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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 12, 2011
The arrival of Barack Obama for a televised primetime memorial tribute to those attacked in the weekend's shooting spree kept Tucson in the headlines one more day. It accounted for 56% (33 min out of 59) of the three-network newshole (46% on Tuesday, 89% on Monday). NBC, whose anchor Brian Williams remains on the scene, ran a Tragedy in Tucson special report for the third straight day. CBS sent anchor Katie Couric to Washington, where she surveyed the reaction of the colleagues of Gabrielle Giffords, the wounded congresswoman. CBS covered the story most heavily (13 min v NBC 12, ABC 8). NBC led with a preview of the President's speech. CBS led with the Capitol Hill tribute. ABC chose the mixture of mourning for the dead and vigils for the injured on the streets of Tucson.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 12, 2011: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
CONSOLER-IN-CHIEF ARRIVES IN TUCSON The arrival of Barack Obama for a televised primetime memorial tribute to those attacked in the weekend's shooting spree kept Tucson in the headlines one more day. It accounted for 56% (33 min out of 59) of the three-network newshole (46% on Tuesday, 89% on Monday). NBC, whose anchor Brian Williams remains on the scene, ran a Tragedy in Tucson special report for the third straight day. CBS sent anchor Katie Couric to Washington, where she surveyed the reaction of the colleagues of Gabrielle Giffords, the wounded congresswoman. CBS covered the story most heavily (13 min v NBC 12, ABC 8). NBC led with a preview of the President's speech. CBS led with the Capitol Hill tribute. ABC chose the mixture of mourning for the dead and vigils for the injured on the streets of Tucson.
"Just to console," was the advanced spin doled out by Obama's aides about the message of the speech to NBC's Savannah Guthrie. Her colleague Lester Holt (no link) told us that the memorial tribute, in the University of Arizona's 14,000-seat basketball arena, even has a slogan: Together We Thrive--Tucson & America. CBS' Chip Reid noted that thousands more are being diverted to the outdoors football stadium, where they will hear a feed of the President's remarks. On ABC, Dan Harris observed that the outpouring of emotions in Tucson was not subsiding with the passage of time--anything but. "Extraordinary," he called it, especially so outside the University Medical Center, where the injured are hospitalized. "It started small on the day of the shootings, with just a few flowers, cards and candles, but day after day, it has grown and grown, unfurling into a massive carpet of sympathy and support. The sheer scope of this is incredible."
ABC's White House correspondent Jake Tapper equated President Obama's task with that of Ronald Reagan after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and that of Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing. Tapper quoted his unidentified "official" sources telling him that their boss "wants to lift the nation up and not shrink the moment with politics…Obama will devote a significant portion of his speech to the memory of the victims and he will also reflect on how all of us can better honor their memories in our own lives."
Frankly, Tapper loses all sense of proportion when he attempts a comparison between Saturday's Safeway supermarket shooting and Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Office Building. Granted, both were instances of violence against the federal government, its property and persons--but the former killed six, the latter 168. It diminishes the outrageousness of Timothy McVeigh's terrorism to put the two incidents into the same category.
WHY CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG? Only CBS assigned a correspondent to the tribute to Gabrielle Giffords by her fellow members of the House of Representatives. Nancy Cordes observed "an outpouring of an emotion that lasted all day" in which more than a hundred of them honored the wounded Giffords and her murdered staffer Gabe Zimmerman. The presence of anchor Katie Couric helped put the focus on the House ceremonies. She convened a roundtable of six--three from each party--for her Congressional Voices feature series. The clinching soundbite came from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, not just Giffords' colleague but a friend too. The Florida Democrat teared up as she quoted her daughter: "Mommy, are you going to get shot?"
But the personal safety of politicians was not Couric's preoccupation. For the second straight day, she implicitly drew a connection between the shooting spree in Tucson and a lack of civility in the national political dialogue. Tuesday she tackled Tim Pawlenty, the former Governor of Minnesota, and EJ Dionne, Washington Post columnist. Dionne defined civil debate by what it excludes: "You do not hate the person you disagree with. You do not think the person you disagree with is stupid. You certainly do not threaten violence against the person you disagree with." With her Congressional roundtable, Couric wondered: "Is now the right time to really analyze and discuss the political discourse in our country?...Was it appropriate in the immediate aftermath of this event, by some people, to blame right-wing rhetoric?"
