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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM FEBRUARY 27, 2013
Pope Benedict XVI was Story of the Day again. Monday, the gathering of the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church for their Conclave led the agenda. Now it is the farewell address of the abdicating Pontifex Maximus, with his headline revelation that, at times during his tenure, it seemed to him that God was sleeping. ABC led with the speech, with Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos describing it, opaquely, as "buoyant and subdued," whatever that means. Neither of the other two newscasts picked the Vatican for its lead item: CBS settled for the Senate and gun control; NBC for the Supreme Court and race relations.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR FEBRUARY 27, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
THE ROCKY TENURE OF SAINT PETER’S SUCCESSOR Pope Benedict XVI was Story of the Day again. Monday, the gathering of the Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church for their Conclave led the agenda. Now it is the farewell address of the abdicating Pontifex Maximus, with his headline revelation that, at times during his tenure, it seemed to him that God was sleeping. ABC led with the speech, with Good Morning America anchor George Stephanopoulos describing it, opaquely, as "buoyant and subdued," whatever that means. Neither of the other two newscasts picked the Vatican for its lead item: CBS settled for the Senate and gun control; NBC for the Supreme Court and race relations.
NBC and CBS chose the correspondents they had already in place in the Eternal City to cover Benedict's valedictory, Anne Thompson and Allen Pizzey respectively. David Wright, who preceded Stephanopoulos to Rome, was assigned a follow-up to preview the Conclave -- and a sophomoric job he did, too (it plays at the tail of the Stephanopoulos videostream). I know the concept of the Holy Trinity is hard to explain to a secular audience but using a Monty-Python-style animation to illustrate the Holy Spirit in action by depicting rays of light shining through a roofless building accompanied by a mystical-sounding audio track is just juvenile.
With Nancy Cordes' lead item from Capitol Hill, CBS continues to dominate coverage of the debate over firearms legislation. Since the New Year, CBS has filed 24 separate gun control packages, compared with 13 by NBC, whose coverage of the hearings was by Tom Costello, and just six by ABC. See Cordes for a description of assault-style bullets fired by a semi-automatic rifle entering the flesh of a six-year-old child.
On CBS, Dean Reynolds followed up with the pro-gun-control millions spent on advertising by independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City in a Democratic primary in Illinois for a vacant seat in the House of Representatives. Bloomberg's candidate Robin Kelly prevailed.
On ABC, Pierre Thomas claimed an Exclusive for his sitdown with Attorney General Eric Holder, which folded in Holder's lobbying on gun control with his lobbying on the law-enforcement downside of the looming automatic federal spending cuts.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS It is a no-brainer that the nightly newscasts should bracket their coverage of the Supreme Court case challenging the Voting Rights Act with the ceremonies in the Capitol Rotunda to unveil a statue to civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Both NBC (with Pete Williams and Kelly O'Donnell) and CBS (with Jan Crawford and Michelle Miller) accomplished this straightforward parlay. ABC assigned a correspondent to neither story.
CBS' Miller, especially, nailed her angle on the Parks story. She profiled Claudette Colvin, who was arrested for sitting in white folks' seats on a Montgomery bus as a 15-year-old some nine months before Parks started her protest. Parks was already active in the civil rights movement and she became a mentrix to Colvin. Parks was selected to start the sit-in because her seamstress' reputation would seem more spotless than that of her unwed, pregnant, teenage protégée.
As we creep towards the so-called sequester, CBS anchor Scott Pelley ran a buck-passing clip from Tuesday's interview with Speaker John Boehner as House Republicans defer to Senate Democrats. CBS' Mark Strassmann followed up on Elaine Quijano's report Tuesday on money-saving ICE detention furloughs for soon-to-be deportees. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski followed in the footsteps of a trio of CBS reports (here, here and here) on the Pentagon budget, traveling to Huntsville to depict the Department of Defense as a jobs program. And, as noted, the ABC Exclusive by Pierre Thomas donated publicity to the Attorney General's pitch that cuts would harm an alphabet soup of FBI, BATF and DEA.
ABC's David Kerley joked around with Jon Linkov of Consumer Reports about the automated safety features in the latest models from Mercedes Benz and Ford and Nissan that will prevent cars crashes. The trouble is, as Kerley pointed out, most autos on the road are not the latest: they average eleven years old.
Here is an idea to cut down on car crashes, the DWI type at least: Drink Budweiser. If the lawsuit that ABC's Linzie Janis covered holds water, you'll have to drink 8% more of the King of Beers to get as buzzed as you used to.
