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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JULY 13, 2009
Sonia Sotomayor was Story of the Day. The first day of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee into her nomination to the Supreme Court was the unanimous choice to lead all three newscasts. Ceremony aside, little original news was made, as the first day consisted of the reading of prepared statements by both panel members and the nominee. NBC, courtesy of the University of Phoenix, this day's single sponsor, expanded its newshole (25 min v ABC 17, CBS 20) by running fewer commercials than usual.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 13, 2009: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SOTOMAYOR SPENDS THE DAY LISTENING IMPASSIVELY Sonia Sotomayor was Story of the Day. The first day of hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee into her nomination to the Supreme Court was the unanimous choice to lead all three newscasts. Ceremony aside, little original news was made, as the first day consisted of the reading of prepared statements by both panel members and the nominee. NBC, courtesy of the University of Phoenix, this day's single sponsor, expanded its newshole (25 min v ABC 17, CBS 20) by running fewer commercials than usual.
A pair of soundbites was selected to sum up the day's proceedings in all three reports. Judge Sotomayor's description of her own judicial philosophy: "Simple. Fidelity to the Law." And the prediction by Sen Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, on her prospects for success: "Unless you have a complete meltdown you are going to get confirmed." CBS anchor Katie Couric asked her colleague Bob Schieffer (at the tail of the Andrews videostream), anchor of Face the Nation, why the Republicans were challenging her: "I guess they do not want the folks back home to think they are potted plants," he speculated.
NBC's Pete Williams had a sardonic take on the day's speechifying, in which the nominee's own words occupied a scant eight minutes: Sotomayor "displayed an essential talent for Supreme Court nominees--the impassive stare." Williams reminded us that President Barack Obama had praised Sotomayor for her empathy when he nominated her. Sen Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican on the panel, asserted that such a quality does not amount to insight into all parties in a case, but sympathy for some and prejudice against others instead. Mused Williams: "At times the President's empathy remark seemed as much a focus of the hearing as his nominee."
Both ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg and CBS' Wyatt Andrews saw Democrats on the panel concentrating on Sotomayor's 17-year record on the federal bench and Republicans focusing on her extracurricular speeches. They both pointed to that famous wise Latina women soundbite that all three network newscasts--and the White House--mangled when the judge was nominated in May. Back then Tyndall Report (here, here and here) catalogued how the quote was misquoted.
Here we go again. This is what Sotomayor actually said: "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." This is how CBS' Andrews heard it: "A wise Latina woman would reach a better conclusion than a white male." ABC's Crawford Greenburg was almost word-for-word the same: "A wise Latina would reach a better conclusion than a white male."
Both did the judge a disservice. Both ignored the fact that this was an aspiration not a prediction: "I would hope that…" Both ignored the difference in experience between the two: her life had "richness;" his lacked it. Both ignored the tendency and saw a hard and fast rule: "…more often than not…" Dropping all those qualifiers gives unwarranted credence to Sotomayor's critics.
MEET DOCTOR REGINA As Judge Sonia Sotomayor was listening to senators, Dr Regina Benjamin was being nominated as the next Surgeon General. NBC's Anne Thompson filed a profile of the rural Alabama family doctor whose clinic serves a shrimp fishing village of 2,500, 40% of whose residents have no health insurance. Thompson checked off Benjamin's nomination by Time in 1994 as one of its Fifty Future Leaders Under 40 and her 2008 award by the MacArthur Foundation with a so-called genius grant. Jake Tapper dug into the archives at ABC and replayed her nomination as his networks Person of the Week back in 1995.
BARACK’S BACK ON HEALTHCARE BEAT President Barack Obama is back at the White House after last week's overseas trip. ABC's Jake Tapper heard him ramp up pressure on Congress to produce healthcare legislation before the August recess. "Will likely not happen," was his conclusion. The $1tr/decade pricetag is the obstacle for Republicans and "moderate" Democrats, Tapper reported; for "liberals" it is the possible lack of a "government-run plan to compete with private insurers." NBC's Chuck Todd filed a brief stand-up on healthcare reform in which he pointed to a "clear-the-deck mentality" at the White House. CBS did not file from the White House at all.
