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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 10, 2013
For the third straight day, the lobbying campaign to persuade the Senate to tighten gun control legislation made the lead spot on one or other of the networks' newscasts. Monday, ABC's Jonathan Karl led with President Barack Obama's rally in Connecticut. Tuesday, CBS' Nancy Cordes led with the bereaved lobbyists from Connecticut working Capitol Hill. Now NBC's Kelly O'Donnell leads with a legislative compromise to require background checks for those seeking to purchase a weapon at a gun show. In fact both NBC and CBS led with the compromise, crafted by Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania. So the gun control debate was Story of the Day. ABC led with Bob Woodruff from Seoul, where they are in an emergency pre-war state of Watchcon-2, still waiting for North Korea to testfire its Musudan missile.
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GUN CONTROL PR PUSH PAYS DIVIDENDS For the third straight day, the lobbying campaign to persuade the Senate to tighten gun control legislation made the lead spot on one or other of the networks' newscasts. Monday, ABC's Jonathan Karl led with President Barack Obama's rally in Connecticut. Tuesday, CBS' Nancy Cordes led with the bereaved lobbyists from Connecticut working Capitol Hill. Now NBC's Kelly O'Donnell leads with a legislative compromise to require background checks for those seeking to purchase a weapon at a gun show. In fact both NBC and CBS led with the compromise, crafted by Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Republican Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania. So the gun control debate was Story of the Day. ABC led with Bob Woodruff from Seoul, where they are in an emergency pre-war state of Watchcon-2, still waiting for North Korea to testfire its Musudan missile.
The Manchin-Toomey team was covered by the Congressional correspondents of NBC and CBS, Kelly O'Donnell and Nancy Cordes respectively. ABC went to Jonathan Karl at the White House (at the tail of the David Muir videostream), where less progress seemed evident. Karl pointed out that proposals to ban assault weapons and to limit the size of bullet magazines had failed to attract majorities, and that the House posed a bigger obstacle to legislation than the Senate anyway.
For backgrounders on background checks, see CBS' Chip Reid on the flaws in the FBI's mental health database (a point that ABC's Jonathan Karl made in February); and ABC's David Muir as he recycled an expose he filed five years ago with Omar Samaha, the brother of a student slain in the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007. Samaha had used ABC's cash to buy weapons at a Virginia gun show, no questions asked.
NBC decided to air an excerpt from the speech by First Lady Michelle Obama, denouncing gun violence, and paying tribute to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl killed in a Chicago park in January.
Meanwhile from Seoul, ABC continued to use cartoon images to depict the threat of battle. Martha Raddatz has already shown Virtual View computer animations of nuclear USAF stealth bombers attacked the North and the North's nuclear-tipped ICBMs headed for Alaska. Now Woodruff animates the imaginary take-off of the never-before-tested red-tipped Musudan.
Richard Engel filed a longer overview on the Korean tensions for NBC. As far as Engel is concerned, Kim Jong Un is gaining the upper hand with his bluster. His nuclear bomb has turned his small sanctions-bound dictatorship into a regional power; and he has taught nations such as the Islamic Republic of Iran how useful it is to develop the bomb. Look at the dancing in the streets of Pyongyang: a state-sponsored mass waltz.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS Besides guns, Congress is also getting lobbied on immigration. NBC's Tom Costello inserted a cross-promotional soundbite from MSNBC's The Daily Rundown as he attended the march to Capitol Hill with its bilingual call for an offer of citizenship to those foreigners living here without green cards. ABC's Jim Avila journeyed to the deserted border ranchlands of rural Arivaca to show video supplied by secureborderintel.org of "hundreds" of people crossing the rickety fence that marks the line between southern Arizona and northern Mexico.
Carter Evans landed his scoop in February when he was on the scene for the shootout and cabin fire that killed Christopher Dorner, the revenge-minded former LAPD cop. Now CBS' Evans follows up on the dispute over who qualifies for the reward: see the case made by Karen and Jim Reynolds.
Justin Tribble was making a serious point about the Prosperity Gospel, preached by the Rev Joel Osteen, when he posed as the televangelist rejecting his Christian faith. Osteen denied the charge, yet forgave Tribble. So why did ABC's David Wright call this theological dispute a hoax, and predict that it might end in a lawsuit?
Contrasting stories aired on CBS about children from the developing world ending up in this country. The first saw Holly Williams travel to the village of Anand in India, where a reproductive clinic provides poor local women to act as surrogate mothers for rich couples' fertilized eggs. Williams' colleague Clarissa Ward filed a similar story from Hyderabad three years ago, when Ward was at ABC. Anand is cheaper, at $25K per pregnancy, compared with $45K. The second was about a war orphan from Sierra Leone, adopted in America by the DePrince family. Michaela DePrince, now 18, is a ballerina in the Dance Theater of Harlem. Michelle Miller introduced her to us.
