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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 07, 2010
Not only was this the 20th straight weekday on which the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster was Story of the Day; it was the fourth straight weekday on which this single story occupied more than half of the three-network newshole (51%--29 min out of 58) That follows totals of 36 min, 31 and 41 for the final three days of last week. CBS and ABC led with the public relations pounding suffered by BP. NBC started with a sensurround show-&-tell of how terrible the congealed crude is along the coastline--that after a sneak peak of Today's q-&-a with Barack Obama, in which Matt Lauer managed to persuade the President to use the undignified phrase "asses to kick."
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 07, 2010: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BARACK OBAMA LOOKS FOR ASSES TO KICK Not only was this the 20th straight weekday on which the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster was Story of the Day; it was the fourth straight weekday on which this single story occupied more than half of the three-network newshole (51%--29 min out of 58) That follows totals of 36 min, 31 and 41 for the final three days of last week. CBS and ABC led with the public relations pounding suffered by BP. NBC started with a sensurround show-&-tell of how terrible the congealed crude is along the coastline--that after a sneak peak of Today's q-&-a with Barack Obama, in which Matt Lauer managed to persuade the President to use the undignified phrase "asses to kick."
CBS' Mark Strassmann introduced us to Robert Dudley, "BP point man in this clean-up," as he inspected the beach at Grand Isle. "Incredibly Bob Dudley had never been this close to Louisiana's oily disaster." His response: "Emotional--I have a very emotional reaction to it." ABC's David Muir monitored BP's posts on Twitter, quoting the corporation's claim that "more than 2,600 vessels are now involved" and offering the correction that "only 115 of those boats are actually skimmers." Muir crouched down on the Grand Isle shore and gazed southwards: "Look off on the horizon. If you scan it, there is not a skimmer in sight."
NBC's Anne Thompson turned her attention to the seabed gusher itself. Following last month's unsuccessful attempt to plug the wellhead with the so-called Top Kill, a containment cap is now siphoning off 11K barrels of crude each day. No one knows what percentage of the overall flow that represents. "There still is no good number," noted Thompson. Yet she quoted Dr Ira Leifer, one of the marine scientists advising the government. Leifer claimed that if he had known how heavy the flow was earlier, he would never have signed off on the Top Kill attempt, which he now believes made matters worse.
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN NBC' Kerry Sanders planted his waders into the thick gloop off Grand Terre Island and promised us "this is as bad as it gets." It certainly looked hellish. Sanders had to tell us about his other senses: "My feet have been in this for the last minute or two and it is like I am standing in a deep fat fryer because it is so hot. It absorbs the heat." Earlier he had inspected the slick from a helicopter: "I think the most surprising thing as we are up here is not that we can see the sheen as far as the eye can see but we are at 500 feet and I can smell it."
Seeing a slimed tern dying from exhaustion, NBC's Sanders confessed: "The struggle to survive is at times difficult to watch." ABC's David Muir checked on the painstaking effort to save pelicans by hand: first apply vegetable oil to their feathers; then bathe them in dishwashing detergent; then apply toothbrushes to keep oil out of their eyes; then warm them with hair dryers; than ship them to Florida. "There is a minority of scientists out there who say it might be easier to euthanize these birds."
TOURIST ADVISORY Orange Beach in Alabama was the location for CBS' Kelly Cobiella where the sheen is sitting offshore and tarballs need cleaning from the beach. NBC's Mark Potter was on Pensacola Beach in Florida, where singer Jimmy Buffett has just opened a new hotel. Potter tried to look on the bright side: "The beaches here are still open and Florida officials hope they can keep them that way." Fat chance.
CRUDE OIL IS BAD FOR ONE’S HEALTH NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman listed the adverse health consequences from contact with crude oil last week. Now her medical colleagues at the other two newscasts--ABC's Richard Besser and CBS' Jennifer Ashton--play catch-up. Benzene, naphthalene and toluene are all known carcinogens, not to speak of headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, inflamed eyes, nose, throat, lungs.
CBS' Ashton also pointed to BP announcements that clean-up workers are expected to work 14-hour days and seven-day weeks. OSHA put a stop to that, warning of an increased risk of workplace injury.
USE ANAMPERSAND THINGUMEBOB TO APPEAR SOCIAL This oil disaster is such a huge story that all three newscasts are departing from their normal formats in order to signal to their viewers that they are aware of the intensity of their interest. And the signals they are sending also imply that the old medium of broadcast television is adapting to the new digital media age.