"We cannot politicize this event," Rep Michael McCaul (R-TX) insisted, referring to the attempted assassination of a political leader.
FISHING FOR SOUNDBITES NBC anchor Brian Williams covered the Congressional angle on a personal level, sitting down in Tucson with Pia Carusone, Rep Gabrielle Giffords' chief of staff, to get an intimate description of her bedside vigil with her boss. Eager to land the tearjerking soundbite, Williams' fished for hyperbole: "Everyone is saying their money is on her…There were two fingers allegedly--was it a peace sign?...Have you any doubt that a year from now, two years from now, you will be in a meeting and you will say to your boss: 'Wasn't that something, your hospitalization!'?"
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer went digging, unsuccessfully, for that peace sign story with Giffords' physicians on Monday. Williams came up dry too. "We will have to ask her one day," was the non-committal answer. As for the doubt about that hypothetical meeting a year or two from now--yes, there is plenty of doubt: "It is hard," Carusone shrugged, "hard to say."
THE SAD DESCENT OF JARED LOUGHNER Keeping the tabloid angle covered, all three newscasts offered more details on the tormented life of Jared Loughner, Tucson's 22-year-old accused gunman. He had been pulled over by a state wildlife officer for running a red light less than three hours before the shooting began and let go with a warning. CBS' Ben Tracy was told by detectives that they found his handwritten note: "I planned ahead, in my assassination." He is now held without bail. In a callous turn of phrase, ABC's Pierre Thomas made fun of his mental illness: "Loughner, we are told by sources, is still sitting in a cell, still smiling, still smirking."
NBC's Mike Taibbi traced friends going back to middle school and described a descent from music-loving sociability. He had a brush with the law over marijuana. He enjoyed target shooting in the desert. His friendships failed. He was expelled from college. He was rejected by army recruiters. He could not find a job. He was even turned down as a volunteer by a local animal shelter. A year ago paranoia suddenly set in. Now "he just sits in his cell staring ahead with that smirk on his face," Marshal David Gonzalez told Newsweek, which is presumably where ABC's Thomas got the idea to tease the suspect.
SARAH PALIN MAKES HER CONTRIBUTION Monday, we saw the curious approach that a trio of conservative media figures has adopted in addressing the controversy surrounding the use of incendiary rhetoric in political debate--and speculation about a possible link to literal violence. All three vigorously protested against insults and attacks that did not exist, figments of their imagination.
ABC's Jake Tapper quoted Rush Limbaugh's fantasy on talkradio that criticism of violent imagery in rhetoric amounted to a stalking horse for repeal of the First Amendment: "What this is all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell quoted Sarah Palin, the FOX News Channel analyst and reality TV show hostess. Palin falsely accused the "lamestream media" of reporting that she was inciting violence. Using initials, she called such reportage bullshit. It is also imaginary.
NBC's Mitchell also quoted FNC's Glenn Beck criticizing what he called "the media" for "desperately using every opportunity to try to convince you that, somehow or another, Sarah Palin is dangerous." Even if some, sometimes, worry that a potential Palin Presidency would be harmful to the nation, "desperately using every opportunity" is nowhere near the truth.
Now comes Sarah Palin herself in her own eight-minute video statement on Facebook. She implicitly dismissed the idea that Jared Loughner, the accused killer in Tucson, was delusional or deranged, prejudging him as an "evil man." She called the murders an "act of monstrous criminality." ABC's Claire Shipman was impressed. She called the message "carefully crafted, above the fray, almost Presidential."
Then Palin adopted that curious rhetorical tactic once more, arguing against phantoms, setting up straw men.
NBC's Mitchell used a soundbite in which she defended people against charges of murder who have never been accused. Palin argued that "all the citizens of a state…those who listen to talkradio…maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle" were each not guilty of criminal acts. Nobody has said that they were. Mitchell herself stipulated so directly: "There is no connection" between the Tucson murders and Palin's use of gun imagery.
Then Palin offered advice to journalists and pundits who "purport" to condemn hatred and violence (who knows what the "purport" was doing in her injunction, distinguishing such pundits from those who condemn it sincerely). They "should not manufacture a blood libel" since blood libels turn out to incite the very violence that should be condemned.
