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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 21, 2013
The tornado in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore qualified as one of those disasters that warrant a full-court press. All three newscasts extended their regular half-hour format (CBS to 90 minutes, NBC and ABC to an hour). Tyndall Report, as usual, confines its monitoring to just the first half hour, for consistency's sake. NBC and CBS both dispatched their anchors to the scene of the disaster. ABC and NBC declared a Special Edition. NBC's was called Devastation in Oklahoma. ABC chose Direct Hit: Twister Outbreak. This one story occupied fully 100% of the three-network newshole.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 21, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
| click to play | story | angle | reporter | dateline | |
| CBS | Tornado season | Moore twister left 17-mile trail of destruction | Scott Pelley | Oklahoma |
| CBS | Tornado season | Neighborhood after neighborhood is destroyed | Anna Werner | Oklahoma |
| ABC | Tornado season | Pair of elementary schools wiped out in Moore | David Muir | Oklahoma |
| NBC | Tornado season | Plaza Towers school hit, eight students killed | Kate Snow | Oklahoma |
| CBS | Tornado season | Grade school teacher injured protecting students | Vinita Nair | Oklahoma |
| CBS | Tornado season | Grade school student in Moore killed, aged nine | Mark Strassmann | Oklahoma |
| CBS | Tornado season | National Guard leads search and rescue in Moore | Scott Pelley | Oklahoma |
| NBC | Tornado season | Many Moore homes, schools have no safe rooms | Tom Costello | No Dateline |
| ABC | Tornado season | Elderly Moore woman has house destroyed twice | Ginger Zee | Oklahoma |
| ABC | Tornado season | Random personal artifacts retrieved from rubble | Cecilia Vega | Oklahoma |
MOORE DEATH TOLL WAS NOT AS BAD AS BELIEVED The tornado in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore qualified as one of those disasters that warrant a full-court press. All three newscasts extended their regular half-hour format (CBS to 90 minutes, NBC and ABC to an hour). Tyndall Report, as usual, confines its monitoring to just the first half hour, for consistency's sake. NBC and CBS both dispatched their anchors to the scene of the disaster. ABC and NBC declared a Special Edition. NBC's was called Devastation in Oklahoma. ABC chose Direct Hit: Twister Outbreak. This one story occupied fully 100% of the three-network newshole.
Of course, it is possible that they over-reacted. Monday evening, when the decision was made to drop everything to cover Moore, the estimate of the death toll was significantly larger than the now-official 24. Furthermore, many of those believed dead were reportedly children, at the collapsed Plaza Towers Elementary. The prospect of school bereavement of the magnitude of the Newtown massacre in Connecticut would have made Moore a no-brainer for saturation coverage.
As it turned out, only seven -- I say "only" not to be callous but to delve into the calculus of newsgathering decisions -- of those killed by the twister were children at Plaza Towers. NBC anchor Brian Williams, alone of the three, had the good grace to lead off his newscast with the relatively good news that the disaster was much less deadly than had been reported at first. Lester Holt told Williams that it was fog (of war) to blame not a funnel cloud. Unfortunately Holt's vivid and comprehensive report, which was NBC's lead, has not been posted online as a videostream.
This is a demonstration of how much the networks had the school disaster as top-of-mind in their planning:
ABC's lead, by David Muir, showed us his network's Video View computer animation of the contrasting architecture of the two elementary schools that were flattened by the tornado: Briarwood, where all survived, and Plaza Towers, where the deaths happened.
NBC's Kate Snow and CBS' Vinita Nair both profiled Plaza Towers schoolteachers who shielded children. A prayerful Rhonda Crosswhite talked to Snow. A tearful Jennifer Doan sobbed to Nair from her hospital bed.
CBS profiled two schoolchildren: nine-year-old Jenae Hornsby died and Mark Strassmann interviewed her family; eight-year-old Courtney Brown survived and Norah O'Donnell visited her in hospital.
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer did not happen to jet to the scene. Still, she is an old hand at extracting a soundbite. Even by remote feed, see Sawyer persuade Jordan Cobb, the Briarwood Elementary student and daughter of bloodied schoolteacher LaDonna Cobb, to say just what she wanted her to say. Sawyer nailed it so well that she slapped an Exclusive label on it.
OTHER TORNADO NOTES… Not for nothing is Oklahoma known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt. ABC's David Muir and NBC's Lester Holt (no link) both played a homevideo of wreckage with the voiceover "The Lord Giveth…" CBS' Mark Strassmann followed the grieving Hornsby family to church. Schoolma'am Rhonda Crosswhite confessed to NBC's Snow that she had violated the First Amendment by praying in front of her students. NBC anchor Brian Williams told Mayor Glenn Lewis of Moore that his community operates "faith-based FEMA." Governor Mary Fallin told CBS anchor Scott Pelley that what Oklahoma needs now is the prayers of others. "God has his reasons for everything, I believe," a homeless homeowner told ABC's Cecilia Vega.
