
Ashton is a newly arrived in-house physician at CBS. The rookie showed her inexperience by offering confusing medical advice. "To be clear," she concluded with no apparent awareness that she was about to be unclear, "the FDA is recommending that, for the consumers who are using these products, they should discontinue the use--stop using it--and speak to their doctor, if they are having problems."
Or was this Ashton's advice? "The FDA is recommending that for the consumers who are using these products they should discontinue the use--stop using it; and speak to their doctor if they are having problems."
NBC's Bazell filed from the eyesight laboratory at the University of Southern California. Its engineers have invented a miniature camera that converts light into a neural code that is transmitted to electrodes that stimulate cells in a blind person's retina. Already the technology can make out the shape of a face and the top two lines of letters on an eye chart. The next step is to develop cameras that can be implanted directly into a blind eye. "Absolutely incredible," marveled NBC anchor Brian Williams.
ABC's Jim Sciutto called it "a day of dueling demonstrations" as the supporters of both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the reelected president, and Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated candidate who alleges ballot stuffing, held rallies. "The difference," noted Sciutto, was that "the opposition rally was illegal." CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed out that her press credentials were canceled shortly before the rallies began. "These vast rallies and counter-rallies are the public face of a huge power struggle taking place behind the scenes." For example, at least 100 prominent members of the opposition have been arrested, including some senior members of the clergy. NBC producer Ali Arouzi is an Iranian citizen, so was allowed to walk the streets without a camera. He recounted that protestors "do not shout slogans against Ahmadinejad so as not to incite violence from the security forces." Instead they silently wave their hands in a V-sign.
Faced with the ban on coverage, ABC's Sciutto said he was forced to follow most of the day's events from his hotel room "although we did manage to film on our cellphones." NBC's Richard Engel, based in New York, relied on feeds of footage from Reuters and the Associated Press and "thousands of videos on the Internet" which NBC News was unable to verify. "They are using Twitter to exchange tactics and avoid arrest. The tweets--short Internet messages--read like military radio traffic." ABC's Miguel Marquez monitored the same online communiques in London: "It is a political protest wrapped in a technological revolution, protests shot on cellphones then instantly shared online around the world, snippets of information tweeted to those hungry for news."
The United States is keeping a low official profile. ABC's Jake Tapper reported that Barack Obama "does not want to be seen as meddling in Iranian affairs." The President granted an interview to CNBC's John Harwood that NBC's Engel quoted. Obama described the Teheran protests as "amazing ferment" but warned that the policy differences between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi "may not be as great as has been advertised." NBC's Engel added that the State Department did intervene to ask Twitter not to take its Website offline for maintenance overnight so that Iranians could continue to use it for uncensored communication.
NO BOARDING OF KOREAN SLOWPOKES While Barack Obama offered a cautious soundbite on the protests in Teheran, his active diplomacy concerned the Korean peninsula. Only CBS assigned a reporter to cover his talks with President Lee Myung-Bak of South Korea, who is "a hard-liner" in opposition to North Korea's nuclear program, according to David Martin. Martin reminded us that the Security Council of the United Nations has passed a resolution authorizing the world's navies "to confront but not to board" any North Korean ship suspected of carrying arms. Quipped Martin: "North Korean ships poke along at about ten knots so this is not a fast-moving crisis."
NYC MAY NEED NOAA’S ARK The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made a splash by forecasting the impact of global warming on the national climate. All three newscasts relayed its doomsday scenarios. NOAA took us around the country region by region. So, for example, ABC's Bill Blakemore showed how a future New Hampshire will have the same climate as the current Carolinas and how Illinois will be the next Texas. NBC's Anne Thompson told us that New York City can expect a pair of hundred-year floods within just the next 40 years and that the aquifer used by great plains agribusiness will run dry. CBS' Daniel Sieberg promised more intense hurricanes in the southeast and more intense wildfires in the southwest. Only CBS' Sieberg filed a soundbite from a climate change denier. Both Blakemore and Thompson treated NOAA's forecast as frightening…but not controversial.
CO-EQUAL BRANCHES CBS filed both a preview and a follow-up on Barack Obama's domestic policy initiatives. Wyatt Andrews' Reality Check follow-up was on the President's healthcare speech Monday. How will he raise the taxes to pay for his plan? "By limiting the tax deductions of high income wage earners. The fact is most of Congress opposes this idea." White House correspondent Chip Reid previewed the President's proposed reorganization of financial industry regulators. He had considered trying to consolidate the alphabet soup of existing agencies "but decided against it, in part, because there is just too much opposition in Congress."
CNBC's Trish Regan covered the Federal Reserve Board's monitoring of the bank credit card industry for NBC. By March, it found that $61bn out of the $1tr in credit card debt was in default--at least 30 days past due. The upshot is that some customers are successfully clearing their accounts by paying pennies on the dollar. Regan offered the example of a $1,700 Visa bill that was settled for $900 plus a hit on the customer's consumer credit rating. "In the end all Americans will wind up paying the price through bailouts, increased bank fees, higher credit card rates and lower credit limits," financial analysts warned her.
TALK IS CHEAP; TEXT SHOULD BE CHEAPER Do you know how easy it is to send a text message? ABC's Elisabeth Leamy told us: a single minute of voice conversation is equivalent to 600 separate text messages. Yet cellphone operators charge 20c per text--for both sending and receiving--for a transmission that costs them 0.3c. "The major carriers all raised their per-text prices within months of each other and they now charge quadruple what they did four years ago." Leamy was covering Senate hearings into possible price fixing to generate those mark-ups. Her advice was to sign up for an unlimited texting plan instead.
DR ASHTON’S UNCLEAR BEDSIDE MANNER NBC closed with a Robert Bazell feature about people who have lost their sense of sight. CBS and ABC both brought us news about those who have lost their sense of smell. Zicam, the Food & Drug Administration warned, can take one's smell away and "if you cannot smell, you cannot taste," warned ABC's Lisa Stark. The ten-year-old zinc-based over-the-counter remedy for the common cold has been linked to 130 people losing their smell. "Both too little and too much zinc can potentially be harmful," Dr Jennifer Ashton warned CBS anchor Jeff Glor.
Ashton is a newly arrived in-house physician at CBS. The rookie showed her inexperience by offering confusing medical advice. "To be clear," she concluded with no apparent awareness that she was about to be unclear, "the FDA is recommending that, for the consumers who are using these products, they should discontinue the use--stop using it--and speak to their doctor, if they are having problems."
Or was this Ashton's advice? "The FDA is recommending that for the consumers who are using these products they should discontinue the use--stop using it; and speak to their doctor if they are having problems."
NBC's Bazell filed from the eyesight laboratory at the University of Southern California. Its engineers have invented a miniature camera that converts light into a neural code that is transmitted to electrodes that stimulate cells in a blind person's retina. Already the technology can make out the shape of a face and the top two lines of letters on an eye chart. The next step is to develop cameras that can be implanted directly into a blind eye. "Absolutely incredible," marveled NBC anchor Brian Williams.
