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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 23, 2013
The Boston Marathon bombing was Story of the Day again, as it has been every weekday since it happened. ABC led with an Exclusive from WCVB-TV, its affiliate in Boston: local anchor Ed Harding scooped a one-on-one with David Henneberry, the Watertown boat owner, who discovered the 19-year-old fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in his backyard. CBS' John Miller sat down with four members of the transit police SWAT unit who made the subsequent arrest. Miller revealed that, far from being armed and dangerous, as police had warned, the wasted Tsarnaev had no weapon -- so the shootout consisted of gunplay between police officers. NBC and CBS both led their newscasts with an update on the hospital-room interrogation of the wounded youth. ABC had Diane Sawyer anchor its newscast from Dallas, where she was preparing a q-&-a with George W Bush, to publicize the opening of his Presidential Library.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 23, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ARMED-&-DANGEROUS WAS COWED-&-WEAPONLESS The Boston Marathon bombing was Story of the Day again, as it has been every weekday since it happened. ABC led with an Exclusive from WCVB-TV, its affiliate in Boston: local anchor Ed Harding scooped a one-on-one with David Henneberry, the Watertown boat owner, who discovered the 19-year-old fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in his backyard. CBS' John Miller sat down with four members of the transit police SWAT unit who made the subsequent arrest. Miller revealed that, far from being armed and dangerous, as police had warned, the wasted Tsarnaev had no weapon -- so the shootout consisted of gunplay between police officers. NBC and CBS both led their newscasts with an update on the hospital-room interrogation of the wounded youth. ABC had Diane Sawyer anchor its newscast from Dallas, where she was preparing a q-&-a with George W Bush, to publicize the opening of his Presidential Library.
Among the tidbits extracted from the interrogation of Tsarnaev: ABC's Brian Ross revealed that he had been able to say only a single word, No; CBS' Bob Orr reported that the gunpowder in the pressure-cooker bombs had been purchased from Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook NH; NBC's Pete Williams said the attacks were intended as retribution for the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan. The same three correspondents suggested last Tuesday (here, here, and here) that the bomb followed a recipe published in Inspire magazine. ABC's Ross and NBC's Williams now report that speculation as fact.
Britain's Channel Four News landed an interview with Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the suspects' mother, in Dagestan, a soundbite from which, asserting her sons' innocence, was excerpted on all three newscasts (there is no link to Charlie d'Agata's report on CBS). ABC's Ross was skeptical that she would ever return to Boston to comfort her hospitalized son: he said she herself is a wanted fugitive, accused of shoplifting apparel worth $1,600 from Lord & Taylor department store.
Anne Thompson rounded out NBC's Boston reporting with a survey of the mood in the community, complete with cross-promotion for her colleague Savannah Guthrie's interviewing on Today, and publicity for The One Fund charity for the wounded. CBS' Elaine Quijano put Boston's preoccupation in perspective by reminding us that its homeless population remains destitute. She profiled the eponymous Women of Means charity, run by the steel-kneed Roseanna Means, a physician from Brigham & Women's Hospital, that offers healthcare to the female street population.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS The disaster at the fertilizer plant near Waco -- with 14 dead, many of them volunteer firefighters -- has been severely undercovered, courtesy of the attention-hogging Boston bombing. ABC's Steve Osunsami made a good faith effort to set things right.
CBS' Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes repeated the accusation raised by House Republicans that they had caught then-Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton in a lie when she swore that she had been unaware of requests for increased security at the Benghazi Consulate in the months before last September's militia attack. Cordes noted that she had no access to the underlying e-mail exchanges that were the basis for the GOP charges. Neither NBC nor ABC deemed the accusations to be worthy of coverage.
NBC, instead, chose to focus on the partisan back and forth on Capitol Hill concerning the FAA's furloughs of air traffic control personnel. ABC's Matt Gutman covered the ensuing airline traffic delays Monday. NBC's Tom Costello does so now.
The twitter feed of the Associated Press appeared to announce explosions in the White House. The hoax was so disconcerting that all three networks assigned a correspondent to cover it. ABC treated it as a stock market story, assigning financial reporter Rebecca Jarvis to cover the four-minute spasm of computerized trading that caused prices to plummet in automated response. CBS went with Major Garrett at the White House, who treated it as a journalism story, noting the disruption of other feeds -- from BBC and npr and CBS News' own 60 Minutes and 48 Hours. NBC used investigative correspondent Lisa Myers, who cited the claim by the Syrian Electronic Army that its hackers pulled off the scam.
If hands-free voice-activated text messaging is as distracting for motorists as using a hands-on device, why do automobile manufacturers install such a capability as a feature of their latest models? It is a good question and ABC's Paula Faris asks it, reprising her previous self-report of her own distraction. None answered.
