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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM FEBRUARY 1, 2013
Preview features for Sunday's big game made Super Bowl XLVII the Story of the Day. The culmination of a week's worth of New-Orleans-based coverage on CBS saw Scott Pelley anchor his newscast on location from Jackson Square. Pelley had James Brown of CBS Sports, which has purchased this year's broadcast rights, show him how to tackle safely -- in other words, without using the helmet as a brain-damaging weapon. ABC and NBC both closed their newscasts with baby animal features with a Super Bowl angle, foals and puppies respectively. None of this was hard news, of course, so did not qualify as a newscast's lead item. For that, each network chose the state of the economy.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR FEBRUARY 1, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SUPER BOWL FEVER Preview features for Sunday's big game made Super Bowl XLVII the Story of the Day. The culmination of a week's worth of New-Orleans-based coverage on CBS saw Scott Pelley anchor his newscast on location from Jackson Square. Pelley had James Brown of CBS Sports, which has purchased this year's broadcast rights, show him how to tackle safely -- in other words, without using the helmet as a brain-damaging weapon. ABC and NBC both closed their newscasts with baby animal features with a Super Bowl angle, foals and puppies respectively. None of this was hard news, of course, so did not qualify as a newscast's lead item. For that, each network chose the state of the economy.
NBC's Tom Costello offered a portmanteau of the day's economic data points -- January's unemployment statistics and a milestone at the New York Stock Exchange. Costello reckoned that the economy is growing fast enough to encourage investors to buy stocks but not fast enough to encourage employers to accelerate hiring.
On CBS, Anthony Mason chose to focus on the employment data; ABC did not even mention the jobs report, concentrating entirely on the stock market returning to six-year-old levels and replenished 401(k) retirement accounts -- even as David Muir conceded that 401(k)s do not cover half the population.
By the way, speaking as a member of the babyboom generation, ABC has developed the irritating tick of using the word babyboom as a euphemism for elderly. It is as if the newscast is embarrassed about the aging demographics of its audience. On Thursday, David Wright referred to nursing home residents as babyboomers in describing a Taco Bell commercial. Now Muir introduces Rosemary Lichtman as one of us. Yet Lichtman herself acknowledges that she was born in 1943, two years before the Baby Boom began.
FRIDAY’S FINDINGS When Ecevit Shanli, a suicide bomber, was successfully halted outside the gate to the Ankara Embassy compound, killing only himself and a Turkish guard, both NBC and CBS had a correspondent on the scene to report on Shanli's political affiliation: Richard Engel called him a Marxist; Holly Williams named the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front in full. ABC too had a reporter, Nick Schifrin, in Ankara -- yet, instead, Martha Raddatz was assigned to narrate the coverage from Washington, where she misinformed us by worrying about "new al-Qaeda-linked groups".
NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who conducted an exit interview with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday, covered her formal transfer to John Kerry at the State Department. The legislator-turned-diplomat realizes he will need precision in his use of words. Mitchell quoted Kerry as admitting to having been "overly casual in his comment" on the timeline of his nomination to the job.
CBS filed a couple of stories on sex and religion. Each time, the correspondent allowed a nonsensical quote to stand without explanation or elaboration. For the past couple of years the network has committed itself to following up on the pedophile priests scandal in the Roman Catholic Church: here is Bill Whitaker on Cardinal Roger Mahony, quoting his eminence's unparsable double negative. From the White House, Major Garrett wondered whether the church would accept new rules for providing its employees with reproductive healthcare. Listen to the soundbite he obtained from Ashley McGuire of the Catholic Association and explain what she means about inner-city nuns needing birth control.
If you liked Seth Doane's Grand Central Terminal tribute on CBS yesterday as much as I did, you will find Station Master Harry Kelly In His Own Words on NBC almost as much fun.