PROPUBLICA PICKS ON REMOTE RURAL FLIERS ProPublica, the not-for-profit investigative journalism cooperative, received a shot of free publicity from CBS' Follow the Money feature. The group followed the Federal Aviation Administration's assignment of $1.1bn in fiscal stimulus funds for airport improvements. Rather than spend it on busy hubs such as Los Angeles International, which lacks taxiway warning lights, the FAA allocated the money to 300 tiny strips from upstate New York to rural Indiana to remote Alaska. Sharyl Attkisson told us the runways cater to "recreational fliers and corporate jets" but are also used by rescue aircraft and cargo haulers. "Why should not the cost be borne by the people who benefit from it?" Attkisson asked the Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "The community cannot raise that kind of money. Rural airports deserve to be safe."
CIA PLANNED HIT SECRET SQUADS Director Leon Panetta of the CIA briefed Intelligence Committee members on Capitol Hill last month about secrets he inherited. Only now are those secrets starting to make news. Both NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Nancy Cordes gave the story a shot. Yet, as murky as spy stories often are, their coverage created as much confusion as insight. The topic was an order issued by President George Bush in late 2001 to have the CIA assemble assassination squads to track down leaders of al-Qaeda "outside of war zones, in fact anywhere in the world," as NBC's Mitchell put it.
Mitchell pointed out that this green light for assassinations was no secret, reminding us of NBC News' own coverage of the go-ahead in December 2001. Yet the CIA, at the time, never briefed Congress about the hit squads. CBS' Cordes came up with a pair of contrasting explanations for keeping the secret. Her unidentified "government sources" told her that it was an "on-again-off-again plan" that "never got off the ground." Her unidentified sources among Congressional Democrats told her Panetta's explanation: then-Vice President Dick Cheney "told the CIA" to withhold the briefing.
GET OUT THE VOTE, TALIBAN-STYLE NBC's Richard Engel won awards for his Tip of the Spear battlefield footage of USArmy firefights with Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Now CBS' Mandy Clark gets in on the act with her Exclusive from Nuristan Province. She holed up with a hundred soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in the village of Barge Matal as guerrillas attacked from surrounding mountain ridges. At the end of the firefight a guerrilla's corpse revealed the motive for the attack. In an attempt to suppress turnout in the national elections in August, the Taliban had confiscated the villagers' voter registration cards: 88 of them were stuffed in the dead man's purse.
ER, THE REALITY SHOW Over the Fourth of July weekend, the citizens of Chicago suffered 63 shootings resulting in eleven murders. NBC's Kevin Tibbles checked out the trauma unit at Cook County Hospital and found that the demand for transfusions was so high that it came within three units of running out of blood.
Only NBC covered that urban violent crime wave. All three newscasts assigned a correspondent--NBC's Mark Potter, ABC's Steve Osunsami, CBS' Mark Strassmann--to the nine-bedroom mansion in the Florida Panhandle where a wealthy couple was shot to death last week. Byrd and Melanie Billings were newsworthy because of their family: they had 16 children, nine of whom were adopted Down Syndrome babies. Yet their deaths were sensational too. The mansion's security cameras traced a gang of killers approaching their home from a Dodge van in the front, an Escalade in the back, according to CBS' Strassmann: "Five masked gunmen dressed ninja-style went inside; less than five minutes later, the couple was shot dead." NBC's Potter quoted the police as alleging that robbery was a motive for the home invasion before adding this mysterious soundbite: "We believe that there are other motives that we have yet to confirm."
PLAY BALL ABC's John Berman had the right to make fun of actor Mark Wahlberg and singer Mariah Carey and sprinter Carl Lewis as each flubbed the task of throwing a baseball across 60' 6". The reason Berman was entitled is that he had to deliver a ceremonial first pitch at the minor league Pawtucket Red Sox--and successfully crossed the pill over home plate. "I decided to dust off the old cannon," he swaggered. Why did World News decide that stroking its reporter's vanity was newsworthy? Because President Barack Obama is about to undertake the same task at the Baseball All-Star Game.
