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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 25, 2010
BP's preparations to try to plug the seabed leak that is poisoning the Gulf of Mexico made the crude oil leak the Story of the Day yet again. That makes eleven straight weekdays on which it was been the most heavily covered single story on the network nightly newscasts. ABC and NBC both led their newscasts from Louisiana. CBS featured the results of its own in-house opinion poll, conducted with The New York Times, before switching to the Gulf disaster.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 25, 2010: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
WHERE IS THE FLEET OF SUPERTANKERS? BP's preparations to try to plug the seabed leak that is poisoning the Gulf of Mexico made the crude oil leak the Story of the Day yet again. That makes eleven straight weekdays on which it was been the most heavily covered single story on the network nightly newscasts. ABC and NBC both led their newscasts from Louisiana. CBS featured the results of its own in-house opinion poll, conducted with The New York Times, before switching to the Gulf disaster.
ABC's Ryan Owens walked us through the so-called Top Kill procedure, under which BP would force slurry into the flow of oil to slow it sufficiently to set concrete in order to seal it. Owens noted that BP's executives are "chronically optimistic." Their best case scenario, he reported, would halt the gusher by Wednesday night. And the worst case? "Shooting all of that mud and concrete could further damage the blowout preventer and that could cause an even larger leak." NBC's Anne Thompson had the same worry: "The leak could become worse and this disaster could stretch long into the summer."
NBC anchor Brian Williams invited John Hofmeister into the studio. Hofmeister is a former president of Shell Oil. He reassured us that BP is making every effort to seal the leak: "I have every confidence that the best minds in the world are working on this." Hofmeister's criticism focused on the failure to clean the oil that had already leaked. He reminded us of an even larger spill in the Arabian Gulf in the early '90s that was handled by a fleet of supertankers, using their massive pumps to take on board a mixture of oil and water--"a million barrels per copy"--so that the mixture could be unloaded, filtered, separated, cleaned and then returned to the Gulf. He reckoned up to five supertankers could save the wetlands.
DYSFUNCTION CBS assigned Sharyl Attkisson on Capitol Hill to cover the report by the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior into BP's relationship with its offshore oil drilling regulator, the Minerals Management Service during the Bush Administration. "MMS is supposed to investigate accidents and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence but we dug through reports involving BP or TransOcean"--the owner of the rig that exploded--"dating back to 2006. In every case but one MMS made no recommendations at all." Attkisson called MMS "dysfunctional." She ticked off examples of its cozy relationship with the oil industry, including revolving door hiring, having the oil companies write reports for the inspectors to copy and longstanding friendships, gifts and junkets. "Now the Inspector General will look at the conduct since 2009."
THE LIFE AQUATIC All three newscasts offered horrendous tales of pollution. CBS' Mark Strassmann showed us a destroyed oysterbed, with $500,000 worth of tainted molluscs now inedible. He waved a live crab at the camera. It was caught on Saturday just before a fishing ban was imposed: "This could be one of the last crabs caught in these waters for some time." Michelle Kosinski on NBC brought us the Grand Isle wetlands: "Today porpoises played in greasy waters. Pelicans, on the edges of their nesting grounds, tried to pull oil from their wings. And beneath us, thousand of oysters, all unfit for harvest."
On ABC, Good Morning America's weathercaster Sam Champion went diving with Philippe Cousteau of Planet Green. "The Gulf's crystal blue waters are now filled with these massive dark storm clouds of oil and chemical sludge, globs of sticky oil being broken up and pulled down into plumes running more than 25 feet deep," he showed us. The combination of oil and Corexit, the chemical dispersant being applied by BP, is so toxic that Champion was not allowed to dive with any exposed skin: "We donned rubber industrial hazmat dry suits and 30lb hard hats rigged with underwater cameras."
CHANGE THE CURRICULUM Monday had seen a pair of anchors reporting from the Gulf Coast. Both CBS' Katie Couric and ABC's Diane Sawyer rounded out their trip with day-after features. Sawyer sat down with the bereaved relatives of Dale Burkeen, one of the eleven platform workers killed by the initial explosion that triggered this disaster. Couric sought the vox pop of half a dozen small business people in the devastated tourist resort of Grand Isle. On NBC, Thanh Truong went to the Boothville Venice elementary school, where almost every student has a family member working either in the fishery or in the oil industry. The science curriculum for sixth graders is now single topic--how coastal ecosystems work and the consequences of their destruction.
FOOTLOOSE IN MOGADISHU ABC's Pierre Thomas was in New York to report on streetfighting in downtown Kingston. Some 30 people are dead as supporters of Christopher Coke, "a folk hero, a Robin Hood like figure," fight to prevent his extradition to the United States on narcotics charges. The fighting is happening "only two hours from Jamaica's famous resorts," Thomas told us.
ABC's Barbara Pinto was in Phoenix to report on military reinforcements being added to the border with Mexico. Arizona politicians, she reminded us, are worried about rising violent crime and depleted social services because of illegal immigration. Newly arriving National Guard troops will not address those problems, since they are "not law enforcement officers but will provide surveillance."