As an antidote (hat tip Andrew Sullivan's The Dish) check out CNN's Wolf Blitzer's Bible Belt experience.
The only package on all three newscasts that bothered to probe the public policy implications of the disaster was on NBC. Why did so many homes and schools not have reinforced safe rooms? Tom Costello investigates.
What feature did ABC to run instead of public policy? Anchor Diane Sawyer brought us animal crackers.
They called out the National Guard. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez and CBS anchor Scott Pelley tagged along as they searched-and-rescued in the rain.
ABC's xTreme Weather Team stormchaser Ginger Zee dug up a highly questionable calculation of probabilities from Weather Decision Technologies, the mobile phone app provider. I do not believe that the 94-year-old Nancy Davis, sorry Nancy E Davis, is a one-hundred-trillion-to-one shot and Zee did nothing to try to change my mind.
BENGHAZI UPDATE Jay Rosen at PressThink has been catching up on Jonathan Karl's Exclusive from May 10th on the CIA's preparation of talking points on the arson-assassination at the Benghazi Consulate last September. This is how I covered that story at the time (here, here and here) and this is Rosen's post about Karl's problems with relying on inaccurate sources.
Having contacted both Rosen and Karl about this controversy, this is my conclusion (cross-posted at PressThink):
The essence of Jonathan Karl's scoop in the Benghazi Consulate story on ABC on May 10th, was his exclusive revelation that the talking points prepared for members of the Intelligence Committee by the CIA (the ones that also guided Ambassador Susan Rice on those Sunday morning shows) had gone through a series of 12 drafts, each one more vague and less informative, with the end result that their imprecision turned out to be deceptive. Specifically, the decisions not to redact the point about the anti-blasphemy protests, but to redact the point about the al-Qaeda-connected Ansar al-Sharia militia, amounted to misleading the public.
It is that process of deception-by-redaction that Karl has defended as the central point of his exclusive, and has led him to stand by it. Karl never actually uses the term "deceit" but his implication is clear.
There are two subsidiary elements to the story, which Karl either stated or implied, that do not contradict his deception-by-redaction thesis, yet do cast it in a different light. First, who made the changes? Second, what was the motive for the changes?
1.Who made the changes? Karl's exclusive on May 10th asserted that either the White House or the State Department made at least some of the changes. The story leads with Jay Carney's claim that those two institutions only changed one word, a claim that Karl contradicts. He later, on May 15th, reported that the final changes were made by the CIA. He remains silent about which of the intermediary changes were made by the White House or by State instead, yet he stands by his premise that some of them were.
2.What was the motive for the changes? In his exclusive report, Karl focuses on the State Department, with its concerns not to open itself to criticism from members of Congress, as the motivator for the redactions. Subsequently a memo has surfaced, written by Ben Rhodes at the White House, that casts doubt on the State Department's influence over the CIA. First, Rhodes never singles out State's concerns; second, he does single out the FBI's concerns that its investigation should not be compromised, as is standard procedure.
The fact that Karl's reporting relied on an incorrect paraphrase of Rhodes' memo, which inaccurately did spell out State's particular concerns, makes Karl's decision to point to State as the motivator less convincing. In Karl's defense, he did not report on World News, either on the 10th or the 15th, that the changes were made to the talking points because of State's input; only that they were made after State's input. This distinction between "after" and "because of" is never spelled out for viewers.
On the other hand, as said, he did report that some of the intermediary changes were in fact made by either State or the White House, and earlier on the 10th, on Good Morning America, he quoted from an e-mail (again, one he had not seen but had been read to him) that the CIA changed some words after being "directed" to do so by State (later that day on World News, Karl made no stronger claim than "input" from State).
So, Karl's scoop about the fact of the changes in the talking points was a genuine one. His reporting on who made the changes and why they were made is vague or shifting or absent.
Of course, it is possible that they over-reacted. Monday evening, when the decision was made to drop everything to cover Moore, the estimate of the death toll was significantly larger than the now-official 24. Furthermore, many of those believed dead were reportedly children, at the collapsed Plaza Towers Elementary. The prospect of school bereavement of the magnitude of the Newtown massacre in Connecticut would have made Moore a no-brainer for saturation coverage.
As it turned out, only seven -- I say "only" not to be callous but to delve into the calculus of newsgathering decisions -- of those killed by the twister were children at Plaza Towers. NBC anchor Brian Williams, alone of the three, had the good grace to lead off his newscast with the relatively good news that the disaster was much less deadly than had been reported at first. Lester Holt told Williams that it was fog (of war) to blame not a funnel cloud. Unfortunately Holt's vivid and comprehensive report, which was NBC's lead, has not been posted online as a videostream.
This is a demonstration of how much the networks had the school disaster as top-of-mind in their planning:
ABC's lead, by David Muir, showed us his network's Video View computer animation of the contrasting architecture of the two elementary schools that were flattened by the tornado: Briarwood, where all survived, and Plaza Towers, where the deaths happened.
