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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 17, 2013
After a one-day hiatus, during which the networks were distracted by that bright shiny object -- weather porn -- the news agenda righted itself and returned to the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service. For the fourth time this week the IRS was Story of the Day, as Steven Miller, its soon-to-be-ousted Acting Commissioner, testified before a House committee about the vetting of Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status. CBS, for the fourth time this week, led off with the double team of Nancy Cordes and Wyatt Andrews. CBS (27 min v NBC 20, ABC 13) has covered the IRS most heavily all week. ABC kicked off with White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, but decided not to post his report online as a videostream. NBC made the misjudgment of sticking with the twisters in Texas, cross-promoting the Weather Channel, its sibling cable network, as its lead, before turning to the IRS.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 17, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
TAXMAN’S EXPLANATIONS GIVEN SHORT SHRIFT After a one-day hiatus, during which the networks were distracted by that bright shiny object -- weather porn -- the news agenda righted itself and returned to the scandal at the Internal Revenue Service. For the fourth time this week the IRS was Story of the Day, as Steven Miller, its soon-to-be-ousted Acting Commissioner, testified before a House committee about the vetting of Tea Party groups applying for tax-exempt status. CBS, for the fourth time this week, led off with the double team of Nancy Cordes and Wyatt Andrews. CBS (27 min v NBC 20, ABC 13) has covered the IRS most heavily all week. ABC kicked off with White House correspondent Jonathan Karl, but decided not to post his report online as a videostream. NBC made the misjudgment of sticking with the twisters in Texas, cross-promoting the Weather Channel, its sibling cable network, as its lead, before turning to the IRS.
The distinction that Commissioner Miller tried to make as he was being grilled -- that Tea Party applications for 501(c)4 status were grouped together for the sake of consistency and efficiency, not to enable targeting with stricter scrutiny -- was given short shrift. Nancy Cordes at CBS explained Miller's position most open-mindedly. NBC's Lisa Myers continued to use the phrase "targeted for extra scrutiny" even as Miller denied it. ABC's Karl, too, (no link) called it targeting.
In their follow-ups, David Gregory, anchor of NBC's Meet the Press, flat out contradicted Miller's sworn testimony, asserting that "only conservatives were targeted," even as Miller refused to use the t-word and testified that other groups received the same scrutiny that conservatives received. CBS anchor Scott Pelley filed a brief behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inside-the-Beltway techniques of media management, describing how the release of the negative news was orchestrated a week ago.
And CBS' Wyatt Andrews, as he did on Tuesday and Wednesday, kept his eye on the big picture, explaining how the social-welfare definition of the 501(c)4 category has warped out of all recognition. See how the AARP can legally run political ads while enjoying such status.
FRIDAY’S FINDINGS The terrifying twister that touched down in Granbury was illustrated by an anecdote shared by both NBC's Gabe Gutierrez and CBS' Anna Werner: Marjorie Davis was dining with her son and daughter-in-law in her trailer home when it was picked up bodily and dumped more than 200 yards away; mother and son were killed. That cross-promotion for the Weather Channel on NBC was handled by Mike Seidel. ABC's Steve Osunsami offered safety tips for surviving severe storms. Why did he mention outdoor gatherings during graduation season? Because his colleague Ginger Zee filed just such footage a year ago, which Osunsami was happy to recycle.
Since graduation season is in the air, NBC filed extended excerpts from First Lady Michelle Obama's commencement address at Bowie State University in Maryland and Kerry Sanders filed his newscast's closer from the University of Central Florida, as all 36 members of the first graduating class of its brand new medical school head off to their residencies tuition-debt-free.
From England comes research in the online journal Reproductive Biomedicine that constant video monitoring of fertilized human eggs results in a healthier selection for implant for women undergoing In-Vitro Fertilization. NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman had already covered this advance in February so she filed an update and Linsey Davis brought ABC's viewers up to speed. CBS tends to find infertility treatments less newsworthy than the other two newscasts, and again skipped the story. Neither Snyderman nor Davis told us how much extra this shiny new technology will cost.
CBS almost always covers the civil war in Syria more heavily than its rivals, so recent investigations into the use of chemical warfare by NBC's Richard Engel, NBC's Ann Curry, and the BBC's Ian Pannell for ABC, ran contrary to trends. Now, from the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin reestablishes the conventional order, being the only correspondent to cover the delivery of new anti-aircraft and naval missiles from Russia to the Baath regime.
ABC, which is the most domestically-minded of the three newscasts, ventured an international dateline. Lama Hasan filed from France -- but in no way did her story stray from ABC's celebrity-loving beaten track. Hasan was in Cannes for the film festival, where $1m in jewels from the House of Chopard had been stolen from a safe in a Novotel. How did Hasan cover this? With Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief and paparazzi stills of bejeweled actresses on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Which network owns the broadcast rights to the Oscars? ABC.
And that was not ABC's only celebrity story. JJ Abrams, the movie director, was profiled by David Muir as the network's Person of the Week. Muir's publicity whirl included plugs for Jimmy Kimmel, TED talks (a World News favorite), TV's Felicity, Alias, and Lost, the movies Super 8 and Taking Care of Business, and the movie series Star Trek and Star Wars. By my count, that is five out of nine Disney properties. Which network is owned by Disney? ABC.
