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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 11, 2013
There was rare unanimity among the three network newscasts about the day's news agenda. The Story of the Day was North Korea's nuclear arsenal: the spies at the Pentagon claim that Pyongyang's bomb is now small enough to be delivered by a missile. All three newscasts led with North Korea: ABC's Bob Woodruff and NBC's Richard Engel from Seoul; CBS' David Martin from the Pentagon. But even lower down the news agenda there was general agreement. Correspondents at all three networks were assigned to the tornadoes sweeping across the Deep South…and the vote in the Senate to proceed with a gun control debate…and the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to Emile Kapaun, a USArmy chaplain in the Korean War.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 11, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
PENTAGON SPOOKS SEE NUCLEAR MISSILES There was rare unanimity among the three network newscasts about the day's news agenda. The Story of the Day was North Korea's nuclear arsenal: the spies at the Pentagon claim that Pyongyang's bomb is now small enough to be delivered by a missile. All three newscasts led with North Korea: ABC's Bob Woodruff and NBC's Richard Engel from Seoul; CBS' David Martin from the Pentagon. But even lower down the news agenda there was general agreement. Correspondents at all three networks were assigned to the tornadoes sweeping across the Deep South…and the vote in the Senate to proceed with a gun control debate…and the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to Emile Kapaun, a USArmy chaplain in the Korean War.
The story of Father Kapaun was recounted by ABC's White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, and the Pentagon correspondents at NBC and CBS, Jim Miklaszewski and David Martin (doing double duty). None of them made note that the timing of the medal ceremony -- complete with gruesome details of inhumane atrocities against prisoners of war by their Communist captors -- might be perceived as a propagandistic provocation by the North Korean leadership as the peninsula seems on the brink of renewing the very war in which the priest served. Instead of geopolitical judgments, we heard otherworldly inspiration. "A candidate for sainthood" -- ABC's Karl; "battlefield miracles" -- CBS' Martin; "self-sacrifice and undaunting spirit and faith" -- NBC's Jim Miklaszewski.
The finding by the Defense Intelligence Agency that North Korea now has nuclear-armed ballistic missiles was not so clear-cut. Just listen to all those caveats, qualifications, and weasel-words: "moderate" confidence; "low" reliability; "capable" of delivery; "potential" threat; credible evidence to make a "plausible" case. ABC's Martha Raddatz pointed out (at the tail of the Woodruff videostream) that no other agency has signed on to the DIA assessment.
Meanwhile, the promised launch of North Korea's medium-range Musudan missile has still not materialized. With nothing to report on, what is a newscast to do? Wednesday, ABC's Bob Woodruff gave up on waiting for the real thing, and offered a Virtual View computer animation to help us imagine a launch. Now the computer animators at NBC and CBS join in: this is how Richard Engel imagines Musudan; this is David Martin's version.
Maybe it is time for diplomacy. State Department correspondents Margaret Brennan and Andrea Mitchell are already in Seoul, awaiting Secretary John Kerry's arrival. They each filed brief stand-ups in preview, on CBS and NBC respectively.
NBC's Richard Engel filed another backgrounder from Seoul on what Pyongyang may be up to with all its bluster and threat. This time he speculated that the technology for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them is North Korea's only export industry. Kim Jong Un needs the brinksmanship as a pretext in order to put on a show of his wares for potential customers like the Islamic Republic of Iran.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS The fourth day of the publicity roll-out of the lobbying effort for gun control legislation did not have the appeal of the first three days this week. The technicalities of a 68-31 Senate cloture vote hardly have the oomph of Monday's Presidential speech, or Tuesday's bereaved citizen lobbyists, or Wednesday's bipartisan compromise. Nevertheless all three Congressional correspondents -- NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, CBS' Nancy Cordes, ABC's Jeff Zeleny -- did their best to make parliamentary procedure newsworthy. I was not impressed by the Biblical analogy that anchor Diane Sawyer used to describe the dispute between the National Rifle Association (a committed, stubborn, minority) and gun-control advocates (a hard-to-mobilize, liberal, majority). Sawyer labeled the former Goliath, the latter David. Hardly. What about Maccabees and Hellenists?
All three newscasts ran video of the hellacious twister that left a 56-mile trail of destruction through Mississippi. NBC handed narration to Gabe Gutierrez in Alabama. CBS used its local affiliate WIAT-TV, also in Alabama, and reporter Leigh Garner. ABC filed from Hazelwood Mo where Alex Perez found the roof ripped off a house that was built of yellow bricks. The Yellow Brick Home, geddit? His video included a yelping dog, geddit?
Part two of Holly Williams feature on CBS about wombs-for-rent in India looked at the surrogate motherhood trade from the point of view of the impoverished pregnant women, whereas part one showed us Dana and Sumanth Chandra, the Chicago couple with the fertilized egg that needed to be carried to term. In India, Williams revealed, there is no recourse for the family of an illiterate woman whose pregnancy killed her in its eighth month -- except for the charity of the couple whose baby happened to survive.
If I was TurboTax, the income tax preparation firm, I would be irritated that my advertising was used as an illustration by ABC's Steve Osunsami for a story about Debbie and Keith Sleight, a Georgia couple whose returns were misprepared and who ended up owing the Internal Revenue Service some $16,000 because of fabricated deductions. The preparing firm was Heath Brothers, nothing to do with TurboTax.
