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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 19, 2013
The nightly newscasts gave viewers a chance to get a concise summary of the welter of daylong (even weeklong) updates on the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings. I say "concise" but in truth they were not as concise as they could have been: each network extended its regular half-hour newscast to occupy an entire hour. Tyndall Report, as usual, confines itself to monitoring just the half-hour anyway, for consistency's sake. NBC and ABC styled their newscasts as a Special Report. ABC chose the title Manhunt. NBC stuck with its label of Monday and Tuesday Terror in Boston. Needless to say the newscasts consisted of all-Boston-bombings all the time: with 59 minutes of total coverage, the story occupied 98% of the three-network newshole.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 19, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
CAMBRIDGE’S BROTHERS TSARNAEV The nightly newscasts gave viewers a chance to get a concise summary of the welter of daylong (even weeklong) updates on the investigation into the Boston Marathon bombings. I say "concise" but in truth they were not as concise as they could have been: each network extended its regular half-hour newscast to occupy an entire hour. Tyndall Report, as usual, confines itself to monitoring just the half-hour anyway, for consistency's sake. NBC and ABC styled their newscasts as a Special Report. ABC chose the title Manhunt. NBC stuck with its label of Monday and Tuesday Terror in Boston. Needless to say the newscasts consisted of all-Boston-bombings all the time: with 59 minutes of total coverage, the story occupied 98% of the three-network newshole.
All three newscasts offered a recapitulation of the events of the previous 24 hours since the FBI had published Wanted pictures of a pair of young male suspects taken at the scene of the explosions at the Boston Marathon finish line. ABC's Brian Ross and CBS' Don Dahler both led off their newscasts with the narrative; Lester Holt occupied the second slot on NBC. Names had been attached to the faces: brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, aged 26 and 19, of Cambridge. They had been implicated in the murder of a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the carjacking of a Mercedes SUV, and a shootout with police officers in Watertown. The elder brother, Tamerlan, was shot to death; the younger, Dzhokhar still unapprehended at the news hour.
The most significant event of the day was the decision by law enforcement to put the entire metropolitan area -- not just Watertown and its surrounding townships, but the one million residents of the city of Boston as well -- under a form of house arrest. The police used the Orwellian euphemism Shelter in Place. ABC assigned Byron Pitts, on the scene in Boston, to cover this unprecedented infringement on the freedom of the citizenry via stir-crazy Skype. The lockdown had just been lifted as the newscasts went on air.
From Washington DC, Pete Williams, who was assigned NBC's lead, filed latest briefings on the house-to-house search in Watertown and as the half-hour was ending, NBC's Kerry Sanders offered a live update that gunfire had erupted once more. Meanwhile, CBS anchor Scott Pelley sat down with Bill Bratton (no link), Boston's onetime Police Commissioner, who guessed that the suspect had slipped the police cordon and was "in the wind."
Who are the Brothers Tsarnaev?
Their immigrant's tale of high-school achievement and sporting prowess was recounted by ABC's Pierre Thomas, NBC's Ann Curry, and CBS' Jim Axelrod. CBS' Axelrod reported that Tamerlan, the boxer, had seemed more humble over the past 18 months. ABC's Alex Perez checked out the brothers' social media presence, including Tamerlan's terrorist playlist on YouTube, and Dzhokhar's links to pro-Chechen and Islamist sites.
Their family reacted to their trouble: ABC's Russian-speaking Bianna Golodryga talked four times to their father Anzor in Dagestan, as had NBC's Curry, in English; CBS' Chip Reid staked out Uncle Ruslan in suburban Maryland.
And the American news audience had to be brought up to speed on the history and ethnicity of the Caucasus. CBS went to Elizabeth Palmer in London for a primer on "one of the cruelest wars in modern history" between Russia and Chechnya, a war from which the Tsarnaevs' parents were refugees. All three newscasts went to their Washington DC bureaus and, in a telling figure of speech, all three correspondents -- CBS' Bob Orr, ABC's Martha Raddatz, and NBC's Andrea Mitchell -- implicitly predicted that ties would be found between the two brothers and Chechen rebels. All three said that the links had "not yet" been found, suggesting that it was only a matter of time. John Miller (no link), CBS' in-house ex-FBI honcho, told us that the feds had checked out and interviewed the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev for possible extremist ties two years ago, but had come up with nothing "derogatory."
Check out NBC's map of the Caucasus in Andrea Mitchell's report. What is its most significant feature? The city of Sochi. Why is Sochi a big deal? It is where NBC Sports has significant resources invested, in preparation for televising the Winter Olympic Games. That's right: Chechnya -- not too far from an up-close-and-personal with a figure skating princess.