NBC anchor Brian Williams acknowledged his viewers' curiosity during his visit to Louisiana last week by framing some of his coverage (here, here and here) as answers to Frequently Asked Questions, to use a digital commonplace. Now ABC's version is to present David Muir's story on the use of skimmer boats and supertankers for oil clean-up under the logo ABC News Gets @nswers (spot theampersand thingumebob, very tweety). CBS joins in with seven different pieces of reporting on the spill in a single newscast, each framed as the response to a question submitted by a nicknamed viewer via e-mail or on Facebook or by Twitter. Story ideas came from such sources as Semper46 and MemoryLane and CityofTucson.
Mark Strassmann covered the "proprietary and secret" size of the Macondo Field…Jennifer Ashton looked at air pollution…David Martin monitored the deployment of the National Guard…Jan Crawford speculated on possible prison time for BP executives…Debbye Turner Bell examined the fate of submarine wildlife…and so on.
This coverage makes a show of being contemporary and interactive and socially networked yet, in truth, it is a departure from normal journalism in stylistic terms only. At root, every single story on every single newscast has always been an answer to the question What is Going on Here? Normal journalism does not require that the activating question be spelled out or attributed. It certainly does not matter whether that question was communicated in digital form and transmitted via social networks. The test for interesting journalism is whether the answer is informative not whether the question is authentic.
These feature innovations are just gestures in order to signal to an audience that the newscast is aware of new media. They are not examples of new media journalism itself.
UPDATE: boy, am I embarrassed. I actually know that "&" is ampersand. What is the formal name for "at sign"?
TEA AND SYMPATHY On the day before the vote in primary elections in twelve states, ABC's Jonathan Karl focused on the political flavor of 2009, the Tea Party. Sharron Angle, frontrunner for the Republican nomination for Nevada's Senate seat is "called Mrs Tea Party," with her platform of leaving the United Nations, privatizing Social Security and shuttering the Internal Revenue Service. "She is a 60-year-old former schoolteacher who wants to abolish the Department of Education." Karl noted that one of Angle's biggest boosters seems to be incumbent Democrat Harry Reid, whose backers believe she is his easiest opponent in the General Election. Karl called that an irony but it is not really ironical. Cynicism is more like it.
WAS HELEN THOMAS WHOLLY WRONG OR JUST IN PART? I had a brief back-and-forth with Steve Safran at Lost Remote concerning Helen Thomas' comments about Jews in Palestine. Thomas, aged 89, expressed "deep regrets" for remarks posted on RabbiLIVE.com and resigned as Hearst Newspapers columnist, leaving the chair in the White House press room that she has occupied since she covered John F Kennedy.
"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," was the soundbite that all three network newscasts quoted to explain what got Thomas into trouble. Safran called Thomas' remarks "anti-Semitic." I call that particular comment anti-Zionist--she seemed to be referring to the Occupied Territories when she said "Palestine" but she may have been referring to the entire former British Mandate--but not, on its face, anti-Semitic. Where Thomas crossed the line was to assert that "home" for Jews is Poland and Germany and to suggest that they should move back there. That is not only inaccurate; it is shockingly insensitive; and does count as an anti-Semitic canard.
None of the three correspondents who covered the end of Thomas' storied career investigated whether personal anti-Zionism should be a disqualification for a job covering the White House. CBS' Sharyl Attkisson went no further than to note that "many say Thomas crossed the line from feisty to offensive with these remarks" but she did not specify which ones. ABC's Dan Harris referred merely to "a controversy" and harsh criticism; NBC's Andrea Mitchell noted nonspecifically that "a firestorm erupted."
Should a reporter who personally believes that the state of Israel illegitimately occupies Palestinian land be disqualified from covering the White House? Or is anti-Zionism acceptable and only anti-Semitism beyond the pale?
FREE APPLE ADVERTISING Apple reaped free publicity--and a little teasing--from ABC and CBS when it unveiled its latest gadget, the fourth version of its iPhone, complete with face-to-face telephony and a high definition video camera. ABC's Neal Karlinsky needled Apple boss Steve Jobs when he lost his wi-fi signal during his presentation: "Even Jobs himself is not immune to the problems that plague the rest of us." CBS' John Blackstone reminded us that the hoopla was almost preempted when a prototype fell into the hands of blogger Jason Chen. Chen, however, failed to spot the Face Time video calling feature.
