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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 6, 2011
The duly-sworn-in 112th Congress dominated headlines for the third straight day. NBC had Brian Williams anchor from Washington, where he aired an Exclusive pre-taped interview with John Boehner, the new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. NBC devoted ten minutes to the two-part interview accounting for fully 51% of its newshole and singlehandedly qualifying Boehner as the Story of the Day. CBS also led from the House, as it resumed its debate on healthcare reform and read the Constitution aloud. ABC took time off from Capitol Hill, to lead instead with healthcare as it is actually delivered--or is withheld. Arizona's Medicaid cuts have led to a second death in the transplant waiting list.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 6, 2011: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE DEBATE RETURNS TO CAPITOL HILL The duly-sworn-in 112th Congress dominated headlines for the third straight day. NBC had Brian Williams anchor from Washington, where he aired an Exclusive pre-taped interview with John Boehner, the new Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. NBC devoted ten minutes to the two-part interview accounting for fully 51% of its newshole and singlehandedly qualifying Boehner as the Story of the Day. CBS also led from the House, as it resumed its debate on healthcare reform and read the Constitution aloud. ABC took time off from Capitol Hill, to lead instead with healthcare as it is actually delivered--or is withheld. Arizona's Medicaid cuts have led to a second death in the transplant waiting list.
Williams' interview was divided into two parts, the first on public policy, the second a personal profile. Speaker Boehner prays a lot, smokes cigarettes a lot, and cries a lot. As for policy, "What do you say to those who would disagree that it was the best health care delivery system in the world because they, by the millions, were not getting it?" "Yes, not every American had fair access to affordable health insurance. Every American had access to the best health care delivery system in the world."
NBC spent so much time on the Boehner interview that the story filed by ABC's Mike von Fremd and CBS' Ben Tracy found no room in its rundown. They both followed up on the liver transplant patient who died in Tucson because the state refused to pay for his surgery. Instead of focusing on the dead man, both brought us 27-year-old Tiffany Tate, a cystic fibrosis patient who has had to resort to personal fundraising to pay for the $200K lung transplant that may keep her alive. Presumably the free publicity from the network newscasts will help raise the funds that Arizona's Medicaid decided to withhold.
As for the House debate on whether to repeal the plan for universal healthcare coverage, Nancy Cordes led CBS' newscast with an added wrinkle from the Congressional Budget Office: not only would the Republican proposal result in millions more being uninsured, it would contradict their commitment to reduce the federal deficit. Per the CBO, repeal would require the government to borrow an extra $200bn. ABC's David Muir followed up with an inquiry for Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the federal government's failure to prevent massive rate hikes in healthcare premiums for individuals who pay for their own insurance. There is no massive federal government takeover of healthcare, apparently, after all: "That is really what the state authority would do," the secretary explained.
WALL STREET BANKER IS WEST WING BOSS There were other odds and ends of inside-the-Beltway bookkeeping. NBC's Congressional correspondent Kelly O'Donnell offered the briefest of notes on moving-in day at the House. William Daley, the scion of the Chicago Democratic political machine and new Chief of Staff at the White House, was profiled by NBC's Savannah Guthrie--"an executive with JPMorgan"--and ABC's Jake Tapper: "Daley today received praise from a frequent White House foe, the US Chamber of Commerce." And on CBS, Jeff Greenfield offered a primer on the efforts in the current Senate to change its rules to make filibusters more difficult. Some Democrats, fearing an imminent return to the minority, disagree with their colleagues' proposal.
MOVIE QUIZ As is customary with any filibuster story, CBS' Jeff Greenfield illustrated his report with a clip from Frank Capra's movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Greenfield showed us Jimmy Stewart in order to tell us that this is not what a filibuster looks like. This leads us to a quiz. What do the following movies have in common?
The Bank Job
The Birds
Ghostbusters
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Rudy
Waterworld
Answer: in the last four days all six of these fictions have been used by ABC to cover actual news stories. Match the fictional title with factual stories filed by Erin Hayes, the BBC's Nick Bryant, anchor Diane Sawyer, David Muir, Sharyn Alfonsi and John Berman. Astonishingly, in two of these cases the movie was invoked precisely in order to tell the viewer that the story being covered had nothing to do with the scene depicted.
Hey ABC! You are a news division! Try actuality footage not Hollywood fantasy for your storytelling.
HOW QUICKLY THEY FORGET The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was by far the biggest news story on the network nightly newscasts during 2010. Yet ABC has not yet found time to cover the findings of the Presidential Commission of inquiry, which points to the finger not only at BP but at its corporate partners Halliburton and Transocean too. "The Deepwater Horizon's crew repeatedly cut corners and no one noticed or cared--not senior oil executives, not government regulators," was the summary from Mark Strassmann, who was CBS' lead reporter on the disaster throughout 2010. "The report spotlights nine avoidable blunders on the rig." Anne Thompson, who played a similar lead role at NBC, gave us a head's up on the commission report on Wednesday. Hey ABC! Play catch up!
NOT BOMBS, NOT TERRORISM All three newscasts filed breaking stories about the parcel threats addressed to a couple of state government offices in Maryland yet, taken together, they shed almost no light on what happened. ABC's Pierre Thomas was the most alarmed of the three: "They were designed to detonate upon opening and they were powered by small batteries and contained explosive chemicals. Now, they appear to have been sent by someone very, very angry at the government" CBS' Bob Orr was calm, pooh-poohing such explosion talk: "The parcels were not bombs but incendiary devices." NBC's Pete Williams was positively blase: "There is no suggestion of terrorism here." Williams did not elaborate.