CHASTE HERMIONE Lovers of The Winter's Tale should check out installation artist Antony Gormley's sculpture project in Trafalgar Square in central London. The square has a spare plinth, so Gormley has organized three months of living statuary: 2,400 people will stand on the pedestal for an hour each and do whatever they feel like. CBS' Mark Phillips offered a pun--"some day your plinth will come"--and a piece of advice for those preparing their sixty minutes on stage: "15 minutes of fame may be better than a whole hour."
A pair of soundbites was selected to sum up the day's proceedings in all three reports. Judge Sotomayor's description of her own judicial philosophy: "Simple. Fidelity to the Law." And the prediction by Sen Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, on her prospects for success: "Unless you have a complete meltdown you are going to get confirmed." CBS anchor Katie Couric asked her colleague Bob Schieffer (at the tail of the Andrews videostream), anchor of Face the Nation, why the Republicans were challenging her: "I guess they do not want the folks back home to think they are potted plants," he speculated.
NBC's Pete Williams had a sardonic take on the day's speechifying, in which the nominee's own words occupied a scant eight minutes: Sotomayor "displayed an essential talent for Supreme Court nominees--the impassive stare." Williams reminded us that President Barack Obama had praised Sotomayor for her empathy when he nominated her. Sen Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican on the panel, asserted that such a quality does not amount to insight into all parties in a case, but sympathy for some and prejudice against others instead. Mused Williams: "At times the President's empathy remark seemed as much a focus of the hearing as his nominee."
Both ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg and CBS' Wyatt Andrews saw Democrats on the panel concentrating on Sotomayor's 17-year record on the federal bench and Republicans focusing on her extracurricular speeches. They both pointed to that famous wise Latina women soundbite that all three network newscasts--and the White House--mangled when the judge was nominated in May. Back then Tyndall Report (here, here and here) catalogued how the quote was misquoted.
Here we go again. This is what Sotomayor actually said: "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." This is how CBS' Andrews heard it: "A wise Latina woman would reach a better conclusion than a white male." ABC's Crawford Greenburg was almost word-for-word the same: "A wise Latina would reach a better conclusion than a white male."
Both did the judge a disservice. Both ignored the fact that this was an aspiration not a prediction: "I would hope that…" Both ignored the difference in experience between the two: her life had "richness;" his lacked it. Both ignored the tendency and saw a hard and fast rule: "…more often than not…" Dropping all those qualifiers gives unwarranted credence to Sotomayor's critics.
MEET DOCTOR REGINA As Judge Sonia Sotomayor was listening to senators, Dr Regina Benjamin was being nominated as the next Surgeon General. NBC's Anne Thompson filed a profile of the rural Alabama family doctor whose clinic serves a shrimp fishing village of 2,500, 40% of whose residents have no health insurance. Thompson checked off Benjamin's nomination by Time in 1994 as one of its Fifty Future Leaders Under 40 and her 2008 award by the MacArthur Foundation with a so-called genius grant. Jake Tapper dug into the archives at ABC and replayed her nomination as his networks Person of the Week back in 1995.
BARACK’S BACK ON HEALTHCARE BEAT President Barack Obama is back at the White House after last week's overseas trip. ABC's Jake Tapper heard him ramp up pressure on Congress to produce healthcare legislation before the August recess. "Will likely not happen," was his conclusion. The $1tr/decade pricetag is the obstacle for Republicans and "moderate" Democrats, Tapper reported; for "liberals" it is the possible lack of a "government-run plan to compete with private insurers." NBC's Chuck Todd filed a brief stand-up on healthcare reform in which he pointed to a "clear-the-deck mentality" at the White House. CBS did not file from the White House at all.
PROPUBLICA PICKS ON REMOTE RURAL FLIERS ProPublica, the not-for-profit investigative journalism cooperative, received a shot of free publicity from CBS' Follow the Money feature. The group followed the Federal Aviation Administration's assignment of $1.1bn in fiscal stimulus funds for airport improvements. Rather than spend it on busy hubs such as Los Angeles International, which lacks taxiway warning lights, the FAA allocated the money to 300 tiny strips from upstate New York to rural Indiana to remote Alaska. Sharyl Attkisson told us the runways cater to "recreational fliers and corporate jets" but are also used by rescue aircraft and cargo haulers. "Why should not the cost be borne by the people who benefit from it?" Attkisson asked the Department of Transportation spokeswoman. "The community cannot raise that kind of money. Rural airports deserve to be safe."