NBC's Richard Engel trumped those two overseas angles with a searing second part of The Most Dangerous Place in the World feature on Mogadishu (this is part one). He told us that most of the guerrillas in the Shabab militia that controls the city are teenagers. Their method of law enforcement is to amputate a right hand and a left foot of accused thieves. Engel sat down in the bushes with a 20-year-old who had his foot cut off: "The militants returned 15 days later and sawed off two more inches just to make him suffer."
NOT VERY GAY As Congress prepares to vote on repealing the Pentagon's policy on homosexuals in uniform, ABC's Bob Woodruff filed a Reports on the anxiety of closeted military gays about being outed and discharged. Since 1993, Woodruff told us, more than 10,000 of the nation's troops have been fired for flouting the Don't Ask, Don't Tell rule. Woodruff showed us stills from a photography portrait project by Jeff Sheng at Los Angeles' Kaycee Olsen Gallery. It shows images of closeted gay warriors, alone in bedrooms, in secret locations, faces obscured, names and ranks falsified. Here are some images, which are not at all gay in their somber mood.
THE WRONG DIRECTION Usually when the networks publish their period opinion polls on the state of the body politic, they headline the President's approval ratings and the level of support for his various policy initiatives. It shows how bleak the popular mood seems to the pollsters that both NBC's Chuck Todd two weeks ago and now CBS' Anthony Mason broke from that mold. CBS had 61% of the population believing that the country is on the wrong track; NBC 56%. "Both political parties viewed negatively," Todd told us. "The approval ratings fro Democrats and Republicans are at or near record lows," said Mason. According to CBS, the Congress of the United States has a disapproval rating of 77%.
NAMING BRAND NAMES All publicity is good publicity, right? When all three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the annual Extreme Eating Awards from the Center for Science & the Public Interest, a total of five restaurant chains received free mentions for their high-calorie high-saturated-fat special menu items.
Five Guys scored the trifecta--mentioned by NBC's George Lewis and CBS' Richard Schlesinger and ABC's Yunji de Nies--because its bacon cheeseburger had the added news hook of being ordered and eaten by Barack Obama during a dining photo-op. Runners-up were Bob Evans' hot cakes (ABC and CBS), PF Chang's noodles (CBS and NBC), The Cheesecake Factory's pasta carbonara and truffle cake (CBS and NBC) and California Pizza Kitchen's steak tostada (ABC and NBC).
Kentucky Fried Chicken even qualified for inclusion by ABC's de Nies because of its Double Down no-bread sandwich--even though CSPI had not singled it out in the first place.
Now contrast that with NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman, who could barely bring herself to utter the brand names of a series of antacid pills that can weaken the bones of middle-aged heartburn sufferers if taken in excess. Norman Charles at The Nightly Daily reckons that Snyderman gagged on the names of Prevacid and Nexium--but not on Prilosec--because those two brands happen to advertise on NBC Nightly News.
Charles is right to be outraged. There is no reason for Snyderman not to help her viewers by naming names. In fact, where advertisers are concerned, she has an extra obligation to bend over backwards to do so.
ABC's Ryan Owens walked us through the so-called Top Kill procedure, under which BP would force slurry into the flow of oil to slow it sufficiently to set concrete in order to seal it. Owens noted that BP's executives are "chronically optimistic." Their best case scenario, he reported, would halt the gusher by Wednesday night. And the worst case? "Shooting all of that mud and concrete could further damage the blowout preventer and that could cause an even larger leak." NBC's Anne Thompson had the same worry: "The leak could become worse and this disaster could stretch long into the summer."
NBC anchor Brian Williams invited John Hofmeister into the studio. Hofmeister is a former president of Shell Oil. He reassured us that BP is making every effort to seal the leak: "I have every confidence that the best minds in the world are working on this." Hofmeister's criticism focused on the failure to clean the oil that had already leaked. He reminded us of an even larger spill in the Arabian Gulf in the early '90s that was handled by a fleet of supertankers, using their massive pumps to take on board a mixture of oil and water--"a million barrels per copy"--so that the mixture could be unloaded, filtered, separated, cleaned and then returned to the Gulf. He reckoned up to five supertankers could save the wetlands.
DYSFUNCTION CBS assigned Sharyl Attkisson on Capitol Hill to cover the report by the Inspector General of the Department of the Interior into BP's relationship with its offshore oil drilling regulator, the Minerals Management Service during the Bush Administration. "MMS is supposed to investigate accidents and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence but we dug through reports involving BP or TransOcean"--the owner of the rig that exploded--"dating back to 2006. In every case but one MMS made no recommendations at all." Attkisson called MMS "dysfunctional." She ticked off examples of its cozy relationship with the oil industry, including revolving door hiring, having the oil companies write reports for the inspectors to copy and longstanding friendships, gifts and junkets. "Now the Inspector General will look at the conduct since 2009."
THE LIFE AQUATIC All three newscasts offered horrendous tales of pollution. CBS' Mark Strassmann showed us a destroyed oysterbed, with $500,000 worth of tainted molluscs now inedible. He waved a live crab at the camera. It was caught on Saturday just before a fishing ban was imposed: "This could be one of the last crabs caught in these waters for some time." Michelle Kosinski on NBC brought us the Grand Isle wetlands: "Today porpoises played in greasy waters. Pelicans, on the edges of their nesting grounds, tried to pull oil from their wings. And beneath us, thousand of oysters, all unfit for harvest."