No argument there. Journalists and pundits should categorically avoid blood libel. And they do. All the time. As NBC's Mitchell and ABC's Shipman and CBS' Chip Reid all patiently explained, a blood libel is the false accusation that the blood of Christian children is used in Jewish religious rituals. Yes, Palin is correct, these libels always have incited violence, being used to stir up anti-Semitic pogroms. Why did this image enter Palin's head? Both NBC's Mitchell and ABC's Shipman suggested that she read it in the headline of an op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal, which defended Palin's rhetorical use of ballistic imagery.
Note that Palin did not literally accuse anyone of committing blood libel against her. She just made the general, unobjectionable point, that blood libels are to be deplored. Nevertheless, there is no escaping her insinuation that "journalists and pundits" had committed such a libel against her personally. All three correspondents noted that such hyperbole was tasteless, to say the least. "Particularly incendiary," was how ABC's Shipman put it. "Offensive," offered NBC's Mitchell, although, mealy-mouthed, she attributed that sentiment to Palin's critics, not to herself. CBS News political analyst Marc Aminder told Reid that Palin "will often make her case in the most explicit, most inflammatory, most attention-getting way that is possible."
But tastelessness aside, there is a question of journalistic ethics that is left unaddressed. When correspondents quote strawman soundbites such as these--soundbites that warn of potential suppression of political dissent…or that accuse pundits of spreading blood libel…or that imply accusations of criminal conduct against listeners to talkradio--soundbites that go beyond hyperbole, that are factually incorrect, that amount to lies…
…when correspondents quote someone implicitly lying by invoking a non-existent straw man, is it not their responsibility to contradict the premise of such a soundbite when they quote it? Surely ABC' Tapper should have contradicted Limbaugh's fantasy that dissent was on the verge of being criminalized (see Jay Rosen at PressThink for similar thoughts on the strawman of impending tyranny)? Surely, Palin's "blood libel" insinuation needed the follow up that no pundit had in fact libeled her in that way? Unless these fictional strawmen are contradicted by journalists when they quote them, they get treated as facts rather than fantasies.
PORT-AU-PRINCE GETS SHORT SHRIFT The first anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince would ordinarily--Tucson aside--have received extensive follow-up coverage. After all the death toll in Haiti has now reached an unimaginable 316,000. CBS' Bill Whitaker aired the second of his 1 Year Later features: Tuesday was on continued homelessness; now he turns to Haiti's children, its orphaned and abandoned, and the charities that try to look after them. ABC's Matt Gutman told us, astonishingly, that in twelve months only 10% of the city's rubble has been removed: the government does not have the funds to pay for clean-up. Almost 2m people rely on international aid agencies for their daily food. NBC did not have a reporter in Haiti.
NBC did send Ian Williams to Brisbane to file a brief stand-up next to the bloated Brisbane River. CBS relied on Danielle Isdale of its Australian newsgathering partner Network Ten. "An inland tsunami," she called it. The video takes your breath away.
"Just to console," was the advanced spin doled out by Obama's aides about the message of the speech to NBC's Savannah Guthrie. Her colleague Lester Holt (no link) told us that the memorial tribute, in the University of Arizona's 14,000-seat basketball arena, even has a slogan: Together We Thrive--Tucson & America. CBS' Chip Reid noted that thousands more are being diverted to the outdoors football stadium, where they will hear a feed of the President's remarks. On ABC, Dan Harris observed that the outpouring of emotions in Tucson was not subsiding with the passage of time--anything but. "Extraordinary," he called it, especially so outside the University Medical Center, where the injured are hospitalized. "It started small on the day of the shootings, with just a few flowers, cards and candles, but day after day, it has grown and grown, unfurling into a massive carpet of sympathy and support. The sheer scope of this is incredible."
ABC's White House correspondent Jake Tapper equated President Obama's task with that of Ronald Reagan after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and that of Bill Clinton after the Oklahoma City bombing. Tapper quoted his unidentified "official" sources telling him that their boss "wants to lift the nation up and not shrink the moment with politics…Obama will devote a significant portion of his speech to the memory of the victims and he will also reflect on how all of us can better honor their memories in our own lives."
Frankly, Tapper loses all sense of proportion when he attempts a comparison between Saturday's Safeway supermarket shooting and Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Murrah Office Building. Granted, both were instances of violence against the federal government, its property and persons--but the former killed six, the latter 168. It diminishes the outrageousness of Timothy McVeigh's terrorism to put the two incidents into the same category.