Strawberries? You want strawberries? You had better lobby Congress to add migrant worker visas to immigration legislation, Ventura County farmer Edgar Terry suggested to Bill Whitaker on CBS, the network that brought us Harvest of Shame.
London-based Lama Hasan got hold of surveillance video of sidewalk pickpockets to illustrate her ABC report on the closure of the Louvre Museum in Paris in protest against the persistent targeting of tourists by thieves. Too bad that the video was fuzzy and unenlightening -- not worth the effort. So she resorted to fake pickpocketing, reenacted for the BBC, to bolster her report.
The story of Father Kapaun was recounted by ABC's White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, and the Pentagon correspondents at NBC and CBS, Jim Miklaszewski and David Martin (doing double duty). None of them made note that the timing of the medal ceremony -- complete with gruesome details of inhumane atrocities against prisoners of war by their Communist captors -- might be perceived as a propagandistic provocation by the North Korean leadership as the peninsula seems on the brink of renewing the very war in which the priest served. Instead of geopolitical judgments, we heard otherworldly inspiration. "A candidate for sainthood" -- ABC's Karl; "battlefield miracles" -- CBS' Martin; "self-sacrifice and undaunting spirit and faith" -- NBC's Jim Miklaszewski.
The finding by the Defense Intelligence Agency that North Korea now has nuclear-armed ballistic missiles was not so clear-cut. Just listen to all those caveats, qualifications, and weasel-words: "moderate" confidence; "low" reliability; "capable" of delivery; "potential" threat; credible evidence to make a "plausible" case. ABC's Martha Raddatz pointed out (at the tail of the Woodruff videostream) that no other agency has signed on to the DIA assessment.
Meanwhile, the promised launch of North Korea's medium-range Musudan missile has still not materialized. With nothing to report on, what is a newscast to do? Wednesday, ABC's Bob Woodruff gave up on waiting for the real thing, and offered a Virtual View computer animation to help us imagine a launch. Now the computer animators at NBC and CBS join in: this is how Richard Engel imagines Musudan; this is David Martin's version.
Maybe it is time for diplomacy. State Department correspondents Margaret Brennan and Andrea Mitchell are already in Seoul, awaiting Secretary John Kerry's arrival. They each filed brief stand-ups in preview, on CBS and NBC respectively.
NBC's Richard Engel filed another backgrounder from Seoul on what Pyongyang may be up to with all its bluster and threat. This time he speculated that the technology for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them is North Korea's only export industry. Kim Jong Un needs the brinksmanship as a pretext in order to put on a show of his wares for potential customers like the Islamic Republic of Iran.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS The fourth day of the publicity roll-out of the lobbying effort for gun control legislation did not have the appeal of the first three days this week. The technicalities of a 68-31 Senate cloture vote hardly have the oomph of Monday's Presidential speech, or Tuesday's bereaved citizen lobbyists, or Wednesday's bipartisan compromise. Nevertheless all three Congressional correspondents -- NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, CBS' Nancy Cordes, ABC's Jeff Zeleny -- did their best to make parliamentary procedure newsworthy. I was not impressed by the Biblical analogy that anchor Diane Sawyer used to describe the dispute between the National Rifle Association (a committed, stubborn, minority) and gun-control advocates (a hard-to-mobilize, liberal, majority). Sawyer labeled the former Goliath, the latter David. Hardly. What about Maccabees and Hellenists?
All three newscasts ran video of the hellacious twister that left a 56-mile trail of destruction through Mississippi. NBC handed narration to Gabe Gutierrez in Alabama. CBS used its local affiliate WIAT-TV, also in Alabama, and reporter Leigh Garner. ABC filed from Hazelwood Mo where Alex Perez found the roof ripped off a house that was built of yellow bricks. The Yellow Brick Home, geddit? His video included a yelping dog, geddit?
Part two of Holly Williams feature on CBS about wombs-for-rent in India looked at the surrogate motherhood trade from the point of view of the impoverished pregnant women, whereas part one showed us Dana and Sumanth Chandra, the Chicago couple with the fertilized egg that needed to be carried to term. In India, Williams revealed, there is no recourse for the family of an illiterate woman whose pregnancy killed her in its eighth month -- except for the charity of the couple whose baby happened to survive.
If I was TurboTax, the income tax preparation firm, I would be irritated that my advertising was used as an illustration by ABC's Steve Osunsami for a story about Debbie and Keith Sleight, a Georgia couple whose returns were misprepared and who ended up owing the Internal Revenue Service some $16,000 because of fabricated deductions. The preparing firm was Heath Brothers, nothing to do with TurboTax.
Strawberries? You want strawberries? You had better lobby Congress to add migrant worker visas to immigration legislation, Ventura County farmer Edgar Terry suggested to Bill Whitaker on CBS, the network that brought us Harvest of Shame.
London-based Lama Hasan got hold of surveillance video of sidewalk pickpockets to illustrate her ABC report on the closure of the Louvre Museum in Paris in protest against the persistent targeting of tourists by thieves. Too bad that the video was fuzzy and unenlightening -- not worth the effort. So she resorted to fake pickpocketing, reenacted for the BBC, to bolster her report.
