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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 03, 2011
Stop the presses. Sailors, when they go off to war at sea, curse incessantly! They engage constantly in ribald horseplay! They laugh at crude sexual jokes and juvenile toilet humor! This was the lockerroom tone aboard the USS Enterprise during the aircraft carrier's tour of duty in the Arabian Sea in 2006. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper obtained a series of crass videos made to entertain the crew by its then executive officer Owen Honors. Captain Honors now commands the ship, but the exposure of his antics may cost him his command. All three newscasts led with Honors' attempts at humor, making smutty saltiness the Story of the Day.
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SMUTTINESS ABOARD THE GOOD SHIP ENTERPRISE Stop the presses. Sailors, when they go off to war at sea, curse incessantly! They engage constantly in ribald horseplay! They laugh at crude sexual jokes and juvenile toilet humor! This was the lockerroom tone aboard the USS Enterprise during the aircraft carrier's tour of duty in the Arabian Sea in 2006. The Virginian-Pilot newspaper obtained a series of crass videos made to entertain the crew by its then executive officer Owen Honors. Captain Honors now commands the ship, but the exposure of his antics may cost him his command. All three newscasts led with Honors' attempts at humor, making smutty saltiness the Story of the Day.
Jim Miklaszewski, NBC's man at the Pentagon dug out file footage of Honors when he was an F-14 pilot in 2002, strutting the right stuff for then-anchor Tom Brokaw. Miklaszewski called Honors' career so far "stellar" before blind-quoting one of his former commanders: "Being a leader does not mean being an entertainer. Otherwise you are just another guy on YouTube." ABC's Martha Raddatz put it this way: "He is supposed to be a commander not a comedian." On CBS, Bob Orr told us that Honors' video productions were a regular Enterprise cameo, intended to boost morale as an introduction to the shipboard feature film on movie night: "My sense is that he is on very big trouble."
FRESHMEN PACK THEIR BAGS ABC anchor Diane Sawyer is planning a trip to Capitol Hill to cover the transfer of power in the House of Representatives. As a preview she had Jonathan Karl narrate homevideo made by freshmen representatives as they traveled from New Hampshire and Arizona, Illinois and Washington State for their swearing-in. NBC and CBS both offered brief look-aheads to the next Congress: Savannah Guthrie from the White House, Nancy Cordes from the Capitol. Before the new Congress is sworn in, several states held inauguration ceremonies for new governors. CBS' John Blackstone previewed looming austerity in New York State, California and Nevada.
The day's other inside-the-Beltway story concerned John Wheeler, the 66-year-old lead fundraiser for the Vietnam War memorial wall on the DC Mall. He has been found dead in a landfill in Delaware, deposited there from a Newark dumpster. NBC's Pete Williams outlined the beginnings of a whodunit.
WHO WANTS TO BE A BILLIONAIRE? ABC anchor Diane Sawyer traveled to Silicon Valley last summer for a one-on-one with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (here and here), enabling the young billionaire to present his side of his story in the build-up to the movie Social Network. ABC was the only network to assign a correspondent to the news that Goldman Sachs' investment in Zuckerberg's business reflected Facebook's current valuation at $50bn. David Muir's report was able to recycle Sawyer's summertime soundbites: "What does it mean to you to be a billionaire right now?" "Well, I am not. I mean our company is a private company. So, like, I do not really have access to any money like that."
TELETHON CHEST-THUMPING All three network anchors have a personal stake in the Stand Up To Cancer fundraising telethon that they co-host each September. So all three newscasts gave prominent publicity to an SUTC-funded biotechnology advance by Johnson & Johnson that will now go into clinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital. It is a blood test that can detect trace elements of tumor cells, as rare as once cell in a billion. The test is designed for cancer patients under treatment, to check whether a tumor is successfully shrinking, without invasive biopsy. NBC's Robert Bazell confined his reporting to that use. CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook also speculated about isolating the tumor cell's genetics in order to tailor treatment. ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser warned against its use for diagnostic screening: "Some fear such a test may detect cancer cells that our bodies are capable of fighting--without dangerous surgery or chemotherapy."
RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW--AND BLACK IN WING NBC made use of its newsgathering partner in Australia to report on the floods in Queensland. Talitha Cummins of 7News filed from the inundated coastal city of Rockhampton. CBS' Ben Tracy showed us snow in California and Nevada. Meanwhile NBC's Janet Shamlian and ABC's Erin Hayes were both in Beebe Ark, where blackbirds fell from the sky as the New Year was ushered in.