This is how Amy Robach demonstrated in January, as part of ABC's Real Money series, how households are wasteful with the food they buy. This is how Robach recycled the highlights of that Real Money report, to illustrate the same statistics from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Too many critters! The primer on the 17-year mating cycles of cicadas by NBC's Anne Thompson was informative enough, but it really should have aired in the newscast's soft-focused closing slot. Thompson could not occupy that slot because it was taken by Kevin Tibbles' visit to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago (what is it with NBC and aquarium animals? See Katy Tur and her walrus at Coney Island just last week). And ABC's closer? Steve Osunsami visited the Noah's Ark animal sanctuary in Georgia, where a lion does lie down with a bear and a Bengal tiger.
The Manchin-Toomey team was covered by the Congressional correspondents of NBC and CBS, Kelly O'Donnell and Nancy Cordes respectively. ABC went to Jonathan Karl at the White House (at the tail of the David Muir videostream), where less progress seemed evident. Karl pointed out that proposals to ban assault weapons and to limit the size of bullet magazines had failed to attract majorities, and that the House posed a bigger obstacle to legislation than the Senate anyway.
For backgrounders on background checks, see CBS' Chip Reid on the flaws in the FBI's mental health database (a point that ABC's Jonathan Karl made in February); and ABC's David Muir as he recycled an expose he filed five years ago with Omar Samaha, the brother of a student slain in the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007. Samaha had used ABC's cash to buy weapons at a Virginia gun show, no questions asked.
NBC decided to air an excerpt from the speech by First Lady Michelle Obama, denouncing gun violence, and paying tribute to Hadiya Pendleton, the 15-year-old girl killed in a Chicago park in January.
Meanwhile from Seoul, ABC continued to use cartoon images to depict the threat of battle. Martha Raddatz has already shown Virtual View computer animations of nuclear USAF stealth bombers attacked the North and the North's nuclear-tipped ICBMs headed for Alaska. Now Woodruff animates the imaginary take-off of the never-before-tested red-tipped Musudan.
Richard Engel filed a longer overview on the Korean tensions for NBC. As far as Engel is concerned, Kim Jong Un is gaining the upper hand with his bluster. His nuclear bomb has turned his small sanctions-bound dictatorship into a regional power; and he has taught nations such as the Islamic Republic of Iran how useful it is to develop the bomb. Look at the dancing in the streets of Pyongyang: a state-sponsored mass waltz.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS Besides guns, Congress is also getting lobbied on immigration. NBC's Tom Costello inserted a cross-promotional soundbite from MSNBC's The Daily Rundown as he attended the march to Capitol Hill with its bilingual call for an offer of citizenship to those foreigners living here without green cards. ABC's Jim Avila journeyed to the deserted border ranchlands of rural Arivaca to show video supplied by secureborderintel.org of "hundreds" of people crossing the rickety fence that marks the line between southern Arizona and northern Mexico.
Carter Evans landed his scoop in February when he was on the scene for the shootout and cabin fire that killed Christopher Dorner, the revenge-minded former LAPD cop. Now CBS' Evans follows up on the dispute over who qualifies for the reward: see the case made by Karen and Jim Reynolds.
Justin Tribble was making a serious point about the Prosperity Gospel, preached by the Rev Joel Osteen, when he posed as the televangelist rejecting his Christian faith. Osteen denied the charge, yet forgave Tribble. So why did ABC's David Wright call this theological dispute a hoax, and predict that it might end in a lawsuit?
Contrasting stories aired on CBS about children from the developing world ending up in this country. The first saw Holly Williams travel to the village of Anand in India, where a reproductive clinic provides poor local women to act as surrogate mothers for rich couples' fertilized eggs. Williams' colleague Clarissa Ward filed a similar story from Hyderabad three years ago, when Ward was at ABC. Anand is cheaper, at $25K per pregnancy, compared with $45K. The second was about a war orphan from Sierra Leone, adopted in America by the DePrince family. Michaela DePrince, now 18, is a ballerina in the Dance Theater of Harlem. Michelle Miller introduced her to us.
This is how Amy Robach demonstrated in January, as part of ABC's Real Money series, how households are wasteful with the food they buy. This is how Robach recycled the highlights of that Real Money report, to illustrate the same statistics from the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Too many critters! The primer on the 17-year mating cycles of cicadas by NBC's Anne Thompson was informative enough, but it really should have aired in the newscast's soft-focused closing slot. Thompson could not occupy that slot because it was taken by Kevin Tibbles' visit to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago (what is it with NBC and aquarium animals? See Katy Tur and her walrus at Coney Island just last week). And ABC's closer? Steve Osunsami visited the Noah's Ark animal sanctuary in Georgia, where a lion does lie down with a bear and a Bengal tiger.
