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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 26, 2013
There was no doubt about it. The Story of the Day was the first half of the doubleheader at the Supreme Court. All three newscasts kicked off with the hearings on gay rights and same-sex marriage. Tuesday's topic was California's Proposition 8, a referendum which banned such unions in 2008 and which was subsequently overturned by an appeals court. Wednesday's will be the federal side of the question: whether the national government can exclude a state's decision to include gays as married couples.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 26, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
AT LEAST THE SUPREMES PROVIDE AUDIO There was no doubt about it. The Story of the Day was the first half of the doubleheader at the Supreme Court. All three newscasts kicked off with the hearings on gay rights and same-sex marriage. Tuesday's topic was California's Proposition 8, a referendum which banned such unions in 2008 and which was subsequently overturned by an appeals court. Wednesday's will be the federal side of the question: whether the national government can exclude a state's decision to include gays as married couples.
All three court correspondents, prohibited from using video cameras, covered the hearings by using soundbites from the official audio feed. NBC's Pete Williams used an old-fashioned sketch artist to depict the justices asking the questions heard on the soundtrack. ABC's Terry Moran and CBS' Jan Crawford displayed verbal transcripts along with stock portrait photographs.
The consensus by the trio of legal eagles was that the court was disinclined to use Proposition 8 as a pretext to make a sweeping ruling with implications for all 50 states, one way or the other.
CBS' John Blackstone followed up from San Francisco with the rollercoaster of legalized nuptials and subsequent bans that California's marriage-minded gays have been riding since 2004. He threw in a couple of divine pieces of same-sex wedding photography as illustration. On NBC, Kristen Dahlgren made the self-serving argument that the medium of television -- specifically a trio of primetime sitcoms -- had played a key role in moving public opinion on same-sex marriage. The milestone comedies that have made us more gay friendly? Ellen then Will & Grace then Modern Family.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS From gay-friendly fantasy comedies to real-life whodunit melodramas: all three newscasts had a correspondent cover the announcement in Italy that Amanda Knox will now face trial for a third time for the 2007 murder of her college roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia. Knox, now studying in Seattle, will not return to Italy and will be tried in absentia. Presumably, the fact that she is no longer officially exonerated undercuts her image as a wronged innocent, and therefore the prospects for her tell-all book Waiting to be Heard, which Diane Sawyer's Exclusive is slated to publicize in primetime on ABC on April 30th. On the other hand, the 25-year-old Knox' return to the spotlight may attract increased attention to Sawyer's already-recorded sitdown. Anyway, ABC's Lama Hasan and NBC's Michelle Kosinski covered the latest twist in the tale of the love-triangle coed from Rome. CBS has registered its primetime interest in the case via its true-crime magazine 48 Hours, whose correspondent Peter van Sant debriefed anchor Scott Pelley in the studio.
As Steve Osunsami told us on ABC last Thursday, sales are picking up in the residential real estate market. Carter Evans on CBS took the anecdotal approach, checking out bullish realtors, gazumped buyers, and fixer-upper flippers in southern California. NBC looked for more financial sophistication from CNBC's Diana Olick, whose explainer interwove rising rents, lower interest rates, cash-only buyers, hedge-fund speculators, and shrinking inventories.
ABC's Investigation feature touted results, as Dan Harris persuaded Coventry Health Care to -- sort of -- reverse its medical implant exclusion policy and provide a $250K cochlear for Carson Rubin, a five-year-old with auditory neuropathy. Sort of because Coventry backtracked for patients in Georgia, but not in the other 23 states where it offers medical insurance.
I could not understand Richard Besser's arithmetic on ABC. If the length of a hospital shift of an intern in medical school has been reduced by a third, from 24 hours to 16 hours, how does the number of physicians caring for a given patient during a three-day stay increase by a factor of 2.5, from four to ten?
The Caisson Platoon of the army's Old Guard attending funerals at Arlington National Cemetery pays such minute attention to detail that it paints horses' hooves with nail polish: see CBS' Chip Reid.
Meteorologists at the University of Georgia have come up with a creative -- and sentimental -- datamining system to map the size and shape of a debris field after a tornado touches down: NBC's Kerry Sanders explains.