THE GREAT WHITE WAY CBS is the network that airs the Tony Awards so it may have had the inside track on the Spider-Man story. Dana Tyler, anchor of WCBS-TV in New York City, claimed a scoop with her profile of Christopher Tierney, the stunt man who plummeted 30 feet into the pit of a theater because of a harness error in previews for Turn off the Dark. Yet there is no evidence that CBS is giving the show special treatment: all three newscasts are covering its snafus--indeed CBS and NBC (but not ABC) cover Broadway as a whole roughly the same amount--Antoinette Perry or no Antoinette Perry.
WHAT? NO AIR CARS? Hats off to futurists! ABC's John Berman told us about a set of 80-year predictions The New York Times published in 1931: increased life expectancy, air conditioning, the remote control, women in the workforce. Sorry about the air cars.
Jim Miklaszewski, NBC's man at the Pentagon dug out file footage of Honors when he was an F-14 pilot in 2002, strutting the right stuff for then-anchor Tom Brokaw. Miklaszewski called Honors' career so far "stellar" before blind-quoting one of his former commanders: "Being a leader does not mean being an entertainer. Otherwise you are just another guy on YouTube." ABC's Martha Raddatz put it this way: "He is supposed to be a commander not a comedian." On CBS, Bob Orr told us that Honors' video productions were a regular Enterprise cameo, intended to boost morale as an introduction to the shipboard feature film on movie night: "My sense is that he is on very big trouble."
FRESHMEN PACK THEIR BAGS ABC anchor Diane Sawyer is planning a trip to Capitol Hill to cover the transfer of power in the House of Representatives. As a preview she had Jonathan Karl narrate homevideo made by freshmen representatives as they traveled from New Hampshire and Arizona, Illinois and Washington State for their swearing-in. NBC and CBS both offered brief look-aheads to the next Congress: Savannah Guthrie from the White House, Nancy Cordes from the Capitol. Before the new Congress is sworn in, several states held inauguration ceremonies for new governors. CBS' John Blackstone previewed looming austerity in New York State, California and Nevada.
The day's other inside-the-Beltway story concerned John Wheeler, the 66-year-old lead fundraiser for the Vietnam War memorial wall on the DC Mall. He has been found dead in a landfill in Delaware, deposited there from a Newark dumpster. NBC's Pete Williams outlined the beginnings of a whodunit.
WHO WANTS TO BE A BILLIONAIRE? ABC anchor Diane Sawyer traveled to Silicon Valley last summer for a one-on-one with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook (here and here), enabling the young billionaire to present his side of his story in the build-up to the movie Social Network. ABC was the only network to assign a correspondent to the news that Goldman Sachs' investment in Zuckerberg's business reflected Facebook's current valuation at $50bn. David Muir's report was able to recycle Sawyer's summertime soundbites: "What does it mean to you to be a billionaire right now?" "Well, I am not. I mean our company is a private company. So, like, I do not really have access to any money like that."
TELETHON CHEST-THUMPING All three network anchors have a personal stake in the Stand Up To Cancer fundraising telethon that they co-host each September. So all three newscasts gave prominent publicity to an SUTC-funded biotechnology advance by Johnson & Johnson that will now go into clinical trials at Massachusetts General Hospital. It is a blood test that can detect trace elements of tumor cells, as rare as once cell in a billion. The test is designed for cancer patients under treatment, to check whether a tumor is successfully shrinking, without invasive biopsy. NBC's Robert Bazell confined his reporting to that use. CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook also speculated about isolating the tumor cell's genetics in order to tailor treatment. ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser warned against its use for diagnostic screening: "Some fear such a test may detect cancer cells that our bodies are capable of fighting--without dangerous surgery or chemotherapy."
RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW--AND BLACK IN WING NBC made use of its newsgathering partner in Australia to report on the floods in Queensland. Talitha Cummins of 7News filed from the inundated coastal city of Rockhampton. CBS' Ben Tracy showed us snow in California and Nevada. Meanwhile NBC's Janet Shamlian and ABC's Erin Hayes were both in Beebe Ark, where blackbirds fell from the sky as the New Year was ushered in.
THE GREAT WHITE WAY CBS is the network that airs the Tony Awards so it may have had the inside track on the Spider-Man story. Dana Tyler, anchor of WCBS-TV in New York City, claimed a scoop with her profile of Christopher Tierney, the stunt man who plummeted 30 feet into the pit of a theater because of a harness error in previews for Turn off the Dark. Yet there is no evidence that CBS is giving the show special treatment: all three newscasts are covering its snafus--indeed CBS and NBC (but not ABC) cover Broadway as a whole roughly the same amount--Antoinette Perry or no Antoinette Perry.
WHAT? NO AIR CARS? Hats off to futurists! ABC's John Berman told us about a set of 80-year predictions The New York Times published in 1931: increased life expectancy, air conditioning, the remote control, women in the workforce. Sorry about the air cars.