ABC also loves lottery stories. Just since the beginning of last year, ABC has filed on jackpots 24 separate times (4 by CBS, 9 by NBC). David Wright consulted a FaceBook survey of the motives of lottery gamblers, including a gratuitous clip from his network's Barbara Walters in a seven-year-old interview with a winner. Unusually, CBS found Powerball's $600m prize worthy of attention, assigning Carter Evans to its long lines. Evans demonstrated his inexperience on this beat by calculating the odds that each of us has a 1-in-10m chance of becoming President of the United States. Does anyone know what that means?
Remember the Cleveland captivity story that dominated the headlines for three days last week? CBS' Jim Axelrod contacted the activist group Partners for Women & Justice to get a case history of a battered woman held prisoner by a violent man. Meet Jessica.
The distinction that Commissioner Miller tried to make as he was being grilled -- that Tea Party applications for 501(c)4 status were grouped together for the sake of consistency and efficiency, not to enable targeting with stricter scrutiny -- was given short shrift. Nancy Cordes at CBS explained Miller's position most open-mindedly. NBC's Lisa Myers continued to use the phrase "targeted for extra scrutiny" even as Miller denied it. ABC's Karl, too, (no link) called it targeting.
In their follow-ups, David Gregory, anchor of NBC's Meet the Press, flat out contradicted Miller's sworn testimony, asserting that "only conservatives were targeted," even as Miller refused to use the t-word and testified that other groups received the same scrutiny that conservatives received. CBS anchor Scott Pelley filed a brief behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inside-the-Beltway techniques of media management, describing how the release of the negative news was orchestrated a week ago.
And CBS' Wyatt Andrews, as he did on Tuesday and Wednesday, kept his eye on the big picture, explaining how the social-welfare definition of the 501(c)4 category has warped out of all recognition. See how the AARP can legally run political ads while enjoying such status.
FRIDAY’S FINDINGS The terrifying twister that touched down in Granbury was illustrated by an anecdote shared by both NBC's Gabe Gutierrez and CBS' Anna Werner: Marjorie Davis was dining with her son and daughter-in-law in her trailer home when it was picked up bodily and dumped more than 200 yards away; mother and son were killed. That cross-promotion for the Weather Channel on NBC was handled by Mike Seidel. ABC's Steve Osunsami offered safety tips for surviving severe storms. Why did he mention outdoor gatherings during graduation season? Because his colleague Ginger Zee filed just such footage a year ago, which Osunsami was happy to recycle.
Since graduation season is in the air, NBC filed extended excerpts from First Lady Michelle Obama's commencement address at Bowie State University in Maryland and Kerry Sanders filed his newscast's closer from the University of Central Florida, as all 36 members of the first graduating class of its brand new medical school head off to their residencies tuition-debt-free.
From England comes research in the online journal Reproductive Biomedicine that constant video monitoring of fertilized human eggs results in a healthier selection for implant for women undergoing In-Vitro Fertilization. NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman had already covered this advance in February so she filed an update and Linsey Davis brought ABC's viewers up to speed. CBS tends to find infertility treatments less newsworthy than the other two newscasts, and again skipped the story. Neither Snyderman nor Davis told us how much extra this shiny new technology will cost.
CBS almost always covers the civil war in Syria more heavily than its rivals, so recent investigations into the use of chemical warfare by NBC's Richard Engel, NBC's Ann Curry, and the BBC's Ian Pannell for ABC, ran contrary to trends. Now, from the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin reestablishes the conventional order, being the only correspondent to cover the delivery of new anti-aircraft and naval missiles from Russia to the Baath regime.
ABC, which is the most domestically-minded of the three newscasts, ventured an international dateline. Lama Hasan filed from France -- but in no way did her story stray from ABC's celebrity-loving beaten track. Hasan was in Cannes for the film festival, where $1m in jewels from the House of Chopard had been stolen from a safe in a Novotel. How did Hasan cover this? With Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief and paparazzi stills of bejeweled actresses on the red carpet at the Academy Awards. Which network owns the broadcast rights to the Oscars? ABC.
And that was not ABC's only celebrity story. JJ Abrams, the movie director, was profiled by David Muir as the network's Person of the Week. Muir's publicity whirl included plugs for Jimmy Kimmel, TED talks (a World News favorite), TV's Felicity, Alias, and Lost, the movies Super 8 and Taking Care of Business, and the movie series Star Trek and Star Wars. By my count, that is five out of nine Disney properties. Which network is owned by Disney? ABC.
ABC also loves lottery stories. Just since the beginning of last year, ABC has filed on jackpots 24 separate times (4 by CBS, 9 by NBC). David Wright consulted a FaceBook survey of the motives of lottery gamblers, including a gratuitous clip from his network's Barbara Walters in a seven-year-old interview with a winner. Unusually, CBS found Powerball's $600m prize worthy of attention, assigning Carter Evans to its long lines. Evans demonstrated his inexperience on this beat by calculating the odds that each of us has a 1-in-10m chance of becoming President of the United States. Does anyone know what that means?
Remember the Cleveland captivity story that dominated the headlines for three days last week? CBS' Jim Axelrod contacted the activist group Partners for Women & Justice to get a case history of a battered woman held prisoner by a violent man. Meet Jessica.