If you listen to Cecilia Vega on ABC, she will tell you that the inspiration for Nick d'Aloisio to start writing apps was the Macbook computer that his mother bought him. If you listen to Chris Jansing on NBC, she will tell you that the 17-year-old Nick is too young to be inspired by the real Mark Zuckerberg: no, it was Zuckerberg's story as fictionalized by the movie The Social Network, and even then it was not Zuckerberg's screen persona, but the one played by Justin Timberlake that was key. The Londoner d'Aloisio is news because he has sold Summly, his newsreader app, for $30m to Yahoo!, which, Vega reminded us, happens to be ABC News' digital partner. What is so innovative about Summly? Its algorithm is genetic, not robotic linear.
All three court correspondents, prohibited from using video cameras, covered the hearings by using soundbites from the official audio feed. NBC's Pete Williams used an old-fashioned sketch artist to depict the justices asking the questions heard on the soundtrack. ABC's Terry Moran and CBS' Jan Crawford displayed verbal transcripts along with stock portrait photographs.
The consensus by the trio of legal eagles was that the court was disinclined to use Proposition 8 as a pretext to make a sweeping ruling with implications for all 50 states, one way or the other.
CBS' John Blackstone followed up from San Francisco with the rollercoaster of legalized nuptials and subsequent bans that California's marriage-minded gays have been riding since 2004. He threw in a couple of divine pieces of same-sex wedding photography as illustration. On NBC, Kristen Dahlgren made the self-serving argument that the medium of television -- specifically a trio of primetime sitcoms -- had played a key role in moving public opinion on same-sex marriage. The milestone comedies that have made us more gay friendly? Ellen then Will & Grace then Modern Family.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS From gay-friendly fantasy comedies to real-life whodunit melodramas: all three newscasts had a correspondent cover the announcement in Italy that Amanda Knox will now face trial for a third time for the 2007 murder of her college roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia. Knox, now studying in Seattle, will not return to Italy and will be tried in absentia. Presumably, the fact that she is no longer officially exonerated undercuts her image as a wronged innocent, and therefore the prospects for her tell-all book Waiting to be Heard, which Diane Sawyer's Exclusive is slated to publicize in primetime on ABC on April 30th. On the other hand, the 25-year-old Knox' return to the spotlight may attract increased attention to Sawyer's already-recorded sitdown. Anyway, ABC's Lama Hasan and NBC's Michelle Kosinski covered the latest twist in the tale of the love-triangle coed from Rome. CBS has registered its primetime interest in the case via its true-crime magazine 48 Hours, whose correspondent Peter van Sant debriefed anchor Scott Pelley in the studio.
As Steve Osunsami told us on ABC last Thursday, sales are picking up in the residential real estate market. Carter Evans on CBS took the anecdotal approach, checking out bullish realtors, gazumped buyers, and fixer-upper flippers in southern California. NBC looked for more financial sophistication from CNBC's Diana Olick, whose explainer interwove rising rents, lower interest rates, cash-only buyers, hedge-fund speculators, and shrinking inventories.
ABC's Investigation feature touted results, as Dan Harris persuaded Coventry Health Care to -- sort of -- reverse its medical implant exclusion policy and provide a $250K cochlear for Carson Rubin, a five-year-old with auditory neuropathy. Sort of because Coventry backtracked for patients in Georgia, but not in the other 23 states where it offers medical insurance.
I could not understand Richard Besser's arithmetic on ABC. If the length of a hospital shift of an intern in medical school has been reduced by a third, from 24 hours to 16 hours, how does the number of physicians caring for a given patient during a three-day stay increase by a factor of 2.5, from four to ten?
The Caisson Platoon of the army's Old Guard attending funerals at Arlington National Cemetery pays such minute attention to detail that it paints horses' hooves with nail polish: see CBS' Chip Reid.
Meteorologists at the University of Georgia have come up with a creative -- and sentimental -- datamining system to map the size and shape of a debris field after a tornado touches down: NBC's Kerry Sanders explains.
If you listen to Cecilia Vega on ABC, she will tell you that the inspiration for Nick d'Aloisio to start writing apps was the Macbook computer that his mother bought him. If you listen to Chris Jansing on NBC, she will tell you that the 17-year-old Nick is too young to be inspired by the real Mark Zuckerberg: no, it was Zuckerberg's story as fictionalized by the movie The Social Network, and even then it was not Zuckerberg's screen persona, but the one played by Justin Timberlake that was key. The Londoner d'Aloisio is news because he has sold Summly, his newsreader app, for $30m to Yahoo!, which, Vega reminded us, happens to be ABC News' digital partner. What is so innovative about Summly? Its algorithm is genetic, not robotic linear.
