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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 2, 2013
A assortment of stories concerning guns and schools set the tone for the day's newscasts -- although no single clear theme emerged. The Story of the Day turned out to be a single six-minute Exclusive filed by ABC anchor Diane Sawyer on the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last December. CBS chose to lead with a separate school story: the surrender of 35 public school educators in Atlanta charged with conspiracy to fix their students' standardized test scores. NBC, on the other hand, led again with the crisis on the Korean peninsula and, this time, ABC did so too.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR APRIL 2, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
GUNS & SCHOOLS A assortment of stories concerning guns and schools set the tone for the day's newscasts -- although no single clear theme emerged. The Story of the Day turned out to be a single six-minute Exclusive filed by ABC anchor Diane Sawyer on the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last December. CBS chose to lead with a separate school story: the surrender of 35 public school educators in Atlanta charged with conspiracy to fix their students' standardized test scores. NBC, on the other hand, led again with the crisis on the Korean peninsula and, this time, ABC did so too.
As for guns and schools…
The National Rifle Association sponsored a program called the National School Shield, which proposed installing armed personnel in every schoolyard in order to deter gun violence: NBC's Pete Williams and ABC's Jonathan Karl accorded it publicity.
The state legislature in Connecticut is close to finalizing a law to ban assault weapons and restrict extra-large bullet magazines: CBS' Jim Axelrod paid tribute to the bipartisan compromise crafted by Brendan Sharkey, Democrat, and Larry Cafero, Republican.
CBS has covered the gun control debate most heavily all year, with more correspondent packages than its rivals combined (31 vs NBC 15, ABC 6). True to form, Nancy Cordes followed Axelrod's report with a visit to the Mean Streets of Baltimore, escorted by its pessimistic pro-gun-control Congressman Elijah Cummings.
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer landed a breathtaking one-on-one with first-grade Sandy Hook teacher Kristin Roig on the day of the massacre back in December. It was only right that Roig should now use Sawyer's airtime as a platform to publicize her newly-launched education charity classes4classes. Sawyer labeled the new interview Exclusive as if it were revealing something sensational -- but it could never replicate the intensity of the original.
With its Education Nation features on topics such as charter schools, and its dedicated education correspondent Rehema Ellis, and its commitment to tracking the federal No Child Left Behind program, and its perennial leadership in Education coverage generally, you would think that NBC would be all over the standardized test cheating scandal in Atlanta. No. CBS' Mark Strassmann and ABC's Steve Osunsami covered it. No Ellis on NBC…not even a mention in passing.
Korea was NBC's lead for the third straight weekday: Friday had Ian Williams from Boengnyeong Island; Monday, Richard Engel from Seoul on the military build-up by the Pentagon; now, Engel again on Pyongyang's decision to restart its plutonium processing plant at Yongbyon. Engel's colleague Andrea Mitchell followed up with ridicule for Secretary of State John Kerry's bluster that the United States would never allow a nuclear North Korea -- that horse had already bolted, when Bill Clinton was President!
Meanwhile, ABC's second Exclusive of the day featured Martha Raddatz doing what she does, hang out with military brass. When she reported on Afghanistan, last Friday, it was on the point of view of Gen Joseph Dunford. Now she visits the DMZ in Korea -- and looks at the North Koreans on the other side of the line through the eyes of Gen James Thurman.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS For every general officer that is a notch on Martha Raddatz' belt at ABC, Elizabeth Palmer at CBS has a match. Palmer moved on from Gen Tony Thomas in Afghanistan last week to her turn with Fightin' Joe Dunford. Last week, Thomas' terminology for peace was "war termination." What does Dunford call withdrawing troops? "Retrograding."
The Brain Initiative looks like the federal government's contribution to Charlie Rose's monthly The Brain Series on PBS. Sure enough, CBS' Bill Plante had a sitdown with Rose's co-host, Nobel laureate Eric Kandel. Funnily enough, of the brain functions mentioned in Plante's package, there was neurology and cognition -- but no psychiatry (and no mention of Rose, either).
Spring is here and NBC's in-house physician Dr Nancy worries about the sniffles. She usually does.
The economy is getting better and NBC's Tom Costello told us so. No surprise. Of the last eleven packages to be filed on all three newscasts on the recovering state of the macro-economy, all but two have been filed by either NBC's Costello or CBS' Anthony Mason.
It looked like Linsey Davis at ABC had a surefire watercooler story when she found an airline that is changing its fare structure to pay what you weigh: passengers who are twice as heavy pay twice as much. The fly in the ointment was that her example was an obscure polynesian island-hopper, Somoa Air.
The oil spill from a pipeline near Little Rock in Arkansas is just a local story, not worthy of national attention -- yet the crude is heavy and toxic and comes from Canada, just like the proposed contents of the unbuilt pipeline that can make headlines. So Anne Thompson covered the leak for NBC.
Bob Orr offered a sort-of follow-up on CBS to Monday's Story of the Day, the murder -- maybe an assassination -- of District Attorney Mike McClelland of Kaufman County, Texas. Possible suspects include the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist prison gang. Orr had no information to link the gang to the murder -- but he did summarize the federal racketeering case against the gang that was made last November. The brotherhood's ruling council generals are Jive and Slick: that is Charles Lee Roberts and Larry Max Bryan, to you.
CBS was unable to be more celebratory about the release from prison of Louis Taylor, aged 58. Taylor is probably innocent, yet had been convicted at the age of 16 of the murder of 28 people, found guilty of the arson of an hotel in Tucson in 1970. CBS' 60 Minutes, along with Court TV, the cable channel, had championed Taylor's case. Yet, the conditions of his release from prison were that he would not be exonerated of the crime, and that he would waive any lawsuit for wrongful incarceration. So, Michelle Miller was unable to report total vindication.
