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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM NOVEMBER 13, 2013
There was a split decision on Story of the Day. CBS, which has covered the rollout of the Affordable Care Act most heavily (88 min v NBC 65, ABC 25) since the federal exchange Website was mislaunched at the beginning of October, led with early statistics for health insurance enrolment. NBC (27 min v CBS 23, ABC 15) continued to focus on The Philippines, leading with Typhoon Haiyan for the fourth straight weekday. ABC, being the laggard on both stories, had an unaccustomed choice to make; it opted to kick off with healthcare reform. The typhoon, however, qualified as Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR NOVEMBER 13, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
NBC’S HAIYAN? OR CBS’ HEALTHCARE? There was a split decision on Story of the Day. CBS, which has covered the rollout of the Affordable Care Act most heavily (88 min v NBC 65, ABC 25) since the federal exchange Website was mislaunched at the beginning of October, led with early statistics for health insurance enrolment. NBC (27 min v CBS 23, ABC 15) continued to focus on The Philippines, leading with Typhoon Haiyan for the fourth straight weekday. ABC, being the laggard on both stories, had an unaccustomed choice to make; it opted to kick off with healthcare reform. The typhoon, however, qualified as Story of the Day.
Nancy Snyderman is not only NBC's in-house physician, she actually got to play one on TV. She attended the emergency clinic set up in the city hall of the devastated coastal community of Tanauan, where she took orders to resupply the pharmacy. See Dr Nancy's bedside manner with an amputee, as she hitched a ride on the flatbed of Raul-the-Cop's pick-up truck to join the Mammoth Medical Mission, volunteers who diverted their trip from Mexico to Cebu City when they heard about the storm.
ABC's Terry Moran brought us emergency techniques for water purification, using disinfectant powders or solar power. CBS' hoarse and bestubbled Seth Doane showed us body bags by the roadside, a fraction of the death toll that now stands at 2,300. Doane's colleague Bill Whitaker rounded out typhoon coverage from Los Angeles, where Filipino ex-patriates are organizing via Stop Hunger Now and the Red Cross.
All three newscasts had their White House correspondent cover the embarrassingly small enrolment statistics for health insurance: the target for October was 500K; actual sign-ups were 106K, although CBS' Major Garrett did add that a further 400K had qualified via Medicaid. His colleague Ben Tracy noted from Los Angeles that Covered California is only 35K towards its statewide goal of 700K. NBC's Chuck Todd observed that the sheepish Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would not even appear before a camera to announce the number: she phoned it in instead. CBS' Nancy Cordes covered the hearings at the House Oversight Committee into the mess at the Website as a separate story, while NBC and ABC folded them into their White House packages.
On ABC, Jonathan Karl did that irritating thing that his colleague Robin Roberts did on Friday. He used a clip from Comedy Central's The Daily Show to illustrate how newsworthy the story was that he was filing on. That technique does not work since, as often as not, Jon Stewart invokes a news story in order to satirize a failure of coverage rather than to point to its underlying importance. Karl used that precious Exclusive label to make the lame boast that ABC News had discovered Adrianna (no last name), the stock photography model whose smiling face, adorning the government's homepage, had been the butt of Stewart's humor.
LOOKING FOR FEAR & ANXIETY All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the Government Accountability Office and its takedown of the Transportation Security Administration. At issue, were the TSA's undercover behavioral detection officers. They lurk around airport terminals on the lookout for people displaying telltale terroristic symptoms such as jumpiness, hostility, nervousness, anxiety, fear, or deceit. According to CBS' Bob Orr, GAO dismantled a 2011 Homeland Security study about their efficacy and concluded that these behaviorists detect no better than random chance would. NBC's Tom Costello and ABC's Pierre Thomas told us that the TSA got the idea for the $200m-per-year program from Israeli security at Ben Gurion Airport.
ERIN THE CRUSADER; DAN THE OMITTER Convicted killer Ryan Ferguson, serving a 40-year prison sentence, has been released from prison, and Erin Moriarty of CBS' primetime 48 Hours magazine, took part of the credit. Moriarty had been publicizing the campaign by the family of the 29-year-old for his release, insisting that he was framed for the 2002 killing of Kent Heitholt, a Missouri journalist, by his then-teenage friend Charles Erickson. Erickson recanted in 2012 and the prosecution was discovered to have suppressed evidence.
Dan Abrams on ABC covered the release too, but he skipped on a couple of those five basic journalistic Ws. No Missouri mentioned for the Where? No Heitholt mentioned for the Who?
DIY NOT APP Paula Faris' Real Money series on ABC usually likes to sport a cutting edge image when giving cost-cutting advice to families by touting the latest smartphone apps. This time Ben Bixby, the expert Faris introduced for tips on saving on heating bills, was a do-it-yourself handyman not a techie. Bixby suggests weatherstripping and insulation. The only free publicity Faris offered was for Home Depot: rent their handheld thermal imagery scanner for $45 a day, en route to a winter's worth of savings of $733.
The free publicity at NBC was lavished on Google for its Glass, the voice-activated browser embedded in a pair of eyeglasses. Kristen Dahlgren demonstrated how useful it is for the disabled, liberating the wheelchairbound to go camping in the woods.
O CANADA Uncharacteristically Canada appeared on the news agenda. Twice! NBC's environmental correspondent Anne Thompson journeyed to Churchill on the Hudson Bay to explain how climate change from global warming is sooner or later going to drive polar bears extinct. There are no seals on land so bears need arctic ice to hunt for their food. ABC's Neal Karlinsky did not travel to Toronto. Instead he provided voiceover from Seattle for the video of City Council proceedings into Mayor Rob Ford's shenanigans.