CIA PLANNED HIT SECRET SQUADS Director Leon Panetta of the CIA briefed Intelligence Committee members on Capitol Hill last month about secrets he inherited. Only now are those secrets starting to make news. Both NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' Nancy Cordes gave the story a shot. Yet, as murky as spy stories often are, their coverage created as much confusion as insight. The topic was an order issued by President George Bush in late 2001 to have the CIA assemble assassination squads to track down leaders of al-Qaeda "outside of war zones, in fact anywhere in the world," as NBC's Mitchell put it.
Mitchell pointed out that this green light for assassinations was no secret, reminding us of NBC News' own coverage of the go-ahead in December 2001. Yet the CIA, at the time, never briefed Congress about the hit squads. CBS' Cordes came up with a pair of contrasting explanations for keeping the secret. Her unidentified "government sources" told her that it was an "on-again-off-again plan" that "never got off the ground." Her unidentified sources among Congressional Democrats told her Panetta's explanation: then-Vice President Dick Cheney "told the CIA" to withhold the briefing.
GET OUT THE VOTE, TALIBAN-STYLE NBC's Richard Engel won awards for his Tip of the Spear battlefield footage of USArmy firefights with Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley. Now CBS' Mandy Clark gets in on the act with her Exclusive from Nuristan Province. She holed up with a hundred soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in the village of Barge Matal as guerrillas attacked from surrounding mountain ridges. At the end of the firefight a guerrilla's corpse revealed the motive for the attack. In an attempt to suppress turnout in the national elections in August, the Taliban had confiscated the villagers' voter registration cards: 88 of them were stuffed in the dead man's purse.
ER, THE REALITY SHOW Over the Fourth of July weekend, the citizens of Chicago suffered 63 shootings resulting in eleven murders. NBC's Kevin Tibbles checked out the trauma unit at Cook County Hospital and found that the demand for transfusions was so high that it came within three units of running out of blood.
Only NBC covered that urban violent crime wave. All three newscasts assigned a correspondent--NBC's Mark Potter, ABC's Steve Osunsami, CBS' Mark Strassmann--to the nine-bedroom mansion in the Florida Panhandle where a wealthy couple was shot to death last week. Byrd and Melanie Billings were newsworthy because of their family: they had 16 children, nine of whom were adopted Down Syndrome babies. Yet their deaths were sensational too. The mansion's security cameras traced a gang of killers approaching their home from a Dodge van in the front, an Escalade in the back, according to CBS' Strassmann: "Five masked gunmen dressed ninja-style went inside; less than five minutes later, the couple was shot dead." NBC's Potter quoted the police as alleging that robbery was a motive for the home invasion before adding this mysterious soundbite: "We believe that there are other motives that we have yet to confirm."
PLAY BALL ABC's John Berman had the right to make fun of actor Mark Wahlberg and singer Mariah Carey and sprinter Carl Lewis as each flubbed the task of throwing a baseball across 60' 6". The reason Berman was entitled is that he had to deliver a ceremonial first pitch at the minor league Pawtucket Red Sox--and successfully crossed the pill over home plate. "I decided to dust off the old cannon," he swaggered. Why did World News decide that stroking its reporter's vanity was newsworthy? Because President Barack Obama is about to undertake the same task at the Baseball All-Star Game.
CHASTE HERMIONE Lovers of The Winter's Tale should check out installation artist Antony Gormley's sculpture project in Trafalgar Square in central London. The square has a spare plinth, so Gormley has organized three months of living statuary: 2,400 people will stand on the pedestal for an hour each and do whatever they feel like. CBS' Mark Phillips offered a pun--"some day your plinth will come"--and a piece of advice for those preparing their sixty minutes on stage: "15 minutes of fame may be better than a whole hour."