The deplorable habit of using fictionalized Hollywood-produced footage to illustrate actual news events continues. ABC's John Donvan doubles up with A Night to Remember and Titanic to preview the replica steamship Blue Star Lines plans to build in China in 2016. NBC's Ron Mott stays with a maritime theme to illustrate the declining fortunes of the depleted cod fishery in the Gulf of Maine. But Ron, if you must use a movie to show us the fortitude of the fishermen of Gloucester, surely you can do better than The Perfect Storm. Think Captains Courageous.
NBC and CBS chose the correspondents they had already in place in the Eternal City to cover Benedict's valedictory, Anne Thompson and Allen Pizzey respectively. David Wright, who preceded Stephanopoulos to Rome, was assigned a follow-up to preview the Conclave -- and a sophomoric job he did, too (it plays at the tail of the Stephanopoulos videostream). I know the concept of the Holy Trinity is hard to explain to a secular audience but using a Monty-Python-style animation to illustrate the Holy Spirit in action by depicting rays of light shining through a roofless building accompanied by a mystical-sounding audio track is just juvenile.
With Nancy Cordes' lead item from Capitol Hill, CBS continues to dominate coverage of the debate over firearms legislation. Since the New Year, CBS has filed 24 separate gun control packages, compared with 13 by NBC, whose coverage of the hearings was by Tom Costello, and just six by ABC. See Cordes for a description of assault-style bullets fired by a semi-automatic rifle entering the flesh of a six-year-old child.
On CBS, Dean Reynolds followed up with the pro-gun-control millions spent on advertising by independent Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City in a Democratic primary in Illinois for a vacant seat in the House of Representatives. Bloomberg's candidate Robin Kelly prevailed.
On ABC, Pierre Thomas claimed an Exclusive for his sitdown with Attorney General Eric Holder, which folded in Holder's lobbying on gun control with his lobbying on the law-enforcement downside of the looming automatic federal spending cuts.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS It is a no-brainer that the nightly newscasts should bracket their coverage of the Supreme Court case challenging the Voting Rights Act with the ceremonies in the Capitol Rotunda to unveil a statue to civil rights activist Rosa Parks. Both NBC (with Pete Williams and Kelly O'Donnell) and CBS (with Jan Crawford and Michelle Miller) accomplished this straightforward parlay. ABC assigned a correspondent to neither story.
CBS' Miller, especially, nailed her angle on the Parks story. She profiled Claudette Colvin, who was arrested for sitting in white folks' seats on a Montgomery bus as a 15-year-old some nine months before Parks started her protest. Parks was already active in the civil rights movement and she became a mentrix to Colvin. Parks was selected to start the sit-in because her seamstress' reputation would seem more spotless than that of her unwed, pregnant, teenage protégée.
As we creep towards the so-called sequester, CBS anchor Scott Pelley ran a buck-passing clip from Tuesday's interview with Speaker John Boehner as House Republicans defer to Senate Democrats. CBS' Mark Strassmann followed up on Elaine Quijano's report Tuesday on money-saving ICE detention furloughs for soon-to-be deportees. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski followed in the footsteps of a trio of CBS reports (here, here and here) on the Pentagon budget, traveling to Huntsville to depict the Department of Defense as a jobs program. And, as noted, the ABC Exclusive by Pierre Thomas donated publicity to the Attorney General's pitch that cuts would harm an alphabet soup of FBI, BATF and DEA.
ABC's David Kerley joked around with Jon Linkov of Consumer Reports about the automated safety features in the latest models from Mercedes Benz and Ford and Nissan that will prevent cars crashes. The trouble is, as Kerley pointed out, most autos on the road are not the latest: they average eleven years old.
Here is an idea to cut down on car crashes, the DWI type at least: Drink Budweiser. If the lawsuit that ABC's Linzie Janis covered holds water, you'll have to drink 8% more of the King of Beers to get as buzzed as you used to.
The deplorable habit of using fictionalized Hollywood-produced footage to illustrate actual news events continues. ABC's John Donvan doubles up with A Night to Remember and Titanic to preview the replica steamship Blue Star Lines plans to build in China in 2016. NBC's Ron Mott stays with a maritime theme to illustrate the declining fortunes of the depleted cod fishery in the Gulf of Maine. But Ron, if you must use a movie to show us the fortitude of the fishermen of Gloucester, surely you can do better than The Perfect Storm. Think Captains Courageous.
