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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 30, 2013
At the start of the year it seemed likely that political debate inside-the-Beltway would be dominated by fiscal cliffs and budgetary deadlines. That is not what is happening. The politics of immigration was Story of the Day for the first two days this week (here and here). Now gun control takes over, Story of the Day for the third time this month (also here and here). All three newscasts covered the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, with CBS and NBC assigning the lead to their Capitol Hill correspondents, Nancy Cordes and Kelly O'Donnell respectively. ABC, instead, chose to lead with Steve Osunsami in northern Georgia, reporting on a pair of rare January tornadoes.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 30, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SO, IT IS NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID At the start of the year it seemed likely that political debate inside-the-Beltway would be dominated by fiscal cliffs and budgetary deadlines. That is not what is happening. The politics of immigration was Story of the Day for the first two days this week (here and here). Now gun control takes over, Story of the Day for the third time this month (also here and here). All three newscasts covered the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, with CBS and NBC assigning the lead to their Capitol Hill correspondents, Nancy Cordes and Kelly O'Donnell respectively. ABC, instead, chose to lead with Steve Osunsami in northern Georgia, reporting on a pair of rare January tornadoes.
The maimed former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was the major player in the gun coverage, making a clear, halting, brain-damaged plea for the political bravery required to regulate firearms. ABC's Jonathan Karl was so captivated by Giffords' words (which she had previewed with his anchor Diane Sawyer three weeks ago) that he created the misleading impression that the hearings were before a House committee, "her former colleagues," rather than in the Senate.
CBS followed up with an eye-opening feature by Chip Reid on the BATF's gun tracing center in Martinsburg WVa, where bureaucratic inefficiency is not a bug. It's a feature.
NBC and CBS both rounded out their coverage with stories on actual gun crimes. CBS' Michelle Miller filed her network's fifth follow-up this month on the elementary school shooting in Newtown: see the bereaved mother Nicole Hockley beating herself up for being a standoffish neighbor. NBC's John Yang brought us a second bereaved mother, Shirley Chambers of Chicago. Believe it or not, her fourth child, 33-year-old Ronnie, is now murdered (Dean Reynolds covered the same tragedy on Monday but CBS decided not to post it online). Previously Jerome had been killed, aged 23 and Carlos, aged 18, and Latoya, aged 15.
"I felt sure that Ronnie was going to grow to be an old man. I really did. But God called him home."
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS The air raids by the Israel Defense Force on a Syrian military convoy heading for Lebanon occurred too late for detailed packages. Both ABC's Martha Raddatz and NBC's Richard Engel filed brief live reports on the destroyed SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, apparently Hezbollah-bound.
NBC offered publicity to The Future, Al Gore's book that tells yet more inconvenient truths. Andrea Mitchell suggested that he was the hypocrite, to badmouth fossil fuels yet to accept Qatari oil money in selling Current TV to al-Jazeera. See Gore's non-responsive response.
Quarterly macro-economic statistics on the Gross Domestic Product are so dry that they are the devil to turn into video news. Last year CBS was much more likely than its rivals to make the effort. Even when fourth quarter data surprisingly revealed that the economy stopped growing as 2012 ended, again only Anthony Mason filed. On ABC, David Muir was so preoccupied about adding human interest that he forgot to mention what this "speed bump" actually consisted of. Instead he went off topic, treating us to woltersworld.com, a retired couple offering tips on how to cash in one's 401(k) on global tourism.
By the way, guess where Anthony Mason filed his GDP report from. Yes, New Orleans. Guess where Jim Axelrod filed his report on restaurant tourism from. Yes, New Orleans. Where has CBS filed three other reports from this week alone, two by Mark Strassmann and one more by Axelrod? Yes, New Orleans. Where is CBS Sports preparing to broadcast the NFL Super Bowl this weekend?
As for actual Super Bowl stories, NBC's Stephanie Gosk offered the most obvious feature of all -- the Harbaugh coaches' sibling rivalry -- following ABC's Steve Osunsami on the Ole Miss double-Blind Side on Tuesday. ABC's latest celebrity sports story, by Bob Woodruff, was off-season. He speculated that the baseball Yankees would fire Alex Rodriguez. Because he can no longer hit a lick? No. Because he cheats? No. Because they agreed to pay him too much.
