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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 11, 2011
NBC's Brian Williams was the only anchor to stay in Tucson for a second weekday to cover the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on Rep Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). NBC was the only newscast to continue a special report format with the Tragedy in Tucson title. After Monday' saturation coverage (54 min), the shooting was still Story of the Day, yet it occupied less than half (46%) of the three-network newshole (27 min out of 58--CBS 11 min, NBC 9, ABC 7). ABC led with a statement of contrition from the parents of the accused killer, Jared Loughner. NBC led from the University Medical Center, with a progress report on the Congresswoman and the other injured patients. CBS kicked off with Loughner's background and reputation.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 11, 2011: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
LOUGHNER PROFILES TAKES ON TABLOID TONE NBC's Brian Williams was the only anchor to stay in Tucson for a second weekday to cover the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on Rep Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). NBC was the only newscast to continue a special report format with the Tragedy in Tucson title. After Monday' saturation coverage (54 min), the shooting was still Story of the Day, yet it occupied less than half (46%) of the three-network newshole (27 min out of 58--CBS 11 min, NBC 9, ABC 7). ABC led with a statement of contrition from the parents of the accused killer, Jared Loughner. NBC led from the University Medical Center, with a progress report on the Congresswoman and the other injured patients. CBS kicked off with Loughner's background and reputation.
"We wish we could change the heinous events of Saturday," was the statement from Loughner's parents that ABC's Pierre Thomas quoted, reporting on a devastated father and a mother who is a nervous wreck. NBC Mike Taibbi was not impressed: "How could the parents of Jared Loughner have been unaware of what their only child was thinking and allegedly planning living in the same house?" Taibbi ripped into Randy and Amy Loughner, questioning their tolerance of their son's "occult shrine in the backyard with candles and a replica skull." Taibbi called Loughner "isolated in his own home and apparently propelled by demons his parents say they never saw."
The probes into Loughner's background on all three newscasts had the whiff of tabloid sensationalism. "A heavy drug user," whispered ABC's Thomas, making no attempt to establish a link between narcotics cause and violent effect, relying only on innuendo. "I know he had smoked pot. I know he had he used psilocybin mushrooms. I know he had used salvia divinorium," Loughner's friend Zachary Osler told Thomas. The upshot, Thomas reported, was "erratic" behavior. NBC's Taibbi, too, reported on marijuana and salvia. He described Loughner's behavior at Pima Community College as "wild, disturbing outbursts, nonsensical tirades some found terrifying." CBS' Ben Tracy visited the community college campus: "Loughner often laughed to himself, shook his fists and was incoherent." He called a math test, a Mayhem Fest; he denounced the college as unConstitutional. Over a period of seven month, Loughner's behavior inspired five separate calls to police.
DREAM ON More innuendo was attached to Jared Loughner's movie viewing. NBC's Mike Taibbi pointed to Donnie Darko and the documentaries Zeitgeist and Loose Change as a source for Loughner's "government conspiracy themes." ABC's David Wright reported that Loughner was a practitioner of so-called Lucid Dreaming. Wright explained it as "a concept straight out of the movies...in dreams, you could have a tryst with a total stranger, conquer a lifelong fear, or commit murder, without any fear of consequences." NBC's Chris Jansing told us about it last summer when the blockbuster Inception was released. ABC's Wright connected it to The Matrix too--and then quoted Loughner's friend Bryce Tierney: "Loughner got in too deep, like the characters in the Inception, his dream became more vivid to him than his waking life." Wright concluded with this lame speculation: "It might just be possible that on Saturday, Loughner's dark dreams became this community's nightmare."
ON THE SERIOUS ANGLE OF MENTAL HEALTH By contrast with tabloid innuendo, both ABC's Dan Harris and CBS' Dean Reynolds returned the coverage of the tragedy in Tucson to serious public policy. Both examined the state's healthcare system and its provision for the mentally ill. "Under Arizona law, anybody who comes into contact with somebody who they believe is mentally unstable, they can simply call and report it," ABC's Harris told us, referring to a 24-hour-a-day crisis hotline. Yet no one from the community college made that call. CBS' Reynolds pointed out Arizona allows earlier intervention than in most states, where laws have to be broken first. Yet the law is not backed by funding: Arizona's mental health budgets have been cut by $65m over the last three years, a 51% reduction.
"We should point out that even if somebody had reported Jared Loughner, there is no guarantee that his alleged violence would have been thwarted," ABC's Harris continued, since fewer than 5,000 of the 120,000 in Arizona who are disqualified from buying firearms because of mental illness have been logged into the federal database for background checks. His colleague Pierre Thomas reported that sales clerks at the gun store where Loughner bought his automatic pistol were reluctant to sell it to him because of his strange behavior but "his background check came up clean."
