 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 13, 2013
ABC may have overlooked the Internal Revenue Service scandal when it broke on Friday but after watching all weekend as it gathered steam, it joined the unanimous verdict. All three newscasts led with the IRS picking on the Tea Party, making it the Story of the Day. NBC's Lisa Myers gave us a preview of the report by the Inspector General of the Treasury Department into IRS scrutiny of 300 different tax-exempt applications. CBS offered a twofer: Wyatt Andrews traveled to Richmond to get examples of the taxman's scrutiny of the Tea Party in Virginia and Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill traced the start of the Ways & Means Committee's response to Tea Party complaints to early in 2011, soon after Republicans regained power. ABC gave the story to Jonathan Karl at the White House.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 13, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
IRS CHECKS WHETHER TEA PARTY IS FOR SOCIAL WELFARE OR FOR POLITICS ABC may have overlooked the Internal Revenue Service scandal when it broke on Friday but after watching all weekend as it gathered steam, it joined the unanimous verdict. All three newscasts led with the IRS picking on the Tea Party, making it the Story of the Day. NBC's Lisa Myers gave us a preview of the report by the Inspector General of the Treasury Department into IRS scrutiny of 300 different tax-exempt applications. CBS offered a twofer: Wyatt Andrews traveled to Richmond to get examples of the taxman's scrutiny of the Tea Party in Virginia and Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill traced the start of the Ways & Means Committee's response to Tea Party complaints to early in 2011, soon after Republicans regained power. ABC gave the story to Jonathan Karl at the White House.
As for the other travails of the Obama Administration, Tom Costello on NBC covered the Justice Department's clandestine inspection of two-months' worth of telephone records at the Associated Press. This time last year, news broke that a CIA spy had infiltrated an al-Qaeda bombmaking cell in Yemen. This is how the network newscasts covered the spy at the time; here is the foiled plot. The feds are now investigating how that secret leaked to AP.
As for the State Department, accused of organizing a cover-up of the fact that it was an Islamist militia that attacked its Benghazi Consulate last September, two of the three White House correspondents covered Barack Obama's sarcastic defense of his diplomats: Chuck Todd on NBC and Bill Plante on CBS. Plante's report consisted of extensive Presidential soundbites. Todd offered unusual hat-tips to the competition, using soundbites from FOX News Channel and from CBS' Face the Nation.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS A pair of sensational stories has been notoriously undercovered in recent weeks: the collapse of the apparel sweatshop in Bangladesh, and the murder trial of the abortion doctor in inner city Philadelphia. So this was make-good time. All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to the guilty verdict against Dr Kermit Gosnell on capital infanticide charges. NBC's Rehema Ellis confined herself to the details of the case. Both Michelle Miller on CBS and Nightline anchor Terry Moran on ABC widened their reporting to put the case in the context of the pro-life/pro-choice abortion rights debate. As for the aftermath of the catastrophe near Dhaka that killed more than 1,100 workers (average monthly pay $37), NBC's Stephanie Gosk offered free publicity to Elizabeth Cline and her book Overdressed, which dubs cut-price clothing imports "fast fashion" on an analogy with fast food.
A pair of sensational stories has been notoriously overcovered in recent weeks: the bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line, and the decade-long captivity of a trio of Cleveland women. From Cleveland, CBS' Dean Reynolds sat down with Jennifer Daunch, the police dispatcher who orchestrated the raid that freed the women, and ABC's Alex Perez re-ran soundbites from CNN's exclusive sitdown with Onil and Pedro Castro, whose brother is charged with the abduction. From Boston, CBS' in-house ex-cop John Miller visited the hospital bed of Richard Donohue, the policeman who was wounded in the Watertown firefight that killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Next, CBS will be selling tickets to the policeman's ball.
CBS' Mark Strassmann had footage of the Mothers Day Parade shooting in New Orleans that wounded 19 marchers via a surveillance camera. It is riveting -- but neither of the other two newscasts gave it a mention.
When Steve Brill published his acclaimed TIME expose about dysfunctional pricing in the healthcare system in February, he kicked the door open to countless consumer watchdog stories. So far ABC's Real Money series has seized the opportunity. As she did in March, Paula Faris teams up with Michelle Katz, author of Healthcare for Less…. This time they demonstrate that there is no such thing as a market price for tonsil surgery.
Look at this playlist and you will see that the network newscasts love to combine heroism, disability and sport. Profiles of military veterans disabled by combat wounds are routinely painted through the continuing athleticism of their broken bodies. So the paralympic-style Warrior Games in Colorado Springs were a no-brainer for NBC's Mike Taibbi to cover, and when a celebrity British royal turned up as cheerleader, well that was just catnip.
