CONTAINING LINKS TO 58103 STORIES FROM THE NETWORKS' NIGHTLY NEWSCASTS
     TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 11, 2013
Haiyan, the catastrophic typhoon that made landfall in The Philippines on Friday, continued in the headlines after the weekend. All three newscasts kicked off with footage from Tacloban, the eastern coastal city with a population over 220,000 that bore the brunt of the storm's 195 mph winds and 15-feet-high surge of water. It was the Story of the Day, occupying 44% (26 min out of 58) of the three-network newshole. NBC's coverage was most comprehensive, with four separate packages; ABC's least so, with one package plus a brief stand-up from Manila.    
     TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 11, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
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video thumbnailNBCTyphoon Haiyan batters The PhilippinesEastern city of Tacloban is hardest hitHarry SmithThe Philippines
video thumbnailCBSTyphoon Haiyan batters The PhilippinesStorm surge at landfall causes floods in LeyteBarnaby LoThe Philippines
video thumbnailNBCTyphoon Haiyan batters The PhilippinesHospital in Tacloban devastated, patients killedNancy SnydermanThe Philippines
video thumbnailNBCTyphoon Haiyan batters The PhilippinesWind tunnel demonstrates punishment of stormTom CostelloMaryland
video thumbnailCBSTyphoon Haiyan batters The PhilippinesFilipino-Americans worry, organize relief aidDon DahlerNo Dateline
video thumbnailABCAfghanistan civilian contractors abuse investigatedConstruction firm profits go to Haqqani NetworkBrian RossNew York
video thumbnailCBSHealthcare reform: universal and managed careBureaucrat not warned of website security risksSharyl AttkissonWashington DC
video thumbnailABCMilitary combat casualties suffer disabilitiesMusic therapy for amputees, benefit concertBob WoodruffNew York
video thumbnailNBCWWII: Doolittle Raid on Tokyo rememberedFinal reunion at Air Force Museum 68 years laterJim MiklaszewskiTexas
video thumbnailCBSMilitary combat veterans histories collectedSix Word War project seeks pithy remembrancesMichelle MillerArizona
 
TYNDALL BLOG: DAILY NOTES ON NETWORK TELEVISION NIGHTLY NEWS
DATELINE TACLOBAN Haiyan, the catastrophic typhoon that made landfall in The Philippines on Friday, continued in the headlines after the weekend. All three newscasts kicked off with footage from Tacloban, the eastern coastal city with a population over 220,000 that bore the brunt of the storm's 195 mph winds and 15-feet-high surge of water. It was the Story of the Day, occupying 44% (26 min out of 58) of the three-network newshole. NBC's coverage was most comprehensive, with four separate packages; ABC's least so, with one package plus a brief stand-up from Manila.

Harry Smith led with way for NBC, folding in coverage from his colleague Angus Walker into his package of corpses and ruined homes and sea-going ships pushed onto dry land by the surge. NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman was based in Cebu City, from where she took a helicopter to visit the ruins of Tacloban's Divine Word Hospital to see dead patients laid out in a makeshift morgue. Nichola Jones of the International Red Cross answered a brief q-&-a on the disaster for CBS anchor Scott Pelley. Both ABC's Gloria Riviera and CBS' Seth Doane included footage of a pregnant woman giving birth amid Tacloban's ruins.

Friday's actual landfall was documented by terrifying footage from Barnaby Lo, a CBS stringer working for CCTV English, who documented the floods destroying his hotel in Leyte. ABC's Riviera included landfall footage from a stormchaser named Jim Edds. At the tail of Riviera's videostream there is Terry Moran's stand-up from Manila, where the US Marine Corps is beginning to fly in relief supplies.

The ex-patriate Filipino-American community is mobilizing. CBS' Don Dahler checked out the relief efforts in Jersey City's Little Manila on the east coast; NBC's Mike Taibbi did the same in Pasadena. Both gave a nod to Team Rubicon for its search-&-rescue response; NBC's Taibbi added the Santa-Barbara-based Direct Relief.

