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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 22, 2010
Finally the streak is broken. The last weekday on which the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not the Story of the Day was on May 10th, when Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court. Since then BP's gusher has dominated the headlines on 30 straight weekdays. Week by week since then, out of a weekly three-network newshole of approximately 285 minutes, the oil disaster has logged the following totals: 62 mins, 81, 154, 153, 127, 144. The first nine weeks of coverage of Hurricane Katrina logged 903 minutes (NBC 379 v ABC 247, CBS 274); the first nine weeks of the oil leak is close behind, with 871 minutes (NBC 322 v ABC 255, CBS 293). So ABC and CBS are both now treating the oil disaster that killed 11 as more newsworthy than the flooding of New Orleans, which killed more than 1800. What broke the streak? An article called The Runaway General in Rolling Stone magazine.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 22, 2010: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
RUNAWAY GENERAL BREAKS GUSHER’S WIN STREAK Finally the streak is broken. The last weekday on which the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was not the Story of the Day was on May 10th, when Elena Kagan was nominated to the Supreme Court. Since then BP's gusher has dominated the headlines on 30 straight weekdays. Week by week since then, out of a weekly three-network newshole of approximately 285 minutes, the oil disaster has logged the following totals: 62 mins, 81, 154, 153, 127, 144. The first nine weeks of coverage of Hurricane Katrina logged 903 minutes (NBC 379 v ABC 247, CBS 274); the first nine weeks of the oil leak is close behind, with 871 minutes (NBC 322 v ABC 255, CBS 293). So ABC and CBS are both now treating the oil disaster that killed 11 as more newsworthy than the flooding of New Orleans, which killed more than 1800. What broke the streak? An article called The Runaway General in Rolling Stone magazine.
All three newscasts led with reporter Michael Hastings' profile of Stanley McChrystal, the commanding general of US military forces in Afghanistan. ABC treated it as a White House story, kicking off its newscast with Jake Tapper. NBC gave Andrea Mitchell the assignment, its diplomatic correspondent. CBS went to the Pentagon and David Martin. Martin called Hastings' portrait of McChrystal and his aides "a jaw-dropping display of disrespect and indiscretion." Tapper noted that the general and his team "let almost no top administration official go uninsulted." For her part, Mitchell characterized McChrystal and his aides as expressing "contempt for everyone up the chain of command from the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, even the Commander-in-Chief."
It is true that most of the badmouthing of diplomats and National Security Council members cited in the article did not come from the general's mouth. It reflected the attitudes of his inner circle of aides instead. ABC's Martha Raddatz quoted Rolling Stone's Hastings: "I think they say these things all the time in private and I just happened to, sort of, see them, how they acted in private." Raddatz called it "baffling" that McChrystal's team would be so open with the reporter.
From the Pentagon, CBS' Martin provided the perspective that "the White House has long suspected the military of mounting a campaign of press leaks to coerce the President into sending more troops." Martin quoted Obama's answer to journalist Jonathan Alter's question about whether the military brass had "jammed him" on the troop decision. "I neither confirm nor deny that I have gotten jammed," the Commander-in-Chief stated.
At the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out that the quarrel with McChrystal is not about his conduct of the counterinsurgency but about his "leadership and judgment…the importance of civilian control and the idea of a chain of command." Opined George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's Good Morning America: "The President has really been put in a real political box. If he fires McChrystal he risks looking thin skinned and petulant but if he accepts these words, which some consider insubordination, then he risks looking weak."
NBC's Richard Engel filed his own profile of the general from Kabul, calling McChrystal "blunt, disciplined and secretive, known for his austere living. He ran covert "black ops" assassination programs against al-Qaeda militants in Iraq and was accused of covering up the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player turned USArmy Ranger, at the hands of his own comrades in Afghanistan. "McChrystal had tremendous latitude. Few questions were asked, his activities all classified." ABC's Raddatz added the tidbit that the general "loves the military. It is his life. He has been married 30 years. Some of those years he has been able to see his wife for fewer than 30 days."
It should be noted that the Pentagon's doctrine of counterinsurgency insists that all aspects of the United States' involvement in Afghanistan--not only warmaking but diplomacy and nationbuilding and training and development aid and political contact--is centralized under the command of the military. So belittling for civilians may be an inevitable consequence of such a structure. CBS' Lara Logan claimed that US foreign policy in Afghanistan is identified with the general himself: "The strategy needs McChrystal to fight for it and with so much political opposition in Washington it is unclear that it will be able to survive." NBC's Engel drew this conclusion from Rolling Stone: "The article suggests McChrystal and his inner circle have become disdainful of authority, calling themselves Team America, believing only they know how to run a war."
