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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JANUARY 15, 2013
New York State got the jump on the White House, passing firearms control legislation on the day before Barack Obama was scheduled to outline his federal proposal. As a consequence, Guns qualified as the Story of the Day. NBC led its newscast with Chuck Todd's stand-up from the White House outlining the President's plans. As for the other two newscasts, they both led with the disgraced Lance Armstrong. His TV interview with Oprah Winfrey has been taped, but is still under wraps. So both ABC and CBS led with background features -- ABC for the second straight day -- instead of the cyclist's actual words.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JANUARY 15, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ALBANY PULLS THE TRIGGER, FEDS PREPARE COVERING FIRE New York State got the jump on the White House, passing firearms control legislation on the day before Barack Obama was scheduled to outline his federal proposal. As a consequence, Guns qualified as the Story of the Day. NBC led its newscast with Chuck Todd's stand-up from the White House outlining the President's plans. As for the other two newscasts, they both led with the disgraced Lance Armstrong. His TV interview with Oprah Winfrey has been taped, but is still under wraps. So both ABC and CBS led with background features -- ABC for the second straight day -- instead of the cyclist's actual words.
The newsworthy development in New York State's gun legislation was the stricter rules on the psychiatrist's couch. Mental patients now have less privacy, with their shrinks compelled to report warning signs of violence to the state's firearms registry. ABC's Pierre Thomas and CBS' Chip Reid both covered that angle. From the White House, CBS' Major Garrett and NBC's Chuck Todd previewed the President's legislation: Garrett took the angle that Obama's veto pen would not insist on a ban on assault weapons; Todd decided that the key element was enforcement of honesty in background checks, a gun-control measure supported by the National Rifle Association.
Rounding out gun coverage, NBC's Ron Allen noted the national red-blue divide: eastern states tending to tighten gun laws, those in the mountain west liberalizing them.
LANCE’S CYCLING PANTS ON FIRE Check out Anne Thompson's montage of soundbites on NBC. Count five separate ways in which the seven-time yellow-jerseyer categorically denied cheating.
For the fourth time in the last six weekdays (here, here, here and here), CBS anchor Scott Pelley played clips from his 60 Minutes Sports expose. This time he turned to former teammate Tyler Hamilton, who had some choice words for the UCI, the sport's controling body, in English the International Cycling Union. On ABC, Neal Karlinsky, following up on Monday's similar lead, turned to his network's 2010 archive of Floyd Landis ratting out his one-time teammate.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS Neither ABC's David Muir nor NBC's Chris Jansing earned kudos for their economy features. Consider me confused.
As part of ABC's Made in America series, Muir went to Walmart. As is his schtick, he stopped shoppers in the parking lot to find plenty of Made in China labels -- even as he contradictorily told us that two-thirds of the goods Walmart sells are domestically produced. Then he reported on Walmart's announcement that it would increase its domestic procurement by $50bn over the next decade. Muir covered the pledge as if it were a big deal -- even as he quoted a Boston Consulting economist's estimate that it amounted to 170,000 jobs over ten years, which is only 17,000 new hires annually. It seemed like Muir was donating plenty of complimentary free publicity to Walmart for a rather inconsequential announcement, whose importance seems to consist of its convenient alignment with ABC's preordained worldview. As such, it functions more as propaganda than as journalism.
Jansing relied on CNBC's personal finance maven Suze Orman to criticize an unemployed couple for borrowing on their 401(k) to avoid bankruptcy in the gap between jobs. Orman's instruction was that a fortysomething couple should have three times their annual income in 401(k) savings. So how did the jobless Shanklands violate the Orman rule? With zero income, their 401(k) should be three times that -- in other words, nothing. Blaming them for borrowing against it seems like blaming the victim, as if recessionary layoffs were theirs to prevent.
CBS decided to take global warming seriously, up to a point. Bill Whitaker took a trip to Huntington Beach, where beachfront property will not last out the century. Then Elizabeth Palmer could not resist rainy puns about soggy London town. She put the seal on her rueful report with a seal.
CBS and ABC both closed their newscasts with children -- unhealthy on CBS with Seth Doane, healthy on ABC with Sharyn Alfonsi. Doane went to a fat farm in South Carolina, Alfonsi to a real one in New York State, where she really did milk Rosie the cow, and, yes, the cow really did belong to Ol' McDonald.
The newsworthy development in New York State's gun legislation was the stricter rules on the psychiatrist's couch. Mental patients now have less privacy, with their shrinks compelled to report warning signs of violence to the state's firearms registry. ABC's Pierre Thomas and CBS' Chip Reid both covered that angle. From the White House, CBS' Major Garrett and NBC's Chuck Todd previewed the President's legislation: Garrett took the angle that Obama's veto pen would not insist on a ban on assault weapons; Todd decided that the key element was enforcement of honesty in background checks, a gun-control measure supported by the National Rifle Association.
Rounding out gun coverage, NBC's Ron Allen noted the national red-blue divide: eastern states tending to tighten gun laws, those in the mountain west liberalizing them.
LANCE’S CYCLING PANTS ON FIRE Check out Anne Thompson's montage of soundbites on NBC. Count five separate ways in which the seven-time yellow-jerseyer categorically denied cheating.
For the fourth time in the last six weekdays (here, here, here and here), CBS anchor Scott Pelley played clips from his 60 Minutes Sports expose. This time he turned to former teammate Tyler Hamilton, who had some choice words for the UCI, the sport's controling body, in English the International Cycling Union. On ABC, Neal Karlinsky, following up on Monday's similar lead, turned to his network's 2010 archive of Floyd Landis ratting out his one-time teammate.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS Neither ABC's David Muir nor NBC's Chris Jansing earned kudos for their economy features. Consider me confused.
As part of ABC's Made in America series, Muir went to Walmart. As is his schtick, he stopped shoppers in the parking lot to find plenty of Made in China labels -- even as he contradictorily told us that two-thirds of the goods Walmart sells are domestically produced. Then he reported on Walmart's announcement that it would increase its domestic procurement by $50bn over the next decade. Muir covered the pledge as if it were a big deal -- even as he quoted a Boston Consulting economist's estimate that it amounted to 170,000 jobs over ten years, which is only 17,000 new hires annually. It seemed like Muir was donating plenty of complimentary free publicity to Walmart for a rather inconsequential announcement, whose importance seems to consist of its convenient alignment with ABC's preordained worldview. As such, it functions more as propaganda than as journalism.
Jansing relied on CNBC's personal finance maven Suze Orman to criticize an unemployed couple for borrowing on their 401(k) to avoid bankruptcy in the gap between jobs. Orman's instruction was that a fortysomething couple should have three times their annual income in 401(k) savings. So how did the jobless Shanklands violate the Orman rule? With zero income, their 401(k) should be three times that -- in other words, nothing. Blaming them for borrowing against it seems like blaming the victim, as if recessionary layoffs were theirs to prevent.
CBS decided to take global warming seriously, up to a point. Bill Whitaker took a trip to Huntington Beach, where beachfront property will not last out the century. Then Elizabeth Palmer could not resist rainy puns about soggy London town. She put the seal on her rueful report with a seal.
CBS and ABC both closed their newscasts with children -- unhealthy on CBS with Seth Doane, healthy on ABC with Sharyn Alfonsi. Doane went to a fat farm in South Carolina, Alfonsi to a real one in New York State, where she really did milk Rosie the cow, and, yes, the cow really did belong to Ol' McDonald.