HBO got a hat tip from NBC's Ron Mott for casting actor Wendall Pierce in The Wire and Treme. Pierce himself was given proper respect in Mott's Making a Difference feature for planting his Sterling Farms supermarkets in the middle of a New Orleans food desert. Well done, Antoine!
As for guns and schools…
The National Rifle Association sponsored a program called the National School Shield, which proposed installing armed personnel in every schoolyard in order to deter gun violence: NBC's Pete Williams and ABC's Jonathan Karl accorded it publicity.
The state legislature in Connecticut is close to finalizing a law to ban assault weapons and restrict extra-large bullet magazines: CBS' Jim Axelrod paid tribute to the bipartisan compromise crafted by Brendan Sharkey, Democrat, and Larry Cafero, Republican.
CBS has covered the gun control debate most heavily all year, with more correspondent packages than its rivals combined (31 vs NBC 15, ABC 6). True to form, Nancy Cordes followed Axelrod's report with a visit to the Mean Streets of Baltimore, escorted by its pessimistic pro-gun-control Congressman Elijah Cummings.
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer landed a breathtaking one-on-one with first-grade Sandy Hook teacher Kristin Roig on the day of the massacre back in December. It was only right that Roig should now use Sawyer's airtime as a platform to publicize her newly-launched education charity classes4classes. Sawyer labeled the new interview Exclusive as if it were revealing something sensational -- but it could never replicate the intensity of the original.
With its Education Nation features on topics such as charter schools, and its dedicated education correspondent Rehema Ellis, and its commitment to tracking the federal No Child Left Behind program, and its perennial leadership in Education coverage generally, you would think that NBC would be all over the standardized test cheating scandal in Atlanta. No. CBS' Mark Strassmann and ABC's Steve Osunsami covered it. No Ellis on NBC…not even a mention in passing.
Korea was NBC's lead for the third straight weekday: Friday had Ian Williams from Boengnyeong Island; Monday, Richard Engel from Seoul on the military build-up by the Pentagon; now, Engel again on Pyongyang's decision to restart its plutonium processing plant at Yongbyon. Engel's colleague Andrea Mitchell followed up with ridicule for Secretary of State John Kerry's bluster that the United States would never allow a nuclear North Korea -- that horse had already bolted, when Bill Clinton was President!
Meanwhile, ABC's second Exclusive of the day featured Martha Raddatz doing what she does, hang out with military brass. When she reported on Afghanistan, last Friday, it was on the point of view of Gen Joseph Dunford. Now she visits the DMZ in Korea -- and looks at the North Koreans on the other side of the line through the eyes of Gen James Thurman.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS For every general officer that is a notch on Martha Raddatz' belt at ABC, Elizabeth Palmer at CBS has a match. Palmer moved on from Gen Tony Thomas in Afghanistan last week to her turn with Fightin' Joe Dunford. Last week, Thomas' terminology for peace was "war termination." What does Dunford call withdrawing troops? "Retrograding."
The Brain Initiative looks like the federal government's contribution to Charlie Rose's monthly The Brain Series on PBS. Sure enough, CBS' Bill Plante had a sitdown with Rose's co-host, Nobel laureate Eric Kandel. Funnily enough, of the brain functions mentioned in Plante's package, there was neurology and cognition -- but no psychiatry (and no mention of Rose, either).
Spring is here and NBC's in-house physician Dr Nancy worries about the sniffles. She usually does.
The economy is getting better and NBC's Tom Costello told us so. No surprise. Of the last eleven packages to be filed on all three newscasts on the recovering state of the macro-economy, all but two have been filed by either NBC's Costello or CBS' Anthony Mason.
It looked like Linsey Davis at ABC had a surefire watercooler story when she found an airline that is changing its fare structure to pay what you weigh: passengers who are twice as heavy pay twice as much. The fly in the ointment was that her example was an obscure polynesian island-hopper, Somoa Air.
The oil spill from a pipeline near Little Rock in Arkansas is just a local story, not worthy of national attention -- yet the crude is heavy and toxic and comes from Canada, just like the proposed contents of the unbuilt pipeline that can make headlines. So Anne Thompson covered the leak for NBC.
Bob Orr offered a sort-of follow-up on CBS to Monday's Story of the Day, the murder -- maybe an assassination -- of District Attorney Mike McClelland of Kaufman County, Texas. Possible suspects include the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas, a white supremacist prison gang. Orr had no information to link the gang to the murder -- but he did summarize the federal racketeering case against the gang that was made last November. The brotherhood's ruling council generals are Jive and Slick: that is Charles Lee Roberts and Larry Max Bryan, to you.
CBS was unable to be more celebratory about the release from prison of Louis Taylor, aged 58. Taylor is probably innocent, yet had been convicted at the age of 16 of the murder of 28 people, found guilty of the arson of an hotel in Tucson in 1970. CBS' 60 Minutes, along with Court TV, the cable channel, had championed Taylor's case. Yet, the conditions of his release from prison were that he would not be exonerated of the crime, and that he would waive any lawsuit for wrongful incarceration. So, Michelle Miller was unable to report total vindication.
HBO got a hat tip from NBC's Ron Mott for casting actor Wendall Pierce in The Wire and Treme. Pierce himself was given proper respect in Mott's Making a Difference feature for planting his Sterling Farms supermarkets in the middle of a New Orleans food desert. Well done, Antoine!
