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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM FEBRUARY 13, 2013
Tuesday the climactic gunfight between police and their fugitive onetime colleague Christopher Dorner was the breaking news that led all three newscasts. Wednesday its aftermath -- and the discovery of a charred skeleton, presumed to be Dorner's, in a tear-gassed-and-incinerated ski cabin -- was again the lead on all three newscasts and again the Story of the Day. Kudos goes to CBS' Carter Evans who followed an unmarked police pick-up truck up the correct mountain road and was rewarded with eyewitness videotape of the lethal gunfight. It is highly unusual that both ABC and NBC should use credited CBS News Exclusive actuality footage in their reports, but both Cecilia Vega and Miguel Almaguer ended up with a hat tip to their rival.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR FEBRUARY 13, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
CBS' EVANS DELIVERS EYEWITNESS VIDEOTAPE Tuesday the climactic gunfight between police and their fugitive onetime colleague Christopher Dorner was the breaking news that led all three newscasts. Wednesday its aftermath -- and the discovery of a charred skeleton, presumed to be Dorner's, in a tear-gassed-and-incinerated ski cabin -- was again the lead on all three newscasts and again the Story of the Day. Kudos goes to CBS' Carter Evans who followed an unmarked police pick-up truck up the correct mountain road and was rewarded with eyewitness videotape of the lethal gunfight. It is highly unusual that both ABC and NBC should use credited CBS News Exclusive actuality footage in their reports, but both Cecilia Vega and Miguel Almaguer ended up with a hat tip to their rival.
Both Vega and Almaguer resorted to computer animation to tell that Dorner was discovered by a couple of cleaning ladies in his hideout a stone's throw from the police command center in Big Bear. Vega's Virtual View animation on ABC showed the two women tied up on the floor of the ski-resort condo; Almaguer's on NBC depicted Dorner as being more considerate, tying them up armchairs. Are these graphic artists just making things up? Who knows? Then listen to Vega's tale of the chase after he leaves the condo in the women's car: she has Dorner hijack Rick Heltebrake's pick-up before getting into a firefight with Fish & Game wardens; listen to Almaguer and the narrative is reversed. Who knows?
So, for the second day in a row, Barack Obama's big speech was pushed into second place. NBC's White House correspondent Peter Alexander did the most old-fashioned job, and the most comprehensive one, recapping the highlights of the State of the Union. CBS took a different tack, singling out three major themes and assigning a reporter to each one: Nancy Cordes to firearms legislation, Anthony Mason to the minimum wage, and Major Garrett to manufacturing industrial policy, a beat that ABC has specialized in over the last year with its Made in America series.
Not this time: ABC's newly appointed White House correspondent Jonathan Karl picked the minimum wage angle instead. Karl worried that a hike in the wage might mean fewer jobs for teenagers. He argued that youth unemployment has risen since the last time the minimum wage was increased in 2007, tendentiously confusing correlation with causation, as if the Great Recession of 2008 had never happened.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS NBC has lagged behind CBS (although ahead of ABC) so far this year in its coverage of the gun control debate. So its series Flashpoint: Guns in America helps to play catch-up. Former anchor Tom Brokaw decided to profile a huntin'-&-skeet-shootin' congressman looking for ways to preserve gun rights yet moderate gun violence. Brokaw strolled through the hills of the Napa Valley district of Rep Mike Thompson while, oddly, refraining from telling us which political party Thompson belongs to. I can only imagine that Brokaw was trying to imply by this omission that grappling with this problem was a bipartisan -- or even a non-partisan -- concern. If so, it surely would have been better journalism for Brokaw to have asserted that view outright, rather than hinting at it by leaving out information.
By the way, Thompson's a Democrat.
All three networks had a correspondent in Vatican City for Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday services, presumed to be his final public mass as Pontifex Maximus. NBC's Anne Thompson also filed on Tuesday; CBS' Allen Pizzey also filed on Monday. ABC is spreading around the desirable assignment of a trip to the Eternal City: first London-based Jeffrey Kofman, then Los-Angeles-based David Wright, now New-York-based Dan Harris.
CBS has yet to assign a reporter to cover the crippled, stinking, sewage-soaked Triumph as she is dragged towards Mobile with 4,200 souls on board. NBC's Janet Shamlian and ABC's Matt Gutman are on the job. Gutman made the mistake of identifying all of those occupants as passengers. Obviously, almost a third are crew.