CBS, along with NBC, covered the drought on the great plains more heavily than ABC throughout last year, including a four-part series along the Arkansas River by Jim Axelrod last September. That is all over now in Missouri, CBS' Dean Reynolds shows us.
Do you want to see a story on NBC about lovable mutts saved from animal shelters by would-be pet owners living miles away and the networks of volunteers who transport them long distance to safety? You could have seen Rehema Ellis' story three years ago, or Kerry Sanders' last October, or now Mark Potter's Operation Roger trucker, shipping Shelby the pooch from Oklahoma to Alaska, from Enid to Tok.
Will ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser be forced to declare the value of the free publicity that his newscast lavished on his new book as payment in kind on his income tax form next year? For that matter, will his publisher Hyperion have to do that too? Anchor Diane Sawyer helpfully informed us that Hyperion is a sibling business unit of ABC News, inside the Disney media conglomerate. For the record, Besser's book is Tell Me The Truth, Doctor.
Among the tidbits extracted from the interrogation of Tsarnaev: ABC's Brian Ross revealed that he had been able to say only a single word, No; CBS' Bob Orr reported that the gunpowder in the pressure-cooker bombs had been purchased from Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook NH; NBC's Pete Williams said the attacks were intended as retribution for the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan. The same three correspondents suggested last Tuesday (here, here, and here) that the bomb followed a recipe published in Inspire magazine. ABC's Ross and NBC's Williams now report that speculation as fact.
Britain's Channel Four News landed an interview with Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the suspects' mother, in Dagestan, a soundbite from which, asserting her sons' innocence, was excerpted on all three newscasts (there is no link to Charlie d'Agata's report on CBS). ABC's Ross was skeptical that she would ever return to Boston to comfort her hospitalized son: he said she herself is a wanted fugitive, accused of shoplifting apparel worth $1,600 from Lord & Taylor department store.
Anne Thompson rounded out NBC's Boston reporting with a survey of the mood in the community, complete with cross-promotion for her colleague Savannah Guthrie's interviewing on Today, and publicity for The One Fund charity for the wounded. CBS' Elaine Quijano put Boston's preoccupation in perspective by reminding us that its homeless population remains destitute. She profiled the eponymous Women of Means charity, run by the steel-kneed Roseanna Means, a physician from Brigham & Women's Hospital, that offers healthcare to the female street population.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS The disaster at the fertilizer plant near Waco -- with 14 dead, many of them volunteer firefighters -- has been severely undercovered, courtesy of the attention-hogging Boston bombing. ABC's Steve Osunsami made a good faith effort to set things right.
CBS' Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes repeated the accusation raised by House Republicans that they had caught then-Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton in a lie when she swore that she had been unaware of requests for increased security at the Benghazi Consulate in the months before last September's militia attack. Cordes noted that she had no access to the underlying e-mail exchanges that were the basis for the GOP charges. Neither NBC nor ABC deemed the accusations to be worthy of coverage.
NBC, instead, chose to focus on the partisan back and forth on Capitol Hill concerning the FAA's furloughs of air traffic control personnel. ABC's Matt Gutman covered the ensuing airline traffic delays Monday. NBC's Tom Costello does so now.
The twitter feed of the Associated Press appeared to announce explosions in the White House. The hoax was so disconcerting that all three networks assigned a correspondent to cover it. ABC treated it as a stock market story, assigning financial reporter Rebecca Jarvis to cover the four-minute spasm of computerized trading that caused prices to plummet in automated response. CBS went with Major Garrett at the White House, who treated it as a journalism story, noting the disruption of other feeds -- from BBC and npr and CBS News' own 60 Minutes and 48 Hours. NBC used investigative correspondent Lisa Myers, who cited the claim by the Syrian Electronic Army that its hackers pulled off the scam.
If hands-free voice-activated text messaging is as distracting for motorists as using a hands-on device, why do automobile manufacturers install such a capability as a feature of their latest models? It is a good question and ABC's Paula Faris asks it, reprising her previous self-report of her own distraction. None answered.
CBS, along with NBC, covered the drought on the great plains more heavily than ABC throughout last year, including a four-part series along the Arkansas River by Jim Axelrod last September. That is all over now in Missouri, CBS' Dean Reynolds shows us.
Do you want to see a story on NBC about lovable mutts saved from animal shelters by would-be pet owners living miles away and the networks of volunteers who transport them long distance to safety? You could have seen Rehema Ellis' story three years ago, or Kerry Sanders' last October, or now Mark Potter's Operation Roger trucker, shipping Shelby the pooch from Oklahoma to Alaska, from Enid to Tok.
Will ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser be forced to declare the value of the free publicity that his newscast lavished on his new book as payment in kind on his income tax form next year? For that matter, will his publisher Hyperion have to do that too? Anchor Diane Sawyer helpfully informed us that Hyperion is a sibling business unit of ABC News, inside the Disney media conglomerate. For the record, Besser's book is Tell Me The Truth, Doctor.
