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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 14, 2013
There was absolute unanimity at the top of the three network nightly newscasts on the first day of the papacy of Francis I. All three kicked off from the Vatican, where the new pope showcased his humbler, simpler style: Anne Thompson filed for NBC, Terry Moran for ABC, Mark Phillips for CBS. CBS' anchor, Scott Pelley, who was in Rome for the first three days this week, was back behind his desk in New York. ABC's Diane Sawyer did not make the same return trip and had David Muir substitute for her. After those three lead items, all three newscasts filed a follow-up from the slums of Buenos Aires, where Jorge Bergoglio had been cardinal.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MARCH 14, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
FRANCIS IS HUMBLER, SIMPLER -- AND WHITEWASHED BY SPECIAL EFFECTS There was absolute unanimity at the top of the three network nightly newscasts on the first day of the papacy of Francis I. All three kicked off from the Vatican, where the new pope showcased his humbler, simpler style: Anne Thompson filed for NBC, Terry Moran for ABC, Mark Phillips for CBS. CBS' anchor, Scott Pelley, who was in Rome for the first three days this week, was back behind his desk in New York. ABC's Diane Sawyer did not make the same return trip and had David Muir substitute for her. After those three lead items, all three newscasts filed a follow-up from the slums of Buenos Aires, where Jorge Bergoglio had been cardinal.
Both CBS' Elaine Quijano and NBC's Miguel Almaguer did the right thing and mentioned the cloud hanging over Bergoglio's record in Argentina: questions concerning the extent of his cooperation with the military junta of the 1970s and the atrocities of its Dirty War. ABC's Matt Gutman did not go there and his colleague Terry Moran offered a peculiar whitewashing special effect, rendering audio of a scratchy movie soundtrack under black-&-white visuals, to make it seem that whatever had happened in the past was dim and distant history.
At least Moran gave us some important information: Bergoglio's team is San Lorenzo.
Following up on the depravities of the church's child sex abuse scandal, CBS has been most diligent in the last year or so. Carter Evans showed us the internal archdiocesan memo that Cardinal Roger Mahony signed off on in Los Angeles agreeing that a molesting priest should not be "forthcoming" with his therapist, because of that therapist's duty to report abuse to civil authorities.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS The other development deemed worthy of coverage by a correspondent on all three networks was the testimony of John Pistole, TSA Administrator, before a House panel, on his decision to allow passengers to carry small pocket-knives aboard airliners. To justify his decision Pistole brought along FBI video of the thing he was wary of, instead of knives: a bomb! All three reporters -- CBS' Sharyl Attkisson, NBC's Tom Costello, ABC's David Kerley -- showed that bomb blowing up real good.
As usual, ABC, whose parent company Disney is in the cruise line business, found high seas misadventures more worthy of coverage: Gio Benitez was the only correspondent assigned to the plight of the passengers of Carnival's Dream in the port of St Maarten. Bad luck for Benitez, he did not land a Caribbean trip, narrating video from New Yorl instead.
NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman has made it her especial duty over the past year or so to cover breast cancer more diligently than others. This time, though, the tidbit of information she delivered about radiation therapy was hardly worth the fuss.
Good for ABC. All three newscasts cash in enough by running Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes advertising that it is the right thing to explain how telephone calls that purport to offer winning prizes turn out to be fraudulent. Pierre Thomas told us that rip-off schemes are often based in Jamaica. Watch out for the incoming 876 area code.
The public relations operation at Pew Research Center persuaded Rehema Ellis to give them a plug on NBC -- but that was about all there was. Her coverage of Pew's Modern Parenthood survey was virtually content-free, aside from a token return to Yahoo!'s no-telecommuting rule, which ABC's David Muir mentioned two weeks ago.
CBS' Jim Axelrod gave his CBS Radio colleagues a pat on the back for the 75th anniversary of World News Roundup…and an implicit piece of self-promotion from Richard C Hottelet, the only surviving Boy of Murrow. What should a newscast contain? "No hokum."
Fine artists Dan Miller and William Scott got free publicity from NBC's Kristen Dahlgren for the expressiveness of their canvasses in her Making a Difference tribute to the Creative Growth painting studio in Oakland. Their works seem extra expressive because their words are not at all so.
David Muir on ABC is an inveterate flagwaver. He proclaimed that the skydiving stunt by Craig Stapleton, unfurling the Stars and Stripes while freefalling through the air, involved a "proud American flag." Looking at how it was bungled, pride is not what comes to wind.
Both CBS' Elaine Quijano and NBC's Miguel Almaguer did the right thing and mentioned the cloud hanging over Bergoglio's record in Argentina: questions concerning the extent of his cooperation with the military junta of the 1970s and the atrocities of its Dirty War. ABC's Matt Gutman did not go there and his colleague Terry Moran offered a peculiar whitewashing special effect, rendering audio of a scratchy movie soundtrack under black-&-white visuals, to make it seem that whatever had happened in the past was dim and distant history.
At least Moran gave us some important information: Bergoglio's team is San Lorenzo.
Following up on the depravities of the church's child sex abuse scandal, CBS has been most diligent in the last year or so. Carter Evans showed us the internal archdiocesan memo that Cardinal Roger Mahony signed off on in Los Angeles agreeing that a molesting priest should not be "forthcoming" with his therapist, because of that therapist's duty to report abuse to civil authorities.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS The other development deemed worthy of coverage by a correspondent on all three networks was the testimony of John Pistole, TSA Administrator, before a House panel, on his decision to allow passengers to carry small pocket-knives aboard airliners. To justify his decision Pistole brought along FBI video of the thing he was wary of, instead of knives: a bomb! All three reporters -- CBS' Sharyl Attkisson, NBC's Tom Costello, ABC's David Kerley -- showed that bomb blowing up real good.
As usual, ABC, whose parent company Disney is in the cruise line business, found high seas misadventures more worthy of coverage: Gio Benitez was the only correspondent assigned to the plight of the passengers of Carnival's Dream in the port of St Maarten. Bad luck for Benitez, he did not land a Caribbean trip, narrating video from New Yorl instead.
NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman has made it her especial duty over the past year or so to cover breast cancer more diligently than others. This time, though, the tidbit of information she delivered about radiation therapy was hardly worth the fuss.
Good for ABC. All three newscasts cash in enough by running Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes advertising that it is the right thing to explain how telephone calls that purport to offer winning prizes turn out to be fraudulent. Pierre Thomas told us that rip-off schemes are often based in Jamaica. Watch out for the incoming 876 area code.
The public relations operation at Pew Research Center persuaded Rehema Ellis to give them a plug on NBC -- but that was about all there was. Her coverage of Pew's Modern Parenthood survey was virtually content-free, aside from a token return to Yahoo!'s no-telecommuting rule, which ABC's David Muir mentioned two weeks ago.
CBS' Jim Axelrod gave his CBS Radio colleagues a pat on the back for the 75th anniversary of World News Roundup…and an implicit piece of self-promotion from Richard C Hottelet, the only surviving Boy of Murrow. What should a newscast contain? "No hokum."
Fine artists Dan Miller and William Scott got free publicity from NBC's Kristen Dahlgren for the expressiveness of their canvasses in her Making a Difference tribute to the Creative Growth painting studio in Oakland. Their works seem extra expressive because their words are not at all so.
David Muir on ABC is an inveterate flagwaver. He proclaimed that the skydiving stunt by Craig Stapleton, unfurling the Stars and Stripes while freefalling through the air, involved a "proud American flag." Looking at how it was bungled, pride is not what comes to wind.