On ABC, Good Morning America's weathercaster Sam Champion went diving with Philippe Cousteau of Planet Green. "The Gulf's crystal blue waters are now filled with these massive dark storm clouds of oil and chemical sludge, globs of sticky oil being broken up and pulled down into plumes running more than 25 feet deep," he showed us. The combination of oil and Corexit, the chemical dispersant being applied by BP, is so toxic that Champion was not allowed to dive with any exposed skin: "We donned rubber industrial hazmat dry suits and 30lb hard hats rigged with underwater cameras."
CHANGE THE CURRICULUM Monday had seen a pair of anchors reporting from the Gulf Coast. Both CBS' Katie Couric and ABC's Diane Sawyer rounded out their trip with day-after features. Sawyer sat down with the bereaved relatives of Dale Burkeen, one of the eleven platform workers killed by the initial explosion that triggered this disaster. Couric sought the vox pop of half a dozen small business people in the devastated tourist resort of Grand Isle. On NBC, Thanh Truong went to the Boothville Venice elementary school, where almost every student has a family member working either in the fishery or in the oil industry. The science curriculum for sixth graders is now single topic--how coastal ecosystems work and the consequences of their destruction.
FOOTLOOSE IN MOGADISHU ABC's Pierre Thomas was in New York to report on streetfighting in downtown Kingston. Some 30 people are dead as supporters of Christopher Coke, "a folk hero, a Robin Hood like figure," fight to prevent his extradition to the United States on narcotics charges. The fighting is happening "only two hours from Jamaica's famous resorts," Thomas told us.
ABC's Barbara Pinto was in Phoenix to report on military reinforcements being added to the border with Mexico. Arizona politicians, she reminded us, are worried about rising violent crime and depleted social services because of illegal immigration. Newly arriving National Guard troops will not address those problems, since they are "not law enforcement officers but will provide surveillance."
NBC's Richard Engel trumped those two overseas angles with a searing second part of The Most Dangerous Place in the World feature on Mogadishu (this is part one). He told us that most of the guerrillas in the Shabab militia that controls the city are teenagers. Their method of law enforcement is to amputate a right hand and a left foot of accused thieves. Engel sat down in the bushes with a 20-year-old who had his foot cut off: "The militants returned 15 days later and sawed off two more inches just to make him suffer."
NOT VERY GAY As Congress prepares to vote on repealing the Pentagon's policy on homosexuals in uniform, ABC's Bob Woodruff filed a Reports on the anxiety of closeted military gays about being outed and discharged. Since 1993, Woodruff told us, more than 10,000 of the nation's troops have been fired for flouting the Don't Ask, Don't Tell rule. Woodruff showed us stills from a photography portrait project by Jeff Sheng at Los Angeles' Kaycee Olsen Gallery. It shows images of closeted gay warriors, alone in bedrooms, in secret locations, faces obscured, names and ranks falsified. Here are some images, which are not at all gay in their somber mood.
THE WRONG DIRECTION Usually when the networks publish their period opinion polls on the state of the body politic, they headline the President's approval ratings and the level of support for his various policy initiatives. It shows how bleak the popular mood seems to the pollsters that both NBC's Chuck Todd two weeks ago and now CBS' Anthony Mason broke from that mold. CBS had 61% of the population believing that the country is on the wrong track; NBC 56%. "Both political parties viewed negatively," Todd told us. "The approval ratings fro Democrats and Republicans are at or near record lows," said Mason. According to CBS, the Congress of the United States has a disapproval rating of 77%.
NAMING BRAND NAMES All publicity is good publicity, right? When all three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the annual Extreme Eating Awards from the Center for Science & the Public Interest, a total of five restaurant chains received free mentions for their high-calorie high-saturated-fat special menu items.
Five Guys scored the trifecta--mentioned by NBC's George Lewis and CBS' Richard Schlesinger and ABC's Yunji de Nies--because its bacon cheeseburger had the added news hook of being ordered and eaten by Barack Obama during a dining photo-op. Runners-up were Bob Evans' hot cakes (ABC and CBS), PF Chang's noodles (CBS and NBC), The Cheesecake Factory's pasta carbonara and truffle cake (CBS and NBC) and California Pizza Kitchen's steak tostada (ABC and NBC).
Kentucky Fried Chicken even qualified for inclusion by ABC's de Nies because of its Double Down no-bread sandwich--even though CSPI had not singled it out in the first place.
Now contrast that with NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman, who could barely bring herself to utter the brand names of a series of antacid pills that can weaken the bones of middle-aged heartburn sufferers if taken in excess. Norman Charles at The Nightly Daily reckons that Snyderman gagged on the names of Prevacid and Nexium--but not on Prilosec--because those two brands happen to advertise on NBC Nightly News.
Charles is right to be outraged. There is no reason for Snyderman not to help her viewers by naming names. In fact, where advertisers are concerned, she has an extra obligation to bend over backwards to do so.
