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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MARCH 19, 2013
Although it was not breaking news, the tenth anniversary of Shock & Awe, the start of the Iraq War, was a milestone that was significant enough to attract the volume of coverage to qualify it as Story of the Day. Being feature material, none of the newscasts led with memories of Iraq. NBC kicked off with the only news even that warranted coverage by a correspondent on all three newscasts: the Marine Corps accident in the Nevada desert that killed seven trainees. ABC and CBS, with substitute anchor Bob Schieffer, both compounded their error of Monday, when they chose to turn an essentially local non-story into their national lead. Both returned to the fact that no massacre happened on the campus of the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
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SHOCK & AWE REVISITED Although it was not breaking news, the tenth anniversary of Shock & Awe, the start of the Iraq War, was a milestone that was significant enough to attract the volume of coverage to qualify it as Story of the Day. Being feature material, none of the newscasts led with memories of Iraq. NBC kicked off with the only news even that warranted coverage by a correspondent on all three newscasts: the Marine Corps accident in the Nevada desert that killed seven trainees. ABC and CBS, with substitute anchor Bob Schieffer, both compounded their error of Monday, when they chose to turn an essentially local non-story into their national lead. Both returned to the fact that no massacre happened on the campus of the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
The element that translated the suicide of a student in his UCF dormitory into national material, was the video supplied by the campus police as they responded to a 911 call from Arabo Babokhani, his freaked-out roommate. The police had helmet-cameras running as they searched through evacuated corridors until they found James Seevakumaran's body, his bucket list for a mass shooting unfulfilled. CBS' Mark Strassmann and ABC's Matt Gutman both narrated the helmetcam footage from Florida.
NBC's Miguel Almaguer and CBS' John Blackstone were both at the gates of the massive Hawthorne Army Depot near Reno where USMC training in Afghan-style desert conditions had gone so wrong. A malfunctioning 60mm mortar was apparently the cause of the deaths. ABC's infatuation with its Virtual View graphics reached ridiculous proportions when Martha Raddatz' report from Washington showed us a computer-animated depiction of the training session, even though she had stock footage from 2010 of the same caliber mortar actually being fired.
Again, at ABC, as on Friday, imagined virtuality trumps videotaped actuality.
The three features revisiting the Iraq War took different angles: ABC's Bob Woodruff, himself brain-damaged in a battlefield injury, focused on disabled American veterans; NBC's Richard Engel examined the lasting damage to Iraq itself; without mentioning the al-Qaeda leader by name, David Martin, CBS' man at the Pentagon, implicitly compared a failed pre-war CIA mission to kill Saddam Hussein with its later, successful manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Luis Rueda hatched the CIA plot to assassinate Saddam using bunker-busting bombs dropped from Stealth fighters on his hideout in the countryside at Dora Farms. Rueda's intelligence was wrong. The farmhouse had no bunker.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS ABC's enthusiasm for lavishing free positive publicity on the Roman church has waned more quickly than that of its rivals. CBS and NBC have both filed daily since the election of Francis I. ABC skipped Friday and now Tuesday, merely voicing over video of his inaugural mass. For a summary of the proceedings, see NBC's Anne Thompson and CBS' Allen Pizzey.
No, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden assured a House panel: the agency has nothing better to suggest than prayer to prevent a meteor from hitting a city. No, Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) agreed, the federal government does not have Bruce Willis in reserve to blow an asteroid off course. So what did Stephanie Gosk do on NBC to illustrate this lack of prevention? She showed its fictionalized existence, courtesy of a clip of Willis himself. Fantasy star wars are, after all, more visually exciting than real committee hearings.
Karen Bartlett, aged 53, has a horrible tale to tell, blinded and mutilated by an adverse reaction to a generic prescription painkiller. ABC had Linzie Janis cover her case from New England, where a second patient lost his intestine after taking a generic. CBS treated it as a Supreme Court story, with legal eagle Jan Crawford explaining the arguments on immunity for pharmaceutical generics, pro-and-con. NBC skipped Bartlett's lawsuit.