FOLLOW-UPS CBS rounded out Thursday's news with a couple of follow-ups from earlier in the week. Jan Crawford used a recent soundbite of the late John Wheeler from her own network's Sunday Morning to illustrate the continuing mystery surrounding the Delaware landfill murder of the Vietnam Memorial activist that NBC's Pete Williams brought us Monday. Seth Doane used his own network's Early Show footage of the reunion of Ted Williams with his estranged 90-year-old mother to update his own profile Thursday (also covered by NBC's Kevin Tibbles) of the panhandler with the voice for radio.
Williams' interview was divided into two parts, the first on public policy, the second a personal profile. Speaker Boehner prays a lot, smokes cigarettes a lot, and cries a lot. As for policy, "What do you say to those who would disagree that it was the best health care delivery system in the world because they, by the millions, were not getting it?" "Yes, not every American had fair access to affordable health insurance. Every American had access to the best health care delivery system in the world."
NBC spent so much time on the Boehner interview that the story filed by ABC's Mike von Fremd and CBS' Ben Tracy found no room in its rundown. They both followed up on the liver transplant patient who died in Tucson because the state refused to pay for his surgery. Instead of focusing on the dead man, both brought us 27-year-old Tiffany Tate, a cystic fibrosis patient who has had to resort to personal fundraising to pay for the $200K lung transplant that may keep her alive. Presumably the free publicity from the network newscasts will help raise the funds that Arizona's Medicaid decided to withhold.
As for the House debate on whether to repeal the plan for universal healthcare coverage, Nancy Cordes led CBS' newscast with an added wrinkle from the Congressional Budget Office: not only would the Republican proposal result in millions more being uninsured, it would contradict their commitment to reduce the federal deficit. Per the CBO, repeal would require the government to borrow an extra $200bn. ABC's David Muir followed up with an inquiry for Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the federal government's failure to prevent massive rate hikes in healthcare premiums for individuals who pay for their own insurance. There is no massive federal government takeover of healthcare, apparently, after all: "That is really what the state authority would do," the secretary explained.
WALL STREET BANKER IS WEST WING BOSS There were other odds and ends of inside-the-Beltway bookkeeping. NBC's Congressional correspondent Kelly O'Donnell offered the briefest of notes on moving-in day at the House. William Daley, the scion of the Chicago Democratic political machine and new Chief of Staff at the White House, was profiled by NBC's Savannah Guthrie--"an executive with JPMorgan"--and ABC's Jake Tapper: "Daley today received praise from a frequent White House foe, the US Chamber of Commerce." And on CBS, Jeff Greenfield offered a primer on the efforts in the current Senate to change its rules to make filibusters more difficult. Some Democrats, fearing an imminent return to the minority, disagree with their colleagues' proposal.
MOVIE QUIZ As is customary with any filibuster story, CBS' Jeff Greenfield illustrated his report with a clip from Frank Capra's movie Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Greenfield showed us Jimmy Stewart in order to tell us that this is not what a filibuster looks like. This leads us to a quiz. What do the following movies have in common?
The Bank Job
The Birds
Ghostbusters
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Rudy
Waterworld
Answer: in the last four days all six of these fictions have been used by ABC to cover actual news stories. Match the fictional title with factual stories filed by Erin Hayes, the BBC's Nick Bryant, anchor Diane Sawyer, David Muir, Sharyn Alfonsi and John Berman. Astonishingly, in two of these cases the movie was invoked precisely in order to tell the viewer that the story being covered had nothing to do with the scene depicted.
Hey ABC! You are a news division! Try actuality footage not Hollywood fantasy for your storytelling.
HOW QUICKLY THEY FORGET The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was by far the biggest news story on the network nightly newscasts during 2010. Yet ABC has not yet found time to cover the findings of the Presidential Commission of inquiry, which points to the finger not only at BP but at its corporate partners Halliburton and Transocean too. "The Deepwater Horizon's crew repeatedly cut corners and no one noticed or cared--not senior oil executives, not government regulators," was the summary from Mark Strassmann, who was CBS' lead reporter on the disaster throughout 2010. "The report spotlights nine avoidable blunders on the rig." Anne Thompson, who played a similar lead role at NBC, gave us a head's up on the commission report on Wednesday. Hey ABC! Play catch up!
NOT BOMBS, NOT TERRORISM All three newscasts filed breaking stories about the parcel threats addressed to a couple of state government offices in Maryland yet, taken together, they shed almost no light on what happened. ABC's Pierre Thomas was the most alarmed of the three: "They were designed to detonate upon opening and they were powered by small batteries and contained explosive chemicals. Now, they appear to have been sent by someone very, very angry at the government" CBS' Bob Orr was calm, pooh-poohing such explosion talk: "The parcels were not bombs but incendiary devices." NBC's Pete Williams was positively blase: "There is no suggestion of terrorism here." Williams did not elaborate.
FOLLOW-UPS CBS rounded out Thursday's news with a couple of follow-ups from earlier in the week. Jan Crawford used a recent soundbite of the late John Wheeler from her own network's Sunday Morning to illustrate the continuing mystery surrounding the Delaware landfill murder of the Vietnam Memorial activist that NBC's Pete Williams brought us Monday. Seth Doane used his own network's Early Show footage of the reunion of Ted Williams with his estranged 90-year-old mother to update his own profile Thursday (also covered by NBC's Kevin Tibbles) of the panhandler with the voice for radio.