Remember last month when ABC's Real Money series publicized SaveLoveGive.com, the Website that helps cellphone customers save money by customizing their contracts? Back then Paula Faris offered us the example of Phil Barry, who saved $1,368 a year: "Holy Mammajamma!" Now for Faris' follow-up. She tells us that her report drove so much traffic to SLG that it crashed its server. As a result, 40,000 new users have saved an annual $2.5m. That averages to $62 savings per contract, not even close to $1,368. Smells more like Bait & Switch than News You Can Use.
Yes, Nick Watt: those canines can be cute. But are they news? Admittedly the affenpinscher may have been news, albeit of the softest sort, but surely Banana Joe was not worth an entire package, was it Katy Tur? This is how Westminster has been followed in previous years.
UPDATE: Watt's story was not only not news, it was also, according to Chris Ariens at TVNewser, not kosher. The fix was in.
Both Vega and Almaguer resorted to computer animation to tell that Dorner was discovered by a couple of cleaning ladies in his hideout a stone's throw from the police command center in Big Bear. Vega's Virtual View animation on ABC showed the two women tied up on the floor of the ski-resort condo; Almaguer's on NBC depicted Dorner as being more considerate, tying them up armchairs. Are these graphic artists just making things up? Who knows? Then listen to Vega's tale of the chase after he leaves the condo in the women's car: she has Dorner hijack Rick Heltebrake's pick-up before getting into a firefight with Fish & Game wardens; listen to Almaguer and the narrative is reversed. Who knows?
So, for the second day in a row, Barack Obama's big speech was pushed into second place. NBC's White House correspondent Peter Alexander did the most old-fashioned job, and the most comprehensive one, recapping the highlights of the State of the Union. CBS took a different tack, singling out three major themes and assigning a reporter to each one: Nancy Cordes to firearms legislation, Anthony Mason to the minimum wage, and Major Garrett to manufacturing industrial policy, a beat that ABC has specialized in over the last year with its Made in America series.
Not this time: ABC's newly appointed White House correspondent Jonathan Karl picked the minimum wage angle instead. Karl worried that a hike in the wage might mean fewer jobs for teenagers. He argued that youth unemployment has risen since the last time the minimum wage was increased in 2007, tendentiously confusing correlation with causation, as if the Great Recession of 2008 had never happened.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS NBC has lagged behind CBS (although ahead of ABC) so far this year in its coverage of the gun control debate. So its series Flashpoint: Guns in America helps to play catch-up. Former anchor Tom Brokaw decided to profile a huntin'-&-skeet-shootin' congressman looking for ways to preserve gun rights yet moderate gun violence. Brokaw strolled through the hills of the Napa Valley district of Rep Mike Thompson while, oddly, refraining from telling us which political party Thompson belongs to. I can only imagine that Brokaw was trying to imply by this omission that grappling with this problem was a bipartisan -- or even a non-partisan -- concern. If so, it surely would have been better journalism for Brokaw to have asserted that view outright, rather than hinting at it by leaving out information.
By the way, Thompson's a Democrat.
All three networks had a correspondent in Vatican City for Pope Benedict's Ash Wednesday services, presumed to be his final public mass as Pontifex Maximus. NBC's Anne Thompson also filed on Tuesday; CBS' Allen Pizzey also filed on Monday. ABC is spreading around the desirable assignment of a trip to the Eternal City: first London-based Jeffrey Kofman, then Los-Angeles-based David Wright, now New-York-based Dan Harris.
CBS has yet to assign a reporter to cover the crippled, stinking, sewage-soaked Triumph as she is dragged towards Mobile with 4,200 souls on board. NBC's Janet Shamlian and ABC's Matt Gutman are on the job. Gutman made the mistake of identifying all of those occupants as passengers. Obviously, almost a third are crew.
Remember last month when ABC's Real Money series publicized SaveLoveGive.com, the Website that helps cellphone customers save money by customizing their contracts? Back then Paula Faris offered us the example of Phil Barry, who saved $1,368 a year: "Holy Mammajamma!" Now for Faris' follow-up. She tells us that her report drove so much traffic to SLG that it crashed its server. As a result, 40,000 new users have saved an annual $2.5m. That averages to $62 savings per contract, not even close to $1,368. Smells more like Bait & Switch than News You Can Use.
Yes, Nick Watt: those canines can be cute. But are they news? Admittedly the affenpinscher may have been news, albeit of the softest sort, but surely Banana Joe was not worth an entire package, was it Katy Tur? This is how Westminster has been followed in previous years.
UPDATE: Watt's story was not only not news, it was also, according to Chris Ariens at TVNewser, not kosher. The fix was in.
