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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM FEBRUARY 6, 2013
A pair of venerable national institutions made headlines. All three newscasts covered both the Boy Scouts of America and the United States Postal Service. ABC's reports, by Ron Claiborne and Ceclia Vega, both signified just how venerable by splicing nostalgic black-and-white film footage of each into their full-color video. The BSA made news by deciding not to do anything: its national board postponed a vote on the future of its ban on participation by gay people. The USPS made news by announcing what it will no longer do, namely deliver letters on Saturday. NBC and CBS both kicked off with the mail, with Tom Costello at a Maryland mailbox and Nancy Cordes in the halls of Congress. ABC led with Martha Raddatz following up on Tuesday's NBC Exclusive from Michael Isikoff -- on the use of missiles from unmanned CIA drones to assassinate suspected terrorists.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR FEBRUARY 6, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
LETTER CARRIERS & BOY SCOUTS A pair of venerable national institutions made headlines. All three newscasts covered both the Boy Scouts of America and the United States Postal Service. ABC's reports, by Ron Claiborne and Ceclia Vega, both signified just how venerable by splicing nostalgic black-and-white film footage of each into their full-color video. The BSA made news by deciding not to do anything: its national board postponed a vote on the future of its ban on participation by gay people. The USPS made news by announcing what it will no longer do, namely deliver letters on Saturday. NBC and CBS both kicked off with the mail, with Tom Costello at a Maryland mailbox and Nancy Cordes in the halls of Congress. ABC led with Martha Raddatz following up on Tuesday's NBC Exclusive from Michael Isikoff -- on the use of missiles from unmanned CIA drones to assassinate suspected terrorists.
ABC's Raddatz filed her report from Occupied Palestine about a secret CIA drone base in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that foments resentment in Yemen. Meanwhile in Pakistan, drones have killed 300-or-so non-terrorist civilians along with their 2,500-or-so intended targets. They hover overhead "like a distant muted chainsaw." NBC's follow-up to Isikoff yesterday was from John Yang in Chicago today. Domestic drone surveillance -- combining cameras, facial recognition technology and eavesdropping -- is already being used by 17 separate law enforcement departments, Yang told us, as well as by farmers, biologists, realtors, and Hollywood. Thus the pretext for a 007-clip from Skyfall.
CBS skipped the drones in favor of an alternate hi-tech conflict: Bob Orr returned once more to the threat of cyberwarfare. Of the 25 stories in our database about hack-attacks, CBS has filed 15 of them, and of those 15, Orr alone accounts for eight. Mostly he worries about China sabotaging our infrastructure. The hackers that ABC's Pierre Thomas told us about are activists not saboteurs. He played clips from the Occupy-movement-inflected propaganda video by Anonymous after it infiltrated systems at the Federal Reserve.
And from the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin offered an early hint of the propaganda push we can expect against the looming fiscal sequestration: no Persian Gulf duty for the USS Truman…future furloughs for the DoD's civilian workforce…a skimpier pay cut for those in uniform.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS The brouhaha about Chris Christie's waistline looks like a media concoction rather than a legitimate news story. Just look at the coverage by Dan Harris on ABC and Andrea Mitchell on NBC. Both used clips from David Letterman's Late Night and soundbites from CNN. Harris threw in Jimmy Fallon and his own anchor Diane Sawyer for good measure; Mitchell inserted a gratuitous plug for her own network's Biggest Loser reality show in primetime. CBS decided there was no news here.
Much of the rhetoric in the debate over gun control legislation has concerned the effectiveness of current restrictions. Last week, Chip Reid at CBS offered an eye-opening peek into the shambolic BATF tracing facility in West Virginia. Now his colleague John Blackstone rides shotgun in Stockton Cal to show us the logistical nightmare of disarming convicted felons and the mentally ill.
Fast food restaurants hold a fascination for ABC that has eluded its two rivals over the past couple of years. Case in point: Abbie Boudreau just gushes over the cult status of In-N-Out Burgers, and Lynsi Torres, its thirtysomething billionaire owner. Boudreau swears that much about Torres is a mystery -- and then contradicts herself by showing how the late Huell Howser managed to get up-close-and-personal on PBS' California's Gold three years ago.