CBS' legal eagle Jan Crawford predicted that Judy Clarke, Loughner's defense attorney, would first argue that his delusions make him mentally incompetent to stand trial, and only rely on an insanity defense as a last resort if competence is found. For those counts on which Loughner will be tried in state court, NBC's Pete Williams pointed out that Arizona law does not acquit defendants who successfully plead insanity. Instead it has a verdict of Guilty But Insane, which requires commitment to a mental hospital first, and then prison if the patient happens to be cured.
AND ON THE TOPIC OF PHYSICAL HEALTH All three newscasts covered the medical updates on Rep Gabrielle Giffords and the others injured in Saturday's shooting from the University Medical Center in Tucson. Anchor Diane Sawyer narrated the press conference by "that amazing medical team we met yesterday" on ABC. The presser also included Bill Hileman describing the condition of his wife Susan and the daughters of Mavy Stoddard, whose stepfather died protecting their mother. Lester Holt brought us the soundbites on NBC, John Blackstone on CBS.
TUCSON POLITICS ARE “ANYTHING BUT PRETTY” Monday, I pointed to the image that the networks' newscasts have built of Arizona over the years, "a state whose civic discourse is imbued with callousness, extremism, violence and vigilantism." Tucson native Savannah Guthrie seems to have picked up on the same negativity. The NBC White House correspondent returned to her hometown to cover Barack Obama's attendance at the memorial for those killed in Saturday's shooting. She tried to set the record straight with a boosterish "vibrant and diverse place, a mix of urban and rural, Native American and Hispanic roots, political progressives and conservatives." She touted the University of Arizona, the desert vistas, its Wild West roots, its main drag downtown, dubbed by LIFE magazine "the ugliest street in America."
But even a hometown girl could not deny the toxic atmosphere: "The politics lately have been a little bit rough…anything but pretty, a hot house of bitter battles over illegal immigration."
NOT-SO-HOT-LANTA Turning from the desert to the ice-slicked streets of Georgia, all three newscasts had their Atlanta-based correspondents stand out in the freezing cold as their city came to a standstill. NBC's Ron Mott and CBS' Mark Strassmann doublecounted the city's fleet of snowplows--eight. ABC's Steve Osunsami brought us ice skating on city streets. NBC followed up with a winter storm forecast for the northeast from The Weather Channel's Chris Warren; ABC got the same map from Good Morning America's Sam Champion (at the tail of the Osunsami videostream).
STUCK IN THE ROUGH Haiti: 1 Year Later was CBS' title for Bill Whitaker's feature from Port-au-Prince to preview the first anniversary of the earthquake that still finds 810K homeless people living in tent cities. Check out the overhead view of the golf course at the once-toney Petionville Country Club. "Relief workers say it will be at least a decade before Haiti can get back to what it was before the quake--and even then, it was the poorest nation in the hemisphere."
"We wish we could change the heinous events of Saturday," was the statement from Loughner's parents that ABC's Pierre Thomas quoted, reporting on a devastated father and a mother who is a nervous wreck. NBC Mike Taibbi was not impressed: "How could the parents of Jared Loughner have been unaware of what their only child was thinking and allegedly planning living in the same house?" Taibbi ripped into Randy and Amy Loughner, questioning their tolerance of their son's "occult shrine in the backyard with candles and a replica skull." Taibbi called Loughner "isolated in his own home and apparently propelled by demons his parents say they never saw."
The probes into Loughner's background on all three newscasts had the whiff of tabloid sensationalism. "A heavy drug user," whispered ABC's Thomas, making no attempt to establish a link between narcotics cause and violent effect, relying only on innuendo. "I know he had smoked pot. I know he had he used psilocybin mushrooms. I know he had used salvia divinorium," Loughner's friend Zachary Osler told Thomas. The upshot, Thomas reported, was "erratic" behavior. NBC's Taibbi, too, reported on marijuana and salvia. He described Loughner's behavior at Pima Community College as "wild, disturbing outbursts, nonsensical tirades some found terrifying." CBS' Ben Tracy visited the community college campus: "Loughner often laughed to himself, shook his fists and was incoherent." He called a math test, a Mayhem Fest; he denounced the college as unConstitutional. Over a period of seven month, Loughner's behavior inspired five separate calls to police.