DRILL AGAIN, BABY, DRILL All this fuss and bother about The Runaway General hardly meant that the Gulf of Mexico had disappeared from the networks' agenda. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi and CBS' Mark Strassmann both covered the decision by a federal judge to overturn the six-month ban on deepwater exploration for new oil. Alfonsi reported that 33 rigs can now go back to work; Strassmann estimated that each rig provides work for between 900 and 1,400 people. Louisiana's $70bn oil industry, he calculated, generates five times the income of its fishery.
On Monday, when CBS anchor Katie Couric made her weekly visit to the Gulf Coast, she brought us the helicopter view of the flotilla of ships and derricks on the high seas a mile above the site of the gushing wellhead. Now NBC's Kerry Sanders brings us an impressive sea level shot of the operation to drill two relief wells and to burn the oil that is siphoned off to the surface.
Rounding out the oil update, CBS' Sharyl Attkisson gave us the heads up on soon-to-be-released research into the size of the submarine plumes of oil that BP insists do not exist. And check out Anne Thompson's heartbreaking portrayal of the despair of a helpless Cambodian-American shrimper in Venice La on NBC.
PALMETTO Another summer Tuesday meant another set of primary elections in the run-up to December's midterms. Most of the attention so far (24 packages) has been on Congressional races. California (3 packages) has been the only governor's contest to receive a correspondent's attention until now. ABC's Steve Osunsami brings us Nikki Haley, the Indian-American Republican of South Carolina. Haley not only "overcame a sex scandal--two men claim to have had an affair with her--the accusations actually helped her. Her support grew."
THINGS THAT ARE BAD FOR YOU Yunji de Nies of ABC told us how the toy in the Happy Meal at McDonalds lures children into non-nutritious eating. CBS' Dean Reynolds showed us new cigarette brands now that the FDA has banned the use of the misleading Lite, Ultra Lite, Mild and Low Tar in names. "Benson & Hedges simply switched from Lite to a new word, DeLuxe, while others erased the label but retained the color-coded pack."
NBC filed part two of its Be Well, Be Healthy series with in-house physician Nancy Snyderman worrying about morbidly obese children and teenagers. On Monday, Tom Costello covered the theory that we are all getting heavier because our meal portions are larger because our plates are bigger. He offered a plug for the book The 9-Inch Diet by Alex Bogusky, who traces the growth of flatware from 9" diameter to 12" over the last 50 years.
Costello calculated that as a 33% increase in food area. I think pi-r-squared means a 77% increase.
TWEENS ON WHEELS Newly released, not at movie theaters, but as a DVD feature, CBS' John Blackstone offers a free plug for Nic & Tristan Go Mega Dega.
All three newscasts led with reporter Michael Hastings' profile of Stanley McChrystal, the commanding general of US military forces in Afghanistan. ABC treated it as a White House story, kicking off its newscast with Jake Tapper. NBC gave Andrea Mitchell the assignment, its diplomatic correspondent. CBS went to the Pentagon and David Martin. Martin called Hastings' portrait of McChrystal and his aides "a jaw-dropping display of disrespect and indiscretion." Tapper noted that the general and his team "let almost no top administration official go uninsulted." For her part, Mitchell characterized McChrystal and his aides as expressing "contempt for everyone up the chain of command from the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, even the Commander-in-Chief."
It is true that most of the badmouthing of diplomats and National Security Council members cited in the article did not come from the general's mouth. It reflected the attitudes of his inner circle of aides instead. ABC's Martha Raddatz quoted Rolling Stone's Hastings: "I think they say these things all the time in private and I just happened to, sort of, see them, how they acted in private." Raddatz called it "baffling" that McChrystal's team would be so open with the reporter.
From the Pentagon, CBS' Martin provided the perspective that "the White House has long suspected the military of mounting a campaign of press leaks to coerce the President into sending more troops." Martin quoted Obama's answer to journalist Jonathan Alter's question about whether the military brass had "jammed him" on the troop decision. "I neither confirm nor deny that I have gotten jammed," the Commander-in-Chief stated.