WHAT MAKES SAWYER SAD ABC anchor Diane Sawyer has a hard time coping with atheism. "It does not seem to make you sad, ever, that we are so insignificant in the universe?" she asked physicist Stephen Hawking, when he told her that the existence of God was "implausible" and that human life is "accidental." The wheelchairbound Hawking has suffered from Lou Gehrig's Disease for more than 40 years and is forced to answer Sawyer's questions at a typing pace of two words per minute by twitching a single muscle in his right cheek. Sawyer's conclusion about Hawking's philosophy was that "it is the glory of being human to set out in search of the mystery" of God's arbitrariness--so she did fit God in there somehow.
Sawyer has some nerve in singling out human insignificance as the thing that might make Hawking sad. How about that ghastly illness?
CBS' Mark Strassmann introduced us to Robert Dudley, "BP point man in this clean-up," as he inspected the beach at Grand Isle. "Incredibly Bob Dudley had never been this close to Louisiana's oily disaster." His response: "Emotional--I have a very emotional reaction to it." ABC's David Muir monitored BP's posts on Twitter, quoting the corporation's claim that "more than 2,600 vessels are now involved" and offering the correction that "only 115 of those boats are actually skimmers." Muir crouched down on the Grand Isle shore and gazed southwards: "Look off on the horizon. If you scan it, there is not a skimmer in sight."
NBC's Anne Thompson turned her attention to the seabed gusher itself. Following last month's unsuccessful attempt to plug the wellhead with the so-called Top Kill, a containment cap is now siphoning off 11K barrels of crude each day. No one knows what percentage of the overall flow that represents. "There still is no good number," noted Thompson. Yet she quoted Dr Ira Leifer, one of the marine scientists advising the government. Leifer claimed that if he had known how heavy the flow was earlier, he would never have signed off on the Top Kill attempt, which he now believes made matters worse.
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN NBC' Kerry Sanders planted his waders into the thick gloop off Grand Terre Island and promised us "this is as bad as it gets." It certainly looked hellish. Sanders had to tell us about his other senses: "My feet have been in this for the last minute or two and it is like I am standing in a deep fat fryer because it is so hot. It absorbs the heat." Earlier he had inspected the slick from a helicopter: "I think the most surprising thing as we are up here is not that we can see the sheen as far as the eye can see but we are at 500 feet and I can smell it."
Seeing a slimed tern dying from exhaustion, NBC's Sanders confessed: "The struggle to survive is at times difficult to watch." ABC's David Muir checked on the painstaking effort to save pelicans by hand: first apply vegetable oil to their feathers; then bathe them in dishwashing detergent; then apply toothbrushes to keep oil out of their eyes; then warm them with hair dryers; than ship them to Florida. "There is a minority of scientists out there who say it might be easier to euthanize these birds."
TOURIST ADVISORY Orange Beach in Alabama was the location for CBS' Kelly Cobiella where the sheen is sitting offshore and tarballs need cleaning from the beach. NBC's Mark Potter was on Pensacola Beach in Florida, where singer Jimmy Buffett has just opened a new hotel. Potter tried to look on the bright side: "The beaches here are still open and Florida officials hope they can keep them that way." Fat chance.
CRUDE OIL IS BAD FOR ONE’S HEALTH NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman listed the adverse health consequences from contact with crude oil last week. Now her medical colleagues at the other two newscasts--ABC's Richard Besser and CBS' Jennifer Ashton--play catch-up. Benzene, naphthalene and toluene are all known carcinogens, not to speak of headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, shortness of breath, inflamed eyes, nose, throat, lungs.
CBS' Ashton also pointed to BP announcements that clean-up workers are expected to work 14-hour days and seven-day weeks. OSHA put a stop to that, warning of an increased risk of workplace injury.
USE AN
NBC anchor Brian Williams acknowledged his viewers' curiosity during his visit to Louisiana last week by framing some of his coverage (here, here and here) as answers to Frequently Asked Questions, to use a digital commonplace. Now ABC's version is to present David Muir's story on the use of skimmer boats and supertankers for oil clean-up under the logo ABC News Gets @nswers (spot the
Mark Strassmann covered the "proprietary and secret" size of the Macondo Field…Jennifer Ashton looked at air pollution…David Martin monitored the deployment of the National Guard…Jan Crawford speculated on possible prison time for BP executives…Debbye Turner Bell examined the fate of submarine wildlife…and so on.
