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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM FEBRUARY 4, 2013
In a neat sandwich, the Super Bowl in New Orleans was Story of the Day both in its run-up (last Friday) and in its aftermath. Yet, as is often the case with sports stories, bound up with copyright constraints, only one of the five packages that went to air on the broadcast versions of the nightly newscasts lived on online. ABC's Steve Osunsami was the lucky survivor. Even though the big game was heavily covered, it did not qualify as the lead item on any of the three newscasts. They were unanimous in selecting the fatal end to the hostage siege in Dale County, Alabama. The FBI rescued a five-year-old boy kidnapped from a school bus and held underground for six days. They killed his 65-year-old captor.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR FEBRUARY 4, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SHOWING BLACKOUT BOWL WOULD HAVE BEEN FAIR USE In a neat sandwich, the Super Bowl in New Orleans was Story of the Day both in its run-up (last Friday) and in its aftermath. Yet, as is often the case with sports stories, bound up with copyright constraints, only one of the five packages that went to air on the broadcast versions of the nightly newscasts lived on online. ABC's Steve Osunsami was the lucky survivor. Even though the big game was heavily covered, it did not qualify as the lead item on any of the three newscasts. They were unanimous in selecting the fatal end to the hostage siege in Dale County, Alabama. The FBI rescued a five-year-old boy kidnapped from a school bus and held underground for six days. They killed his 65-year-old captor.
News organizations are allowed to override the claims of copyright owners in order to include material such as Super Bowl sports footage in their online stories with claims of fair use -- that the footage was necessary for the proper telling of an important news story. So, in fact, there is no reason why Armen Keteyian's report on CBS should not be posted. Fair use indeed it was: Keteyian explained that a feed from the Entergy substation in New Orleans to the Superdome had failed, thereby blacking out much of the stadium and causing the 34-minute delay of game.
On the other hand, Josh Elliott on ABC can feel relieved at his network's reticence: it spares his blushes that his asinine reporting does not get wider dissemination. Elliott told us that the blackout was caused by "nothing more than the surreal and historic kicking of a plug from its socket."
The post-Super-Bowl story by ABC's Steve Osunsami that did survive online was a follow-up to his Blind Side pregame feature last Tuesday. It focused on the happy family ending for Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher. I preferred the earlier one, with its appalling glimpse of Dickensian beginnings.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS All three newscasts ran soundbites from Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head to deter her from her activism in favor of girls' education. NBC's Keir Simmons covered her skull-repair surgery from England. CBS anchor Scott Pelley narrated the footage from New York. Yet Bob Woodruff, at ABC, was the one who slapped an Exclusive label on his report.
From Gun Country: ABC's Jonathan Karl exposed the deplorable state of the mental health registry that is supposed to provide background checks before sales of firearms. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and CBS' Anna Werner covered Chris Kyle, the former USNavy SEAL and author of American Sniper, nicknamed The Devil of Ramadi, whose rifle had killed 150 singlehandedly in Iraq. NBC's Miklaszewski told us that his assistance to fellow veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder consisted of so-called Exposure Therapy, taking them to a Texas shooting range to reacquaint them with their intimacy with gunfire. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.
I think Byron Pitts on CBS wanted to make us feel either outrage, at sloppy bureaucracy, or trepidation, at unregulated firearms, when he told us the story of the haunted, heavily-armed Chris Oberender, 17 years on from the death of his mother at his own, young hands. To me it sounded inconsolably sad.
What does ABC have against the hotel industry? Here were Elisabeth Leamy and Andrea Canning questioning its brochures. Here was Chris Cuomo on rude staff and here on harassing working conditions. Now, in ABC's regular Real Money feature, Amy Robach offers free publicity to iStopOver.com and airbnb.com, the Websites that undercut hotel room rates by organizing homeowners to take in paying houseguests.
There was only one reason that the bones dug up by medieval archeologists in England would be newsworthy on American newscasts: William Shakespeare. The identification of the remains of the last Plantagenet king allowed both NBC's Stephanie Gosk and CBS' Mark Phillips to play movie clips of Lord Larry chewing the scenery. Phillips called "A horse! A horse…" the one good line in the play. Gosk countered with McKellan and Spacey, hunchback backups for Olivier, with the opening line, which is yet more famous: "Now is the winter…"
News organizations are allowed to override the claims of copyright owners in order to include material such as Super Bowl sports footage in their online stories with claims of fair use -- that the footage was necessary for the proper telling of an important news story. So, in fact, there is no reason why Armen Keteyian's report on CBS should not be posted. Fair use indeed it was: Keteyian explained that a feed from the Entergy substation in New Orleans to the Superdome had failed, thereby blacking out much of the stadium and causing the 34-minute delay of game.
On the other hand, Josh Elliott on ABC can feel relieved at his network's reticence: it spares his blushes that his asinine reporting does not get wider dissemination. Elliott told us that the blackout was caused by "nothing more than the surreal and historic kicking of a plug from its socket."
The post-Super-Bowl story by ABC's Steve Osunsami that did survive online was a follow-up to his Blind Side pregame feature last Tuesday. It focused on the happy family ending for Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher. I preferred the earlier one, with its appalling glimpse of Dickensian beginnings.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS All three newscasts ran soundbites from Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot in the head to deter her from her activism in favor of girls' education. NBC's Keir Simmons covered her skull-repair surgery from England. CBS anchor Scott Pelley narrated the footage from New York. Yet Bob Woodruff, at ABC, was the one who slapped an Exclusive label on his report.
From Gun Country: ABC's Jonathan Karl exposed the deplorable state of the mental health registry that is supposed to provide background checks before sales of firearms. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski and CBS' Anna Werner covered Chris Kyle, the former USNavy SEAL and author of American Sniper, nicknamed The Devil of Ramadi, whose rifle had killed 150 singlehandedly in Iraq. NBC's Miklaszewski told us that his assistance to fellow veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder consisted of so-called Exposure Therapy, taking them to a Texas shooting range to reacquaint them with their intimacy with gunfire. Nothing could possibly go wrong there.
I think Byron Pitts on CBS wanted to make us feel either outrage, at sloppy bureaucracy, or trepidation, at unregulated firearms, when he told us the story of the haunted, heavily-armed Chris Oberender, 17 years on from the death of his mother at his own, young hands. To me it sounded inconsolably sad.
What does ABC have against the hotel industry? Here were Elisabeth Leamy and Andrea Canning questioning its brochures. Here was Chris Cuomo on rude staff and here on harassing working conditions. Now, in ABC's regular Real Money feature, Amy Robach offers free publicity to iStopOver.com and airbnb.com, the Websites that undercut hotel room rates by organizing homeowners to take in paying houseguests.
There was only one reason that the bones dug up by medieval archeologists in England would be newsworthy on American newscasts: William Shakespeare. The identification of the remains of the last Plantagenet king allowed both NBC's Stephanie Gosk and CBS' Mark Phillips to play movie clips of Lord Larry chewing the scenery. Phillips called "A horse! A horse…" the one good line in the play. Gosk countered with McKellan and Spacey, hunchback backups for Olivier, with the opening line, which is yet more famous: "Now is the winter…"