Dan Harris seemed so proud of the viral flying pussycat video that he had made with the ASPCA that he seemed unable to take Tweety Bird's side against Sylvester in his ABC closing feature. The feline threat to the avian population is serious, according to Smithsonian researchers, but Harris was determined to make a horror movie joke of it, complete with a cameo by Ben Johnson, the Coming Attractions voice-over. And what was Harris trying to imply when his example of a small mammal killed by cats was a chipmunk? Think Tom & Jerry, Dan.
The maimed former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was the major player in the gun coverage, making a clear, halting, brain-damaged plea for the political bravery required to regulate firearms. ABC's Jonathan Karl was so captivated by Giffords' words (which she had previewed with his anchor Diane Sawyer three weeks ago) that he created the misleading impression that the hearings were before a House committee, "her former colleagues," rather than in the Senate.
CBS followed up with an eye-opening feature by Chip Reid on the BATF's gun tracing center in Martinsburg WVa, where bureaucratic inefficiency is not a bug. It's a feature.
NBC and CBS both rounded out their coverage with stories on actual gun crimes. CBS' Michelle Miller filed her network's fifth follow-up this month on the elementary school shooting in Newtown: see the bereaved mother Nicole Hockley beating herself up for being a standoffish neighbor. NBC's John Yang brought us a second bereaved mother, Shirley Chambers of Chicago. Believe it or not, her fourth child, 33-year-old Ronnie, is now murdered (Dean Reynolds covered the same tragedy on Monday but CBS decided not to post it online). Previously Jerome had been killed, aged 23 and Carlos, aged 18, and Latoya, aged 15.
"I felt sure that Ronnie was going to grow to be an old man. I really did. But God called him home."
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS The air raids by the Israel Defense Force on a Syrian military convoy heading for Lebanon occurred too late for detailed packages. Both ABC's Martha Raddatz and NBC's Richard Engel filed brief live reports on the destroyed SA-17 surface-to-air missiles, apparently Hezbollah-bound.
NBC offered publicity to The Future, Al Gore's book that tells yet more inconvenient truths. Andrea Mitchell suggested that he was the hypocrite, to badmouth fossil fuels yet to accept Qatari oil money in selling Current TV to al-Jazeera. See Gore's non-responsive response.
Quarterly macro-economic statistics on the Gross Domestic Product are so dry that they are the devil to turn into video news. Last year CBS was much more likely than its rivals to make the effort. Even when fourth quarter data surprisingly revealed that the economy stopped growing as 2012 ended, again only Anthony Mason filed. On ABC, David Muir was so preoccupied about adding human interest that he forgot to mention what this "speed bump" actually consisted of. Instead he went off topic, treating us to woltersworld.com, a retired couple offering tips on how to cash in one's 401(k) on global tourism.
By the way, guess where Anthony Mason filed his GDP report from. Yes, New Orleans. Guess where Jim Axelrod filed his report on restaurant tourism from. Yes, New Orleans. Where has CBS filed three other reports from this week alone, two by Mark Strassmann and one more by Axelrod? Yes, New Orleans. Where is CBS Sports preparing to broadcast the NFL Super Bowl this weekend?
As for actual Super Bowl stories, NBC's Stephanie Gosk offered the most obvious feature of all -- the Harbaugh coaches' sibling rivalry -- following ABC's Steve Osunsami on the Ole Miss double-Blind Side on Tuesday. ABC's latest celebrity sports story, by Bob Woodruff, was off-season. He speculated that the baseball Yankees would fire Alex Rodriguez. Because he can no longer hit a lick? No. Because he cheats? No. Because they agreed to pay him too much.
Dan Harris seemed so proud of the viral flying pussycat video that he had made with the ASPCA that he seemed unable to take Tweety Bird's side against Sylvester in his ABC closing feature. The feline threat to the avian population is serious, according to Smithsonian researchers, but Harris was determined to make a horror movie joke of it, complete with a cameo by Ben Johnson, the Coming Attractions voice-over. And what was Harris trying to imply when his example of a small mammal killed by cats was a chipmunk? Think Tom & Jerry, Dan.