At the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd pointed out that the quarrel with McChrystal is not about his conduct of the counterinsurgency but about his "leadership and judgment…the importance of civilian control and the idea of a chain of command." Opined George Stephanopoulos, anchor of ABC's Good Morning America: "The President has really been put in a real political box. If he fires McChrystal he risks looking thin skinned and petulant but if he accepts these words, which some consider insubordination, then he risks looking weak."
NBC's Richard Engel filed his own profile of the general from Kabul, calling McChrystal "blunt, disciplined and secretive, known for his austere living. He ran covert "black ops" assassination programs against al-Qaeda militants in Iraq and was accused of covering up the death of Pat Tillman, the NFL player turned USArmy Ranger, at the hands of his own comrades in Afghanistan. "McChrystal had tremendous latitude. Few questions were asked, his activities all classified." ABC's Raddatz added the tidbit that the general "loves the military. It is his life. He has been married 30 years. Some of those years he has been able to see his wife for fewer than 30 days."
It should be noted that the Pentagon's doctrine of counterinsurgency insists that all aspects of the United States' involvement in Afghanistan--not only warmaking but diplomacy and nationbuilding and training and development aid and political contact--is centralized under the command of the military. So belittling for civilians may be an inevitable consequence of such a structure. CBS' Lara Logan claimed that US foreign policy in Afghanistan is identified with the general himself: "The strategy needs McChrystal to fight for it and with so much political opposition in Washington it is unclear that it will be able to survive." NBC's Engel drew this conclusion from Rolling Stone: "The article suggests McChrystal and his inner circle have become disdainful of authority, calling themselves Team America, believing only they know how to run a war."
DRILL AGAIN, BABY, DRILL All this fuss and bother about The Runaway General hardly meant that the Gulf of Mexico had disappeared from the networks' agenda. ABC's Sharyn Alfonsi and CBS' Mark Strassmann both covered the decision by a federal judge to overturn the six-month ban on deepwater exploration for new oil. Alfonsi reported that 33 rigs can now go back to work; Strassmann estimated that each rig provides work for between 900 and 1,400 people. Louisiana's $70bn oil industry, he calculated, generates five times the income of its fishery.
On Monday, when CBS anchor Katie Couric made her weekly visit to the Gulf Coast, she brought us the helicopter view of the flotilla of ships and derricks on the high seas a mile above the site of the gushing wellhead. Now NBC's Kerry Sanders brings us an impressive sea level shot of the operation to drill two relief wells and to burn the oil that is siphoned off to the surface.
Rounding out the oil update, CBS' Sharyl Attkisson gave us the heads up on soon-to-be-released research into the size of the submarine plumes of oil that BP insists do not exist. And check out Anne Thompson's heartbreaking portrayal of the despair of a helpless Cambodian-American shrimper in Venice La on NBC.
PALMETTO Another summer Tuesday meant another set of primary elections in the run-up to December's midterms. Most of the attention so far (24 packages) has been on Congressional races. California (3 packages) has been the only governor's contest to receive a correspondent's attention until now. ABC's Steve Osunsami brings us Nikki Haley, the Indian-American Republican of South Carolina. Haley not only "overcame a sex scandal--two men claim to have had an affair with her--the accusations actually helped her. Her support grew."
THINGS THAT ARE BAD FOR YOU Yunji de Nies of ABC told us how the toy in the Happy Meal at McDonalds lures children into non-nutritious eating. CBS' Dean Reynolds showed us new cigarette brands now that the FDA has banned the use of the misleading Lite, Ultra Lite, Mild and Low Tar in names. "Benson & Hedges simply switched from Lite to a new word, DeLuxe, while others erased the label but retained the color-coded pack."
NBC filed part two of its Be Well, Be Healthy series with in-house physician Nancy Snyderman worrying about morbidly obese children and teenagers. On Monday, Tom Costello covered the theory that we are all getting heavier because our meal portions are larger because our plates are bigger. He offered a plug for the book The 9-Inch Diet by Alex Bogusky, who traces the growth of flatware from 9" diameter to 12" over the last 50 years.
Costello calculated that as a 33% increase in food area. I think pi-r-squared means a 77% increase.
TWEENS ON WHEELS Newly released, not at movie theaters, but as a DVD feature, CBS' John Blackstone offers a free plug for Nic & Tristan Go Mega Dega.
