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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM APRIL 3, 2013
If it had not been for a single soundbite by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel -- referring to North Korea as "a real and clear danger" -- the day's news agenda would have been irredeemably flippant. All three newscasts ran the Hagel quote, but only NBC chose to lead with it; and after that, NBC filled its newscast with fluff. CBS decided to focus on crime, kicking off with Bill Plante's almost-content-free coverage of President Barack Obama's lobbying for gun control legislation. ABC both started and ended with the trivial topic of college basketball. It turned out that ABC's lead, the firing of Mike Wise, the head coach at Rutgers University, was the lightweight Story of this lightweight Day.
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HAGEL’S FIG LEAF If it had not been for a single soundbite by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel -- referring to North Korea as "a real and clear danger" -- the day's news agenda would have been irredeemably flippant. All three newscasts ran the Hagel quote, but only NBC chose to lead with it; and after that, NBC filled its newscast with fluff. CBS decided to focus on crime, kicking off with Bill Plante's almost-content-free coverage of President Barack Obama's lobbying for gun control legislation. ABC both started and ended with the trivial topic of college basketball. It turned out that ABC's lead, the firing of Mike Wise, the head coach at Rutgers University, was the lightweight Story of this lightweight Day.
All three newscasts covered the North Korean story but, Hagel's soundbite apart, they chose divergent angles. NBC's Richard Engel, leading off his newscast from Seoul for the third straight day, went nuclear, with excellent ICBM-filled stock footage of precision-marching by North Korea's military. ABC's Martha Raddatz, as she likes to do, landed a sitdown with a general: Tuesday she was at the DMZ with Gen James Thurman; now she brings us Gen Jan-Marc Jouas.
How can you tell the difference between North Korea and South Korea? Raddatz tells us: one is the place with no trees; the other has taller men.
For the Washington angle on the Korean peninsula, go to NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' David Martin at the Pentagon. Mitchell did little except reiterate the main points of Engel's reporting from Seoul. Martin chose to emphasize the closure of the cross-border Kaesang Industrial Park -- and he warned that next week the United States and South Korea would ratchet up military maneuvers one more level, with amphibious landings and live-fire exercises. So this drumbeat can keep going.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS Elizabeth Palmer of CBS filed the second part of her sitdown with Gen Joseph Dunford (part one here) in Kabul. See the general's undisguised disdain for President Hamit Karzai and you will realize why diplomats are diplomats and soldiers are soldiers.
The crime spree on CBS was as follows:
Gun control: CBS has committed itself so much more heavily than its rivals to this debate since the New Year that it is no surprise that it should assign White House correspondent Bill Plante to President Obama's speech on the issue in Denver. But there was no there there. It certainly did not deserve to be a lead story.
Sandy Hook: ABC anchor Diane Sawyer landed her six-minute follow-up Exclusive Tuesday; now CBS anchor Scott Pelley assembles a focus group of bereaved kin for 60 Minutes. Watch for this soundbite: "It feels like it just happened a moment ago and yet it has been years since I saw my son."
Assassinations: in-house ex-cop John Miller really did not have very much more on Monday's Story of the Day, the murder of the District Attorney of Kaufman County. He was astonished, however, at the turn in the Aryan Brotherhood case that Bob Orr covered on Tuesday. On ABC, Pierre Thomas also tried to keep the assassination story going, with news from Mingo County WVa -- but that was a stretch too.
False Imprisonment: following up on a 60 Minutes expose of injustice in the Pioneer Hotel arson in Tucson in 1970, Michelle Miller filed on the release of Louis Taylor after 41 years behind bars Tuesday; now Bill Whitaker sits down with him as he insists on his innocence of multiple murders, yet explains why his new plea was no contest, meaning that technically he is still guilty.
Separately, on ABC, Amy Robach cross-promoted her 20/20 coverage of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints with an Investigation into the abiding influence of Prophet Warren Jeffs that was almost indistinguishable from two previous reports (here and here) last November. What is new is that Robach has now been assured by state prison officials in Texas that there is nothing wrong with Jeffs' continuing to issue teachings to his followers from behind bars. Robach tells us that they are 8,000 strong, living "in this town" -- no direction known.
The fluff parade on NBC was as follows:
Cross-Promotion: filing from beautiful downtown Burbank, Kristen Dahlgren cobbled together clips from NBC's Late Night, NBC's Tonight Show, NBC's Saturday Night Live, NBC's Today and a West Side Story spoof video featuring NBC's Jimmy Fallon and NBC's Jay Leno.
Vanity: NBC's in-house physician Dr Nancy jumped on research in Open a medical journal from Britain, to allow her to run clips from baldness-remedy infomercials -- spray-ons, lotions, lasers -- and from the classic sitcom Seinfeld. I wonder which network used to air that show.
Nostalgia: Kevin Tibbles sat down with Martin Cooper, the scientist who developed the first cellular telephone for Motorola, which made its maiden call exactly 40 years ago. Tibbles illustrated his story with clips from Get Smart, the one-time NBC sitcom, and Star Trek, the one-time NBC science fiction drama, and Wall Street, the movie starring Michael Douglas, the announcer for NBC Nightly News, a cellphone-using NBC News producer from the 80s, and Saturday Night Live. That's on NBC, don't you know?
As for sports on ABC:
Rutgers University: ABC could at least take reflected credit for the video that ended Mike Wise's career as basketball coach. The video was first aired publicly on ABC's sibling network, ESPN. Wise's abuse of his players included shying balls at them and taunting them with homo-sexist insults: "You f**king fairy," was how NBC's Anne Thompson (not posted online) quoted him; "You ******* fa***," was what he said, according to Seth Doane on CBS; "You (expletive) fairy," was Gio Benitez' version on ABC. Benitez did make the salient point that Rutgers was the university where that sex-cam suicide happened: gay-bashing bullying had been explicitly banned there since 2010.