As for New Orleans: CBS offered Steve Hartman On The Road with a canoe journey from the Frenchman River that was long enough to make the paddler's beard grow bushy. Anchor Scott Pelley seemed to be praising the charter system that has replaced regular public schools in the city -- although Simone Smith, his example of success from Sci Academy, does not seem to have learned that becoming an actress is a circuitous career path towards running the Pentagon.
The remainder was better off avoided: NBC's Janet Shamlian ran the unimaginative feature that the Big Easy is an excellent party town (duh!); ABC's Josh Elliott selected the obvious Jim & John Show that NBC's Stephanie Gosk covered on Wednesday; and the baby animal features by Darren Rovell on ABC and anchor Brian Williams on NBC just make your teeth hurt, they are so sugary.
NBC's Tom Costello offered a portmanteau of the day's economic data points -- January's unemployment statistics and a milestone at the New York Stock Exchange. Costello reckoned that the economy is growing fast enough to encourage investors to buy stocks but not fast enough to encourage employers to accelerate hiring.
On CBS, Anthony Mason chose to focus on the employment data; ABC did not even mention the jobs report, concentrating entirely on the stock market returning to six-year-old levels and replenished 401(k) retirement accounts -- even as David Muir conceded that 401(k)s do not cover half the population.
By the way, speaking as a member of the babyboom generation, ABC has developed the irritating tick of using the word babyboom as a euphemism for elderly. It is as if the newscast is embarrassed about the aging demographics of its audience. On Thursday, David Wright referred to nursing home residents as babyboomers in describing a Taco Bell commercial. Now Muir introduces Rosemary Lichtman as one of us. Yet Lichtman herself acknowledges that she was born in 1943, two years before the Baby Boom began.
FRIDAY’S FINDINGS When Ecevit Shanli, a suicide bomber, was successfully halted outside the gate to the Ankara Embassy compound, killing only himself and a Turkish guard, both NBC and CBS had a correspondent on the scene to report on Shanli's political affiliation: Richard Engel called him a Marxist; Holly Williams named the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front in full. ABC too had a reporter, Nick Schifrin, in Ankara -- yet, instead, Martha Raddatz was assigned to narrate the coverage from Washington, where she misinformed us by worrying about "new al-Qaeda-linked groups".
NBC's Andrea Mitchell, who conducted an exit interview with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday, covered her formal transfer to John Kerry at the State Department. The legislator-turned-diplomat realizes he will need precision in his use of words. Mitchell quoted Kerry as admitting to having been "overly casual in his comment" on the timeline of his nomination to the job.
CBS filed a couple of stories on sex and religion. Each time, the correspondent allowed a nonsensical quote to stand without explanation or elaboration. For the past couple of years the network has committed itself to following up on the pedophile priests scandal in the Roman Catholic Church: here is Bill Whitaker on Cardinal Roger Mahony, quoting his eminence's unparsable double negative. From the White House, Major Garrett wondered whether the church would accept new rules for providing its employees with reproductive healthcare. Listen to the soundbite he obtained from Ashley McGuire of the Catholic Association and explain what she means about inner-city nuns needing birth control.
If you liked Seth Doane's Grand Central Terminal tribute on CBS yesterday as much as I did, you will find Station Master Harry Kelly In His Own Words on NBC almost as much fun.
As for New Orleans: CBS offered Steve Hartman On The Road with a canoe journey from the Frenchman River that was long enough to make the paddler's beard grow bushy. Anchor Scott Pelley seemed to be praising the charter system that has replaced regular public schools in the city -- although Simone Smith, his example of success from Sci Academy, does not seem to have learned that becoming an actress is a circuitous career path towards running the Pentagon.
The remainder was better off avoided: NBC's Janet Shamlian ran the unimaginative feature that the Big Easy is an excellent party town (duh!); ABC's Josh Elliott selected the obvious Jim & John Show that NBC's Stephanie Gosk covered on Wednesday; and the baby animal features by Darren Rovell on ABC and anchor Brian Williams on NBC just make your teeth hurt, they are so sugary.