Each of the networks filed a feature about school days -- but look how different they were in tone:
On CBS, Ben Tracy introduced us to the daunting START (School Threat Assessment and Response Team) of the Mental Health Department of Los Angeles County. It monitors the 50 students in the unified school system most likely to blow their classmates away.
On NBC, its Stories of Progress series took us to the Miami-Dade School District, where the lack of funding for physical education has led to innovation. Rehema Ellis showed us kids kayaking, stationary bicycling, rock climbing, dancing videogames.
And which school has the coolest crossing guard? An elementary school in Silver Spring Md, that's who. ABC's David Kerley shows us the $15K-a-year, 6'5", 58-year-old, who now blows his own whistle.
The element that translated the suicide of a student in his UCF dormitory into national material, was the video supplied by the campus police as they responded to a 911 call from Arabo Babokhani, his freaked-out roommate. The police had helmet-cameras running as they searched through evacuated corridors until they found James Seevakumaran's body, his bucket list for a mass shooting unfulfilled. CBS' Mark Strassmann and ABC's Matt Gutman both narrated the helmetcam footage from Florida.
NBC's Miguel Almaguer and CBS' John Blackstone were both at the gates of the massive Hawthorne Army Depot near Reno where USMC training in Afghan-style desert conditions had gone so wrong. A malfunctioning 60mm mortar was apparently the cause of the deaths. ABC's infatuation with its Virtual View graphics reached ridiculous proportions when Martha Raddatz' report from Washington showed us a computer-animated depiction of the training session, even though she had stock footage from 2010 of the same caliber mortar actually being fired.
Again, at ABC, as on Friday, imagined virtuality trumps videotaped actuality.
The three features revisiting the Iraq War took different angles: ABC's Bob Woodruff, himself brain-damaged in a battlefield injury, focused on disabled American veterans; NBC's Richard Engel examined the lasting damage to Iraq itself; without mentioning the al-Qaeda leader by name, David Martin, CBS' man at the Pentagon, implicitly compared a failed pre-war CIA mission to kill Saddam Hussein with its later, successful manhunt for Osama bin Laden. Luis Rueda hatched the CIA plot to assassinate Saddam using bunker-busting bombs dropped from Stealth fighters on his hideout in the countryside at Dora Farms. Rueda's intelligence was wrong. The farmhouse had no bunker.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS ABC's enthusiasm for lavishing free positive publicity on the Roman church has waned more quickly than that of its rivals. CBS and NBC have both filed daily since the election of Francis I. ABC skipped Friday and now Tuesday, merely voicing over video of his inaugural mass. For a summary of the proceedings, see NBC's Anne Thompson and CBS' Allen Pizzey.
No, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden assured a House panel: the agency has nothing better to suggest than prayer to prevent a meteor from hitting a city. No, Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) agreed, the federal government does not have Bruce Willis in reserve to blow an asteroid off course. So what did Stephanie Gosk do on NBC to illustrate this lack of prevention? She showed its fictionalized existence, courtesy of a clip of Willis himself. Fantasy star wars are, after all, more visually exciting than real committee hearings.
Karen Bartlett, aged 53, has a horrible tale to tell, blinded and mutilated by an adverse reaction to a generic prescription painkiller. ABC had Linzie Janis cover her case from New England, where a second patient lost his intestine after taking a generic. CBS treated it as a Supreme Court story, with legal eagle Jan Crawford explaining the arguments on immunity for pharmaceutical generics, pro-and-con. NBC skipped Bartlett's lawsuit.
Each of the networks filed a feature about school days -- but look how different they were in tone:
On CBS, Ben Tracy introduced us to the daunting START (School Threat Assessment and Response Team) of the Mental Health Department of Los Angeles County. It monitors the 50 students in the unified school system most likely to blow their classmates away.
On NBC, its Stories of Progress series took us to the Miami-Dade School District, where the lack of funding for physical education has led to innovation. Rehema Ellis showed us kids kayaking, stationary bicycling, rock climbing, dancing videogames.
And which school has the coolest crossing guard? An elementary school in Silver Spring Md, that's who. ABC's David Kerley shows us the $15K-a-year, 6'5", 58-year-old, who now blows his own whistle.