University of Louisville: Good Morning America's Josh Elliott closed ABC's newscast with a sitdown with Kevin Ware, the point guard who shattered his shin during the March Madness tournament. In an effort to pay tribute to a mother's love, Elliott brought her in to be next to her hobbled son. The gesture would have seemed more sincere if Elliott had checked to see that he got her name right: the graphic says Lisa Ware; he introduced her as Lisa Junior.
All three newscasts covered the North Korean story but, Hagel's soundbite apart, they chose divergent angles. NBC's Richard Engel, leading off his newscast from Seoul for the third straight day, went nuclear, with excellent ICBM-filled stock footage of precision-marching by North Korea's military. ABC's Martha Raddatz, as she likes to do, landed a sitdown with a general: Tuesday she was at the DMZ with Gen James Thurman; now she brings us Gen Jan-Marc Jouas.
How can you tell the difference between North Korea and South Korea? Raddatz tells us: one is the place with no trees; the other has taller men.
For the Washington angle on the Korean peninsula, go to NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' David Martin at the Pentagon. Mitchell did little except reiterate the main points of Engel's reporting from Seoul. Martin chose to emphasize the closure of the cross-border Kaesang Industrial Park -- and he warned that next week the United States and South Korea would ratchet up military maneuvers one more level, with amphibious landings and live-fire exercises. So this drumbeat can keep going.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS Elizabeth Palmer of CBS filed the second part of her sitdown with Gen Joseph Dunford (part one here) in Kabul. See the general's undisguised disdain for President Hamit Karzai and you will realize why diplomats are diplomats and soldiers are soldiers.
The crime spree on CBS was as follows:
Gun control: CBS has committed itself so much more heavily than its rivals to this debate since the New Year that it is no surprise that it should assign White House correspondent Bill Plante to President Obama's speech on the issue in Denver. But there was no there there. It certainly did not deserve to be a lead story.
Sandy Hook: ABC anchor Diane Sawyer landed her six-minute follow-up Exclusive Tuesday; now CBS anchor Scott Pelley assembles a focus group of bereaved kin for 60 Minutes. Watch for this soundbite: "It feels like it just happened a moment ago and yet it has been years since I saw my son."
Assassinations: in-house ex-cop John Miller really did not have very much more on Monday's Story of the Day, the murder of the District Attorney of Kaufman County. He was astonished, however, at the turn in the Aryan Brotherhood case that Bob Orr covered on Tuesday. On ABC, Pierre Thomas also tried to keep the assassination story going, with news from Mingo County WVa -- but that was a stretch too.
False Imprisonment: following up on a 60 Minutes expose of injustice in the Pioneer Hotel arson in Tucson in 1970, Michelle Miller filed on the release of Louis Taylor after 41 years behind bars Tuesday; now Bill Whitaker sits down with him as he insists on his innocence of multiple murders, yet explains why his new plea was no contest, meaning that technically he is still guilty.
Separately, on ABC, Amy Robach cross-promoted her 20/20 coverage of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints with an Investigation into the abiding influence of Prophet Warren Jeffs that was almost indistinguishable from two previous reports (here and here) last November. What is new is that Robach has now been assured by state prison officials in Texas that there is nothing wrong with Jeffs' continuing to issue teachings to his followers from behind bars. Robach tells us that they are 8,000 strong, living "in this town" -- no direction known.
The fluff parade on NBC was as follows:
Cross-Promotion: filing from beautiful downtown Burbank, Kristen Dahlgren cobbled together clips from NBC's Late Night, NBC's Tonight Show, NBC's Saturday Night Live, NBC's Today and a West Side Story spoof video featuring NBC's Jimmy Fallon and NBC's Jay Leno.
Vanity: NBC's in-house physician Dr Nancy jumped on research in Open a medical journal from Britain, to allow her to run clips from baldness-remedy infomercials -- spray-ons, lotions, lasers -- and from the classic sitcom Seinfeld. I wonder which network used to air that show.
Nostalgia: Kevin Tibbles sat down with Martin Cooper, the scientist who developed the first cellular telephone for Motorola, which made its maiden call exactly 40 years ago. Tibbles illustrated his story with clips from Get Smart, the one-time NBC sitcom, and Star Trek, the one-time NBC science fiction drama, and Wall Street, the movie starring Michael Douglas, the announcer for NBC Nightly News, a cellphone-using NBC News producer from the 80s, and Saturday Night Live. That's on NBC, don't you know?
As for sports on ABC:
Rutgers University: ABC could at least take reflected credit for the video that ended Mike Wise's career as basketball coach. The video was first aired publicly on ABC's sibling network, ESPN. Wise's abuse of his players included shying balls at them and taunting them with homo-sexist insults: "You f**king fairy," was how NBC's Anne Thompson (not posted online) quoted him; "You ******* fa***," was what he said, according to Seth Doane on CBS; "You (expletive) fairy," was Gio Benitez' version on ABC. Benitez did make the salient point that Rutgers was the university where that sex-cam suicide happened: gay-bashing bullying had been explicitly banned there since 2010.
University of Louisville: Good Morning America's Josh Elliott closed ABC's newscast with a sitdown with Kevin Ware, the point guard who shattered his shin during the March Madness tournament. In an effort to pay tribute to a mother's love, Elliott brought her in to be next to her hobbled son. The gesture would have seemed more sincere if Elliott had checked to see that he got her name right: the graphic says Lisa Ware; he introduced her as Lisa Junior.