CENTRAL CHARACTER IN HER OWN REALITY TV SHOW So far this week on ABC, we have seen Alex Marquardt as a liontamer and Bob Woodruff as a hardhat ironworker. Linzie Janis is the latest reporter to leave behind the role of journalist in order to cast herself as the central character in her own reality TV show. With a hat tip to Man vs Food on the Travel Channel, Janis played a daredevil foodtaster, entering Blair Lazar's kitchen to sample the Top of the Chili Charts on the Scoville Scale.
Nancy Snyderman is not only NBC's in-house physician, she actually got to play one on TV. She attended the emergency clinic set up in the city hall of the devastated coastal community of Tanauan, where she took orders to resupply the pharmacy. See Dr Nancy's bedside manner with an amputee, as she hitched a ride on the flatbed of Raul-the-Cop's pick-up truck to join the Mammoth Medical Mission, volunteers who diverted their trip from Mexico to Cebu City when they heard about the storm.
ABC's Terry Moran brought us emergency techniques for water purification, using disinfectant powders or solar power. CBS' hoarse and bestubbled Seth Doane showed us body bags by the roadside, a fraction of the death toll that now stands at 2,300. Doane's colleague Bill Whitaker rounded out typhoon coverage from Los Angeles, where Filipino ex-patriates are organizing via Stop Hunger Now and the Red Cross.
All three newscasts had their White House correspondent cover the embarrassingly small enrolment statistics for health insurance: the target for October was 500K; actual sign-ups were 106K, although CBS' Major Garrett did add that a further 400K had qualified via Medicaid. His colleague Ben Tracy noted from Los Angeles that Covered California is only 35K towards its statewide goal of 700K. NBC's Chuck Todd observed that the sheepish Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would not even appear before a camera to announce the number: she phoned it in instead. CBS' Nancy Cordes covered the hearings at the House Oversight Committee into the mess at the Website as a separate story, while NBC and ABC folded them into their White House packages.
On ABC, Jonathan Karl did that irritating thing that his colleague Robin Roberts did on Friday. He used a clip from Comedy Central's The Daily Show to illustrate how newsworthy the story was that he was filing on. That technique does not work since, as often as not, Jon Stewart invokes a news story in order to satirize a failure of coverage rather than to point to its underlying importance. Karl used that precious Exclusive label to make the lame boast that ABC News had discovered Adrianna (no last name), the stock photography model whose smiling face, adorning the government's homepage, had been the butt of Stewart's humor.
LOOKING FOR FEAR & ANXIETY All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to cover the Government Accountability Office and its takedown of the Transportation Security Administration. At issue, were the TSA's undercover behavioral detection officers. They lurk around airport terminals on the lookout for people displaying telltale terroristic symptoms such as jumpiness, hostility, nervousness, anxiety, fear, or deceit. According to CBS' Bob Orr, GAO dismantled a 2011 Homeland Security study about their efficacy and concluded that these behaviorists detect no better than random chance would. NBC's Tom Costello and ABC's Pierre Thomas told us that the TSA got the idea for the $200m-per-year program from Israeli security at Ben Gurion Airport.
ERIN THE CRUSADER; DAN THE OMITTER Convicted killer Ryan Ferguson, serving a 40-year prison sentence, has been released from prison, and Erin Moriarty of CBS' primetime 48 Hours magazine, took part of the credit. Moriarty had been publicizing the campaign by the family of the 29-year-old for his release, insisting that he was framed for the 2002 killing of Kent Heitholt, a Missouri journalist, by his then-teenage friend Charles Erickson. Erickson recanted in 2012 and the prosecution was discovered to have suppressed evidence.
Dan Abrams on ABC covered the release too, but he skipped on a couple of those five basic journalistic Ws. No Missouri mentioned for the Where? No Heitholt mentioned for the Who?
DIY NOT APP Paula Faris' Real Money series on ABC usually likes to sport a cutting edge image when giving cost-cutting advice to families by touting the latest smartphone apps. This time Ben Bixby, the expert Faris introduced for tips on saving on heating bills, was a do-it-yourself handyman not a techie. Bixby suggests weatherstripping and insulation. The only free publicity Faris offered was for Home Depot: rent their handheld thermal imagery scanner for $45 a day, en route to a winter's worth of savings of $733.
The free publicity at NBC was lavished on Google for its Glass, the voice-activated browser embedded in a pair of eyeglasses. Kristen Dahlgren demonstrated how useful it is for the disabled, liberating the wheelchairbound to go camping in the woods.
O CANADA Uncharacteristically Canada appeared on the news agenda. Twice! NBC's environmental correspondent Anne Thompson journeyed to Churchill on the Hudson Bay to explain how climate change from global warming is sooner or later going to drive polar bears extinct. There are no seals on land so bears need arctic ice to hunt for their food. ABC's Neal Karlinsky did not travel to Toronto. Instead he provided voiceover from Seattle for the video of City Council proceedings into Mayor Rob Ford's shenanigans.
CENTRAL CHARACTER IN HER OWN REALITY TV SHOW So far this week on ABC, we have seen Alex Marquardt as a liontamer and Bob Woodruff as a hardhat ironworker. Linzie Janis is the latest reporter to leave behind the role of journalist in order to cast herself as the central character in her own reality TV show. With a hat tip to Man vs Food on the Travel Channel, Janis played a daredevil foodtaster, entering Blair Lazar's kitchen to sample the Top of the Chili Charts on the Scoville Scale.