DREAM ON More innuendo was attached to Jared Loughner's movie viewing. NBC's Mike Taibbi pointed to Donnie Darko and the documentaries Zeitgeist and Loose Change as a source for Loughner's "government conspiracy themes." ABC's David Wright reported that Loughner was a practitioner of so-called Lucid Dreaming. Wright explained it as "a concept straight out of the movies...in dreams, you could have a tryst with a total stranger, conquer a lifelong fear, or commit murder, without any fear of consequences." NBC's Chris Jansing told us about it last summer when the blockbuster Inception was released. ABC's Wright connected it to The Matrix too--and then quoted Loughner's friend Bryce Tierney: "Loughner got in too deep, like the characters in the Inception, his dream became more vivid to him than his waking life." Wright concluded with this lame speculation: "It might just be possible that on Saturday, Loughner's dark dreams became this community's nightmare."
ON THE SERIOUS ANGLE OF MENTAL HEALTH By contrast with tabloid innuendo, both ABC's Dan Harris and CBS' Dean Reynolds returned the coverage of the tragedy in Tucson to serious public policy. Both examined the state's healthcare system and its provision for the mentally ill. "Under Arizona law, anybody who comes into contact with somebody who they believe is mentally unstable, they can simply call and report it," ABC's Harris told us, referring to a 24-hour-a-day crisis hotline. Yet no one from the community college made that call. CBS' Reynolds pointed out Arizona allows earlier intervention than in most states, where laws have to be broken first. Yet the law is not backed by funding: Arizona's mental health budgets have been cut by $65m over the last three years, a 51% reduction.
"We should point out that even if somebody had reported Jared Loughner, there is no guarantee that his alleged violence would have been thwarted," ABC's Harris continued, since fewer than 5,000 of the 120,000 in Arizona who are disqualified from buying firearms because of mental illness have been logged into the federal database for background checks. His colleague Pierre Thomas reported that sales clerks at the gun store where Loughner bought his automatic pistol were reluctant to sell it to him because of his strange behavior but "his background check came up clean."
CBS' legal eagle Jan Crawford predicted that Judy Clarke, Loughner's defense attorney, would first argue that his delusions make him mentally incompetent to stand trial, and only rely on an insanity defense as a last resort if competence is found. For those counts on which Loughner will be tried in state court, NBC's Pete Williams pointed out that Arizona law does not acquit defendants who successfully plead insanity. Instead it has a verdict of Guilty But Insane, which requires commitment to a mental hospital first, and then prison if the patient happens to be cured.
AND ON THE TOPIC OF PHYSICAL HEALTH All three newscasts covered the medical updates on Rep Gabrielle Giffords and the others injured in Saturday's shooting from the University Medical Center in Tucson. Anchor Diane Sawyer narrated the press conference by "that amazing medical team we met yesterday" on ABC. The presser also included Bill Hileman describing the condition of his wife Susan and the daughters of Mavy Stoddard, whose stepfather died protecting their mother. Lester Holt brought us the soundbites on NBC, John Blackstone on CBS.
TUCSON POLITICS ARE “ANYTHING BUT PRETTY” Monday, I pointed to the image that the networks' newscasts have built of Arizona over the years, "a state whose civic discourse is imbued with callousness, extremism, violence and vigilantism." Tucson native Savannah Guthrie seems to have picked up on the same negativity. The NBC White House correspondent returned to her hometown to cover Barack Obama's attendance at the memorial for those killed in Saturday's shooting. She tried to set the record straight with a boosterish "vibrant and diverse place, a mix of urban and rural, Native American and Hispanic roots, political progressives and conservatives." She touted the University of Arizona, the desert vistas, its Wild West roots, its main drag downtown, dubbed by LIFE magazine "the ugliest street in America."
But even a hometown girl could not deny the toxic atmosphere: "The politics lately have been a little bit rough…anything but pretty, a hot house of bitter battles over illegal immigration."
NOT-SO-HOT-LANTA Turning from the desert to the ice-slicked streets of Georgia, all three newscasts had their Atlanta-based correspondents stand out in the freezing cold as their city came to a standstill. NBC's Ron Mott and CBS' Mark Strassmann doublecounted the city's fleet of snowplows--eight. ABC's Steve Osunsami brought us ice skating on city streets. NBC followed up with a winter storm forecast for the northeast from The Weather Channel's Chris Warren; ABC got the same map from Good Morning America's Sam Champion (at the tail of the Osunsami videostream).
STUCK IN THE ROUGH Haiti: 1 Year Later was CBS' title for Bill Whitaker's feature from Port-au-Prince to preview the first anniversary of the earthquake that still finds 810K homeless people living in tent cities. Check out the overhead view of the golf course at the once-toney Petionville Country Club. "Relief workers say it will be at least a decade before Haiti can get back to what it was before the quake--and even then, it was the poorest nation in the hemisphere."