Neither story is really important, but both provided eyecatching video of nature's vandalism. Ayman Mohyeldin on NBC takes us to the wine country of northern California to show the ground mysteriously giving way, cracking homes open. Ginger Zee on ABC takes us to Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota (yup, the land of a thousand lakes) to show us the crackling and tinkling of heaving ice.
There was no evidence of actual journalism being practiced in David Muir's report on Barbara Walters' countdown to her retirement next year -- but there was plenty of ABC News office politics. Watch, and diagnose the Disney power dynamics between Muir, Walters, Diane Sawyer, and Bob Iger. By the way, in Muir's thumbnail of Walters' bio he jumps from ABC Evening News straight to The View with no mention of the intervening 20/20, which Muir happens to anchor now, himself. What did he mean by that omission?
As for the other travails of the Obama Administration, Tom Costello on NBC covered the Justice Department's clandestine inspection of two-months' worth of telephone records at the Associated Press. This time last year, news broke that a CIA spy had infiltrated an al-Qaeda bombmaking cell in Yemen. This is how the network newscasts covered the spy at the time; here is the foiled plot. The feds are now investigating how that secret leaked to AP.
As for the State Department, accused of organizing a cover-up of the fact that it was an Islamist militia that attacked its Benghazi Consulate last September, two of the three White House correspondents covered Barack Obama's sarcastic defense of his diplomats: Chuck Todd on NBC and Bill Plante on CBS. Plante's report consisted of extensive Presidential soundbites. Todd offered unusual hat-tips to the competition, using soundbites from FOX News Channel and from CBS' Face the Nation.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS A pair of sensational stories has been notoriously undercovered in recent weeks: the collapse of the apparel sweatshop in Bangladesh, and the murder trial of the abortion doctor in inner city Philadelphia. So this was make-good time. All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to the guilty verdict against Dr Kermit Gosnell on capital infanticide charges. NBC's Rehema Ellis confined herself to the details of the case. Both Michelle Miller on CBS and Nightline anchor Terry Moran on ABC widened their reporting to put the case in the context of the pro-life/pro-choice abortion rights debate. As for the aftermath of the catastrophe near Dhaka that killed more than 1,100 workers (average monthly pay $37), NBC's Stephanie Gosk offered free publicity to Elizabeth Cline and her book Overdressed, which dubs cut-price clothing imports "fast fashion" on an analogy with fast food.
A pair of sensational stories has been notoriously overcovered in recent weeks: the bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line, and the decade-long captivity of a trio of Cleveland women. From Cleveland, CBS' Dean Reynolds sat down with Jennifer Daunch, the police dispatcher who orchestrated the raid that freed the women, and ABC's Alex Perez re-ran soundbites from CNN's exclusive sitdown with Onil and Pedro Castro, whose brother is charged with the abduction. From Boston, CBS' in-house ex-cop John Miller visited the hospital bed of Richard Donohue, the policeman who was wounded in the Watertown firefight that killed Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Next, CBS will be selling tickets to the policeman's ball.
CBS' Mark Strassmann had footage of the Mothers Day Parade shooting in New Orleans that wounded 19 marchers via a surveillance camera. It is riveting -- but neither of the other two newscasts gave it a mention.
When Steve Brill published his acclaimed TIME expose about dysfunctional pricing in the healthcare system in February, he kicked the door open to countless consumer watchdog stories. So far ABC's Real Money series has seized the opportunity. As she did in March, Paula Faris teams up with Michelle Katz, author of Healthcare for Less…. This time they demonstrate that there is no such thing as a market price for tonsil surgery.
Look at this playlist and you will see that the network newscasts love to combine heroism, disability and sport. Profiles of military veterans disabled by combat wounds are routinely painted through the continuing athleticism of their broken bodies. So the paralympic-style Warrior Games in Colorado Springs were a no-brainer for NBC's Mike Taibbi to cover, and when a celebrity British royal turned up as cheerleader, well that was just catnip.
Neither story is really important, but both provided eyecatching video of nature's vandalism. Ayman Mohyeldin on NBC takes us to the wine country of northern California to show the ground mysteriously giving way, cracking homes open. Ginger Zee on ABC takes us to Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota (yup, the land of a thousand lakes) to show us the crackling and tinkling of heaving ice.
There was no evidence of actual journalism being practiced in David Muir's report on Barbara Walters' countdown to her retirement next year -- but there was plenty of ABC News office politics. Watch, and diagnose the Disney power dynamics between Muir, Walters, Diane Sawyer, and Bob Iger. By the way, in Muir's thumbnail of Walters' bio he jumps from ABC Evening News straight to The View with no mention of the intervening 20/20, which Muir happens to anchor now, himself. What did he mean by that omission?