This coverage makes a show of being contemporary and interactive and socially networked yet, in truth, it is a departure from normal journalism in stylistic terms only. At root, every single story on every single newscast has always been an answer to the question What is Going on Here? Normal journalism does not require that the activating question be spelled out or attributed. It certainly does not matter whether that question was communicated in digital form and transmitted via social networks. The test for interesting journalism is whether the answer is informative not whether the question is authentic.
These feature innovations are just gestures in order to signal to an audience that the newscast is aware of new media. They are not examples of new media journalism itself.
UPDATE: boy, am I embarrassed. I actually know that "&" is ampersand. What is the formal name for "at sign"?
TEA AND SYMPATHY On the day before the vote in primary elections in twelve states, ABC's Jonathan Karl focused on the political flavor of 2009, the Tea Party. Sharron Angle, frontrunner for the Republican nomination for Nevada's Senate seat is "called Mrs Tea Party," with her platform of leaving the United Nations, privatizing Social Security and shuttering the Internal Revenue Service. "She is a 60-year-old former schoolteacher who wants to abolish the Department of Education." Karl noted that one of Angle's biggest boosters seems to be incumbent Democrat Harry Reid, whose backers believe she is his easiest opponent in the General Election. Karl called that an irony but it is not really ironical. Cynicism is more like it.
WAS HELEN THOMAS WHOLLY WRONG OR JUST IN PART? I had a brief back-and-forth with Steve Safran at Lost Remote concerning Helen Thomas' comments about Jews in Palestine. Thomas, aged 89, expressed "deep regrets" for remarks posted on RabbiLIVE.com and resigned as Hearst Newspapers columnist, leaving the chair in the White House press room that she has occupied since she covered John F Kennedy.
"Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine," was the soundbite that all three network newscasts quoted to explain what got Thomas into trouble. Safran called Thomas' remarks "anti-Semitic." I call that particular comment anti-Zionist--she seemed to be referring to the Occupied Territories when she said "Palestine" but she may have been referring to the entire former British Mandate--but not, on its face, anti-Semitic. Where Thomas crossed the line was to assert that "home" for Jews is Poland and Germany and to suggest that they should move back there. That is not only inaccurate; it is shockingly insensitive; and does count as an anti-Semitic canard.
None of the three correspondents who covered the end of Thomas' storied career investigated whether personal anti-Zionism should be a disqualification for a job covering the White House. CBS' Sharyl Attkisson went no further than to note that "many say Thomas crossed the line from feisty to offensive with these remarks" but she did not specify which ones. ABC's Dan Harris referred merely to "a controversy" and harsh criticism; NBC's Andrea Mitchell noted nonspecifically that "a firestorm erupted."
Should a reporter who personally believes that the state of Israel illegitimately occupies Palestinian land be disqualified from covering the White House? Or is anti-Zionism acceptable and only anti-Semitism beyond the pale?
FREE APPLE ADVERTISING Apple reaped free publicity--and a little teasing--from ABC and CBS when it unveiled its latest gadget, the fourth version of its iPhone, complete with face-to-face telephony and a high definition video camera. ABC's Neal Karlinsky needled Apple boss Steve Jobs when he lost his wi-fi signal during his presentation: "Even Jobs himself is not immune to the problems that plague the rest of us." CBS' John Blackstone reminded us that the hoopla was almost preempted when a prototype fell into the hands of blogger Jason Chen. Chen, however, failed to spot the Face Time video calling feature.
WHAT MAKES SAWYER SAD ABC anchor Diane Sawyer has a hard time coping with atheism. "It does not seem to make you sad, ever, that we are so insignificant in the universe?" she asked physicist Stephen Hawking, when he told her that the existence of God was "implausible" and that human life is "accidental." The wheelchairbound Hawking has suffered from Lou Gehrig's Disease for more than 40 years and is forced to answer Sawyer's questions at a typing pace of two words per minute by twitching a single muscle in his right cheek. Sawyer's conclusion about Hawking's philosophy was that "it is the glory of being human to set out in search of the mystery" of God's arbitrariness--so she did fit God in there somehow.
Sawyer has some nerve in singling out human insignificance as the thing that might make Hawking sad. How about that ghastly illness?
