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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 13, 2011
Last week, the federal budget was all the rage, headline fare as a policy dispute could be dramatized with shutdown deadlines and countdown clocks. That quarrel concerned $30bn or so. Now President Barack Obama makes a major speech, unveiling his plan to cut the projected size of the National Debt by $4tr before 2025. The speech was a rebuttal to last week's plan by House Republicans for a similar-sized overall reduction in the deficit with a radically different mixture of taxation and healthcare spending. Such talk of decades and trillions is apparently too abstract for headline fare. All three newscasts, including ABC with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, led instead with a sleeping air traffic controler in Reno and a nighttime medevac flight that had to land unsupervised, at its own risk. Everyone was safe and the patient survived. Yet it qualified as Story of the Day. There is just something about airplanes: yesterday no one was hurt in that runway collision at JFK Airport and it, too, was Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 13, 2011: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FORGET THE FISCAL CRISIS--WHAT ABOUT THE DOZY CONTROLER? Last week, the federal budget was all the rage, headline fare as a policy dispute could be dramatized with shutdown deadlines and countdown clocks. That quarrel concerned $30bn or so. Now President Barack Obama makes a major speech, unveiling his plan to cut the projected size of the National Debt by $4tr before 2025. The speech was a rebuttal to last week's plan by House Republicans for a similar-sized overall reduction in the deficit with a radically different mixture of taxation and healthcare spending. Such talk of decades and trillions is apparently too abstract for headline fare. All three newscasts, including ABC with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, led instead with a sleeping air traffic controler in Reno and a nighttime medevac flight that had to land unsupervised, at its own risk. Everyone was safe and the patient survived. Yet it qualified as Story of the Day. There is just something about airplanes: yesterday no one was hurt in that runway collision at JFK Airport and it, too, was Story of the Day.
President Obama's speech was covered, lower down the rundown, by all three White House correspondents: Savannah Guthrie on NBC, Jake Tapper on ABC, Chip Reid on CBS. Back in February, the same three covered the White House's budget proposal, which offered a different fiscal vision for the next decade. Yet they all appear to have forgotten that document, since these contradictions were not considered worthy of note. Only two of the three Congressional correspondents--ABC's Jonathan Karl and CBS' Nancy Cordes--covered Rep Paul Ryan's speech unveiling the GOP plan last week. So, all in all, the network nightly newscasts do not treat such long-term fiscal pronouncements very seriously.
By contrast: check out this list of minor air-traffic-control mishaps over the years.
WEDNESDAY WISDOM The lone foreign story on the day's agenda was Libya. Look how CBS' David Martin has dominated the Pentagon angle on the Moammar Khadafy story
Pay your taxes! Only ABC has turned the IRS deadline into a news hook: Brian Ross warns us not to trust those TaxMasters ads on cable news channels
Twice this week, the national newscasts turn to suburban NYC crime blotter: Long Island beach killer and Hudson River minivan drownings
For national crime trends check CBS this week: Bob Orr on copkillers Monday; now Jim Axelrod on the high cost of incarceration
Sports stories often do not get posted online because of timidity over fair use of copyright: CBS skipped Ben Tracy on Barry Bonds; NBC did use Miguel Almaguer
Dr Nancy Snyderman, NBC's in-house physician, was interested in teenage sleep in 2007 and again in 2011: observe advances in neurological imaging technology
Look at all these stories on dietary supplements. Almost all share Sharyn Alfonsi's message on ABC. Pill popping does not work
President Obama's speech was covered, lower down the rundown, by all three White House correspondents: Savannah Guthrie on NBC, Jake Tapper on ABC, Chip Reid on CBS. Back in February, the same three covered the White House's budget proposal, which offered a different fiscal vision for the next decade. Yet they all appear to have forgotten that document, since these contradictions were not considered worthy of note. Only two of the three Congressional correspondents--ABC's Jonathan Karl and CBS' Nancy Cordes--covered Rep Paul Ryan's speech unveiling the GOP plan last week. So, all in all, the network nightly newscasts do not treat such long-term fiscal pronouncements very seriously.
By contrast: check out this list of minor air-traffic-control mishaps over the years.
WEDNESDAY WISDOM The lone foreign story on the day's agenda was Libya. Look how CBS' David Martin has dominated the Pentagon angle on the Moammar Khadafy story
Pay your taxes! Only ABC has turned the IRS deadline into a news hook: Brian Ross warns us not to trust those TaxMasters ads on cable news channels
Twice this week, the national newscasts turn to suburban NYC crime blotter: Long Island beach killer and Hudson River minivan drownings
For national crime trends check CBS this week: Bob Orr on copkillers Monday; now Jim Axelrod on the high cost of incarceration
Sports stories often do not get posted online because of timidity over fair use of copyright: CBS skipped Ben Tracy on Barry Bonds; NBC did use Miguel Almaguer
Dr Nancy Snyderman, NBC's in-house physician, was interested in teenage sleep in 2007 and again in 2011: observe advances in neurological imaging technology
Look at all these stories on dietary supplements. Almost all share Sharyn Alfonsi's message on ABC. Pill popping does not work