Out of all this coverage, only NBC's Tom Costello did the right thing by including a reference to global warming as a factor to account for the intensity of Typhoon Haiyan. He included a meteorological explanation from Bryan Norcross at NBC's sibling network the Weather Channnel. And then he did what television reporters like to do -- leave the world of journalism and take on the role of central character in his own reality TV show. See the begoggled Tom enter the laboratory at the University of Maryland as a guinea pig to brave the might of its wind tunnel.


MONDAY’S MENTIONS There were only two other international packages apart from the typhoon coverage. CBS' Elizabeth Palmer filed a brief live stand-up from London on the setback to the diplomacy on Iran's nuclear program. ABC's Brian Ross filed an Investigates feature on the $150m in Pentagon funds paid to contractors in Afghanistan who use their profits to fund organizations like the Haqqani Network, a Pakistan-based organization that opposes the very occupation that is the source of those funds.

Pentagon Inspector General John Sopko appeared to be Ross' source, as was the case for this pair of Camp Leatherneck stories back in July.


HEALTHCARE REFORM With Sharyl Attkisson's report on an investigation by the House Oversight Committee, CBS has now devoted more time on healthcare reform since the start of October, when the launch of the federal exchange Website was bungled, than both of its rival newscasts combined (79 min v ABC 20, NBC 51). Attkisson received portions of the transcript of the investigation into CMS, which had control of the site, and its internal memos about security problems with its data.


THE GOD BEAT If Dan Harris tends to be the go-to-guy for religion stories at ABC, then Elaine Quijano tends to be the god-gal at CBS. The difference is that Quijano leans more towards Rome. Her latest looks into what Catholics in the pews might think of their bishops' views on divorce and same-sex marriage. Pope Francis wants to know.


MOVIES AS MOVIES I teased ABC last week for its compulsion to confuse fictional clips from Hollywood movies with actuality footage of real-life news events. At least this time when ABC's Hollywood-based David Wright airs clips from Die Hard and Terminator and Cinderella and The Hunger Games he is not trying to confuse us. He is actually reporting on those movies as movies, to illustrate gunplay-and-sex research into the ratings system from the University of Pennsylvania.

For real life violence, Wright's colleague Steve Osunsami brought us a horrible tale of domestic abuse and family revenge in Louisiana's Lafayette Parish. The kinfolk of Bethany Arceneaux decided to take matters into their own hands when her abusive boyfriend Scott Thomas ignored a restraining order. ABC's Osunasami told us that fully half of all domestic violence restraining orders are violated nationwide. Thomas was killed. The sheriff decided that the Arceneaux clan had committed no crime.


CHRISTMAS IS COMING ABC's Linzie Janis posts the earliest package of the Christmas holiday shopping season, complete with publicity for Amazon, Best Buy, Toys-R-Us, Target, Macy's, Walmart -- and a plug for Mark Ellwood's book Bargain Fever. To contradict that tired cliché that Christmas Is Starting Earlier Than Ever it is fun to look back at previous years to see the earliest date for a correspondent to cover Christmas on the nightly newscasts:

2012: November 13th
2011: November 23rd
2010: October 18th
2009: November 18th
2008: November 27th
2007: November 15th
2006: November 14th

See! Right on time!


VETERANS DAY All three newscasts closed with a feature tribute to the military. As he did last year, ABC's Bob Woodruff publicized his own Stand Up For Heroes benefit concert for those disabled in combat. He praised the Musicorps program, organized by concert pianist Arthur Bloom, and played a clip from the Band of Brothers singing group, led by pop musician Roger Waters, formerly of Pink Floyd. Hallelujah!

NBC's Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski brought us a ceremony at the National Air Force Museum in Dayton Ohio, where veterans of the WWII Doolittle Raid on Tokyo said their final farewells 68 years later. Pentagon correspondent David Martin of CBS told us in April that they were saying their final farewells back then.

Even more terse than a haiku: that is my effort to summarize the Six Word War project organized by Shaun Wheelwright and Mike Nemeth. CBS' Michelle Miller offered this: "Sharing war's complexities in simple sentences."