As for a possible link between the two young men and a global network of Islamist terrorism, NBC anchor Brian Williams had a briefing with his network's in-house analyst Michael Leiter, in which Williams incoherently called the bombings "bloodless," and the public reaction to them "shameful." Leiter diagnosed their motivation as "Sunni extremist" combined with a "homegrown aspect."
For ABC's closer, Dan Harris, a child of Boston, paid tribute to his hometown using almost exactly the same strong tones that Anne Thompson, also a native Bostonian, had invoked to close NBC's newscast the night before.
All three newscasts offered a recapitulation of the events of the previous 24 hours since the FBI had published Wanted pictures of a pair of young male suspects taken at the scene of the explosions at the Boston Marathon finish line. ABC's Brian Ross and CBS' Don Dahler both led off their newscasts with the narrative; Lester Holt occupied the second slot on NBC. Names had been attached to the faces: brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, aged 26 and 19, of Cambridge. They had been implicated in the murder of a campus police officer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the carjacking of a Mercedes SUV, and a shootout with police officers in Watertown. The elder brother, Tamerlan, was shot to death; the younger, Dzhokhar still unapprehended at the news hour.
The most significant event of the day was the decision by law enforcement to put the entire metropolitan area -- not just Watertown and its surrounding townships, but the one million residents of the city of Boston as well -- under a form of house arrest. The police used the Orwellian euphemism Shelter in Place. ABC assigned Byron Pitts, on the scene in Boston, to cover this unprecedented infringement on the freedom of the citizenry via stir-crazy Skype. The lockdown had just been lifted as the newscasts went on air.
From Washington DC, Pete Williams, who was assigned NBC's lead, filed latest briefings on the house-to-house search in Watertown and as the half-hour was ending, NBC's Kerry Sanders offered a live update that gunfire had erupted once more. Meanwhile, CBS anchor Scott Pelley sat down with Bill Bratton (no link), Boston's onetime Police Commissioner, who guessed that the suspect had slipped the police cordon and was "in the wind."
Who are the Brothers Tsarnaev?
Their immigrant's tale of high-school achievement and sporting prowess was recounted by ABC's Pierre Thomas, NBC's Ann Curry, and CBS' Jim Axelrod. CBS' Axelrod reported that Tamerlan, the boxer, had seemed more humble over the past 18 months. ABC's Alex Perez checked out the brothers' social media presence, including Tamerlan's terrorist playlist on YouTube, and Dzhokhar's links to pro-Chechen and Islamist sites.
Their family reacted to their trouble: ABC's Russian-speaking Bianna Golodryga talked four times to their father Anzor in Dagestan, as had NBC's Curry, in English; CBS' Chip Reid staked out Uncle Ruslan in suburban Maryland.
And the American news audience had to be brought up to speed on the history and ethnicity of the Caucasus. CBS went to Elizabeth Palmer in London for a primer on "one of the cruelest wars in modern history" between Russia and Chechnya, a war from which the Tsarnaevs' parents were refugees. All three newscasts went to their Washington DC bureaus and, in a telling figure of speech, all three correspondents -- CBS' Bob Orr, ABC's Martha Raddatz, and NBC's Andrea Mitchell -- implicitly predicted that ties would be found between the two brothers and Chechen rebels. All three said that the links had "not yet" been found, suggesting that it was only a matter of time. John Miller (no link), CBS' in-house ex-FBI honcho, told us that the feds had checked out and interviewed the late Tamerlan Tsarnaev for possible extremist ties two years ago, but had come up with nothing "derogatory."
Check out NBC's map of the Caucasus in Andrea Mitchell's report. What is its most significant feature? The city of Sochi. Why is Sochi a big deal? It is where NBC Sports has significant resources invested, in preparation for televising the Winter Olympic Games. That's right: Chechnya -- not too far from an up-close-and-personal with a figure skating princess.
As for a possible link between the two young men and a global network of Islamist terrorism, NBC anchor Brian Williams had a briefing with his network's in-house analyst Michael Leiter, in which Williams incoherently called the bombings "bloodless," and the public reaction to them "shameful." Leiter diagnosed their motivation as "Sunni extremist" combined with a "homegrown aspect."
For ABC's closer, Dan Harris, a child of Boston, paid tribute to his hometown using almost exactly the same strong tones that Anne Thompson, also a native Bostonian, had invoked to close NBC's newscast the night before.