WHY CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG? Only CBS assigned a correspondent to the tribute to Gabrielle Giffords by her fellow members of the House of Representatives. Nancy Cordes observed "an outpouring of an emotion that lasted all day" in which more than a hundred of them honored the wounded Giffords and her murdered staffer Gabe Zimmerman. The presence of anchor Katie Couric helped put the focus on the House ceremonies. She convened a roundtable of six--three from each party--for her Congressional Voices feature series. The clinching soundbite came from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, not just Giffords' colleague but a friend too. The Florida Democrat teared up as she quoted her daughter: "Mommy, are you going to get shot?"
But the personal safety of politicians was not Couric's preoccupation. For the second straight day, she implicitly drew a connection between the shooting spree in Tucson and a lack of civility in the national political dialogue. Tuesday she tackled Tim Pawlenty, the former Governor of Minnesota, and EJ Dionne, Washington Post columnist. Dionne defined civil debate by what it excludes: "You do not hate the person you disagree with. You do not think the person you disagree with is stupid. You certainly do not threaten violence against the person you disagree with." With her Congressional roundtable, Couric wondered: "Is now the right time to really analyze and discuss the political discourse in our country?...Was it appropriate in the immediate aftermath of this event, by some people, to blame right-wing rhetoric?"
"We cannot politicize this event," Rep Michael McCaul (R-TX) insisted, referring to the attempted assassination of a political leader.
FISHING FOR SOUNDBITES NBC anchor Brian Williams covered the Congressional angle on a personal level, sitting down in Tucson with Pia Carusone, Rep Gabrielle Giffords' chief of staff, to get an intimate description of her bedside vigil with her boss. Eager to land the tearjerking soundbite, Williams' fished for hyperbole: "Everyone is saying their money is on her…There were two fingers allegedly--was it a peace sign?...Have you any doubt that a year from now, two years from now, you will be in a meeting and you will say to your boss: 'Wasn't that something, your hospitalization!'?"
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer went digging, unsuccessfully, for that peace sign story with Giffords' physicians on Monday. Williams came up dry too. "We will have to ask her one day," was the non-committal answer. As for the doubt about that hypothetical meeting a year or two from now--yes, there is plenty of doubt: "It is hard," Carusone shrugged, "hard to say."
THE SAD DESCENT OF JARED LOUGHNER Keeping the tabloid angle covered, all three newscasts offered more details on the tormented life of Jared Loughner, Tucson's 22-year-old accused gunman. He had been pulled over by a state wildlife officer for running a red light less than three hours before the shooting began and let go with a warning. CBS' Ben Tracy was told by detectives that they found his handwritten note: "I planned ahead, in my assassination." He is now held without bail. In a callous turn of phrase, ABC's Pierre Thomas made fun of his mental illness: "Loughner, we are told by sources, is still sitting in a cell, still smiling, still smirking."
NBC's Mike Taibbi traced friends going back to middle school and described a descent from music-loving sociability. He had a brush with the law over marijuana. He enjoyed target shooting in the desert. His friendships failed. He was expelled from college. He was rejected by army recruiters. He could not find a job. He was even turned down as a volunteer by a local animal shelter. A year ago paranoia suddenly set in. Now "he just sits in his cell staring ahead with that smirk on his face," Marshal David Gonzalez told Newsweek, which is presumably where ABC's Thomas got the idea to tease the suspect.
SARAH PALIN MAKES HER CONTRIBUTION Monday, we saw the curious approach that a trio of conservative media figures has adopted in addressing the controversy surrounding the use of incendiary rhetoric in political debate--and speculation about a possible link to literal violence. All three vigorously protested against insults and attacks that did not exist, figments of their imagination.
ABC's Jake Tapper quoted Rush Limbaugh's fantasy on talkradio that criticism of violent imagery in rhetoric amounted to a stalking horse for repeal of the First Amendment: "What this is all about is shutting down any and all political opposition and eventually criminalizing it."
NBC's Andrea Mitchell quoted Sarah Palin, the FOX News Channel analyst and reality TV show hostess. Palin falsely accused the "lamestream media" of reporting that she was inciting violence. Using initials, she called such reportage bullshit. It is also imaginary.