Usually, I pay NBC no respect for its coverage of the Olympic Games. Since the broadcast rights to these events are owned by NBC Sports, usually purported journalism amounts to no more than crass self-promotion. Jim Maceda's preview trip of next year's winterfest is an exception. In Sochi, he finds a Vladimir Putin vanity project just south of mountains infested with Chechen guerrillas. "What could possibly go wrong?" asks anchor Brian Williams.
Kudos to Elizabeth Palmer of CBS for introducing us to abdul-Kader Haidara, preserver of the priceless manuscripts of Timbuktu. See Haidara's smile. It is as wide as the Sahara.
ABC's Raddatz filed her report from Occupied Palestine about a secret CIA drone base in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia that foments resentment in Yemen. Meanwhile in Pakistan, drones have killed 300-or-so non-terrorist civilians along with their 2,500-or-so intended targets. They hover overhead "like a distant muted chainsaw." NBC's follow-up to Isikoff yesterday was from John Yang in Chicago today. Domestic drone surveillance -- combining cameras, facial recognition technology and eavesdropping -- is already being used by 17 separate law enforcement departments, Yang told us, as well as by farmers, biologists, realtors, and Hollywood. Thus the pretext for a 007-clip from Skyfall.
CBS skipped the drones in favor of an alternate hi-tech conflict: Bob Orr returned once more to the threat of cyberwarfare. Of the 25 stories in our database about hack-attacks, CBS has filed 15 of them, and of those 15, Orr alone accounts for eight. Mostly he worries about China sabotaging our infrastructure. The hackers that ABC's Pierre Thomas told us about are activists not saboteurs. He played clips from the Occupy-movement-inflected propaganda video by Anonymous after it infiltrated systems at the Federal Reserve.
And from the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin offered an early hint of the propaganda push we can expect against the looming fiscal sequestration: no Persian Gulf duty for the USS Truman…future furloughs for the DoD's civilian workforce…a skimpier pay cut for those in uniform.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS The brouhaha about Chris Christie's waistline looks like a media concoction rather than a legitimate news story. Just look at the coverage by Dan Harris on ABC and Andrea Mitchell on NBC. Both used clips from David Letterman's Late Night and soundbites from CNN. Harris threw in Jimmy Fallon and his own anchor Diane Sawyer for good measure; Mitchell inserted a gratuitous plug for her own network's Biggest Loser reality show in primetime. CBS decided there was no news here.
Much of the rhetoric in the debate over gun control legislation has concerned the effectiveness of current restrictions. Last week, Chip Reid at CBS offered an eye-opening peek into the shambolic BATF tracing facility in West Virginia. Now his colleague John Blackstone rides shotgun in Stockton Cal to show us the logistical nightmare of disarming convicted felons and the mentally ill.
Fast food restaurants hold a fascination for ABC that has eluded its two rivals over the past couple of years. Case in point: Abbie Boudreau just gushes over the cult status of In-N-Out Burgers, and Lynsi Torres, its thirtysomething billionaire owner. Boudreau swears that much about Torres is a mystery -- and then contradicts herself by showing how the late Huell Howser managed to get up-close-and-personal on PBS' California's Gold three years ago.
Usually, I pay NBC no respect for its coverage of the Olympic Games. Since the broadcast rights to these events are owned by NBC Sports, usually purported journalism amounts to no more than crass self-promotion. Jim Maceda's preview trip of next year's winterfest is an exception. In Sochi, he finds a Vladimir Putin vanity project just south of mountains infested with Chechen guerrillas. "What could possibly go wrong?" asks anchor Brian Williams.
Kudos to Elizabeth Palmer of CBS for introducing us to abdul-Kader Haidara, preserver of the priceless manuscripts of Timbuktu. See Haidara's smile. It is as wide as the Sahara.