NBC's Mitchell also quoted FNC's Glenn Beck criticizing what he called "the media" for "desperately using every opportunity to try to convince you that, somehow or another, Sarah Palin is dangerous." Even if some, sometimes, worry that a potential Palin Presidency would be harmful to the nation, "desperately using every opportunity" is nowhere near the truth.
Now comes Sarah Palin herself in her own eight-minute video statement on Facebook. She implicitly dismissed the idea that Jared Loughner, the accused killer in Tucson, was delusional or deranged, prejudging him as an "evil man." She called the murders an "act of monstrous criminality." ABC's Claire Shipman was impressed. She called the message "carefully crafted, above the fray, almost Presidential."
Then Palin adopted that curious rhetorical tactic once more, arguing against phantoms, setting up straw men.
NBC's Mitchell used a soundbite in which she defended people against charges of murder who have never been accused. Palin argued that "all the citizens of a state…those who listen to talkradio…maps of swing districts used by both sides of the aisle" were each not guilty of criminal acts. Nobody has said that they were. Mitchell herself stipulated so directly: "There is no connection" between the Tucson murders and Palin's use of gun imagery.
Then Palin offered advice to journalists and pundits who "purport" to condemn hatred and violence (who knows what the "purport" was doing in her injunction, distinguishing such pundits from those who condemn it sincerely). They "should not manufacture a blood libel" since blood libels turn out to incite the very violence that should be condemned.
No argument there. Journalists and pundits should categorically avoid blood libel. And they do. All the time. As NBC's Mitchell and ABC's Shipman and CBS' Chip Reid all patiently explained, a blood libel is the false accusation that the blood of Christian children is used in Jewish religious rituals. Yes, Palin is correct, these libels always have incited violence, being used to stir up anti-Semitic pogroms. Why did this image enter Palin's head? Both NBC's Mitchell and ABC's Shipman suggested that she read it in the headline of an op-ed column in The Wall Street Journal, which defended Palin's rhetorical use of ballistic imagery.
Note that Palin did not literally accuse anyone of committing blood libel against her. She just made the general, unobjectionable point, that blood libels are to be deplored. Nevertheless, there is no escaping her insinuation that "journalists and pundits" had committed such a libel against her personally. All three correspondents noted that such hyperbole was tasteless, to say the least. "Particularly incendiary," was how ABC's Shipman put it. "Offensive," offered NBC's Mitchell, although, mealy-mouthed, she attributed that sentiment to Palin's critics, not to herself. CBS News political analyst Marc Aminder told Reid that Palin "will often make her case in the most explicit, most inflammatory, most attention-getting way that is possible."
But tastelessness aside, there is a question of journalistic ethics that is left unaddressed. When correspondents quote strawman soundbites such as these--soundbites that warn of potential suppression of political dissent…or that accuse pundits of spreading blood libel…or that imply accusations of criminal conduct against listeners to talkradio--soundbites that go beyond hyperbole, that are factually incorrect, that amount to lies…
…when correspondents quote someone implicitly lying by invoking a non-existent straw man, is it not their responsibility to contradict the premise of such a soundbite when they quote it? Surely ABC' Tapper should have contradicted Limbaugh's fantasy that dissent was on the verge of being criminalized (see Jay Rosen at PressThink for similar thoughts on the strawman of impending tyranny)? Surely, Palin's "blood libel" insinuation needed the follow up that no pundit had in fact libeled her in that way? Unless these fictional strawmen are contradicted by journalists when they quote them, they get treated as facts rather than fantasies.
PORT-AU-PRINCE GETS SHORT SHRIFT The first anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that leveled Port-au-Prince would ordinarily--Tucson aside--have received extensive follow-up coverage. After all the death toll in Haiti has now reached an unimaginable 316,000. CBS' Bill Whitaker aired the second of his 1 Year Later features: Tuesday was on continued homelessness; now he turns to Haiti's children, its orphaned and abandoned, and the charities that try to look after them. ABC's Matt Gutman told us, astonishingly, that in twelve months only 10% of the city's rubble has been removed: the government does not have the funds to pay for clean-up. Almost 2m people rely on international aid agencies for their daily food. NBC did not have a reporter in Haiti.
NBC did send Ian Williams to Brisbane to file a brief stand-up next to the bloated Brisbane River. CBS relied on Danielle Isdale of its Australian newsgathering partner Network Ten. "An inland tsunami," she called it. The video takes your breath away.