NBC's Kate Snow and CBS' Vinita Nair both profiled Plaza Towers schoolteachers who shielded children. A prayerful Rhonda Crosswhite talked to Snow. A tearful Jennifer Doan sobbed to Nair from her hospital bed.
CBS profiled two schoolchildren: nine-year-old Jenae Hornsby died and Mark Strassmann interviewed her family; eight-year-old Courtney Brown survived and Norah O'Donnell visited her in hospital.
ABC anchor Diane Sawyer did not happen to jet to the scene. Still, she is an old hand at extracting a soundbite. Even by remote feed, see Sawyer persuade Jordan Cobb, the Briarwood Elementary student and daughter of bloodied schoolteacher LaDonna Cobb, to say just what she wanted her to say. Sawyer nailed it so well that she slapped an Exclusive label on it.
OTHER TORNADO NOTES… Not for nothing is Oklahoma known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt. ABC's David Muir and NBC's Lester Holt (no link) both played a homevideo of wreckage with the voiceover "The Lord Giveth…" CBS' Mark Strassmann followed the grieving Hornsby family to church. Schoolma'am Rhonda Crosswhite confessed to NBC's Snow that she had violated the First Amendment by praying in front of her students. NBC anchor Brian Williams told Mayor Glenn Lewis of Moore that his community operates "faith-based FEMA." Governor Mary Fallin told CBS anchor Scott Pelley that what Oklahoma needs now is the prayers of others. "God has his reasons for everything, I believe," a homeless homeowner told ABC's Cecilia Vega.
As an antidote (hat tip Andrew Sullivan's The Dish) check out CNN's Wolf Blitzer's Bible Belt experience.
The only package on all three newscasts that bothered to probe the public policy implications of the disaster was on NBC. Why did so many homes and schools not have reinforced safe rooms? Tom Costello investigates.
What feature did ABC to run instead of public policy? Anchor Diane Sawyer brought us animal crackers.
They called out the National Guard. NBC's Gabe Gutierrez and CBS anchor Scott Pelley tagged along as they searched-and-rescued in the rain.
ABC's xTreme Weather Team stormchaser Ginger Zee dug up a highly questionable calculation of probabilities from Weather Decision Technologies, the mobile phone app provider. I do not believe that the 94-year-old Nancy Davis, sorry Nancy E Davis, is a one-hundred-trillion-to-one shot and Zee did nothing to try to change my mind.
BENGHAZI UPDATE Jay Rosen at PressThink has been catching up on Jonathan Karl's Exclusive from May 10th on the CIA's preparation of talking points on the arson-assassination at the Benghazi Consulate last September. This is how I covered that story at the time (here, here and here) and this is Rosen's post about Karl's problems with relying on inaccurate sources.
Having contacted both Rosen and Karl about this controversy, this is my conclusion (cross-posted at PressThink):
The essence of Jonathan Karl's scoop in the Benghazi Consulate story on ABC on May 10th, was his exclusive revelation that the talking points prepared for members of the Intelligence Committee by the CIA (the ones that also guided Ambassador Susan Rice on those Sunday morning shows) had gone through a series of 12 drafts, each one more vague and less informative, with the end result that their imprecision turned out to be deceptive. Specifically, the decisions not to redact the point about the anti-blasphemy protests, but to redact the point about the al-Qaeda-connected Ansar al-Sharia militia, amounted to misleading the public.
It is that process of deception-by-redaction that Karl has defended as the central point of his exclusive, and has led him to stand by it. Karl never actually uses the term "deceit" but his implication is clear.
There are two subsidiary elements to the story, which Karl either stated or implied, that do not contradict his deception-by-redaction thesis, yet do cast it in a different light. First, who made the changes? Second, what was the motive for the changes?
1.Who made the changes? Karl's exclusive on May 10th asserted that either the White House or the State Department made at least some of the changes. The story leads with Jay Carney's claim that those two institutions only changed one word, a claim that Karl contradicts. He later, on May 15th, reported that the final changes were made by the CIA. He remains silent about which of the intermediary changes were made by the White House or by State instead, yet he stands by his premise that some of them were.
2.What was the motive for the changes? In his exclusive report, Karl focuses on the State Department, with its concerns not to open itself to criticism from members of Congress, as the motivator for the redactions. Subsequently a memo has surfaced, written by Ben Rhodes at the White House, that casts doubt on the State Department's influence over the CIA. First, Rhodes never singles out State's concerns; second, he does single out the FBI's concerns that its investigation should not be compromised, as is standard procedure.
The fact that Karl's reporting relied on an incorrect paraphrase of Rhodes' memo, which inaccurately did spell out State's particular concerns, makes Karl's decision to point to State as the motivator less convincing. In Karl's defense, he did not report on World News, either on the 10th or the 15th, that the changes were made to the talking points because of State's input; only that they were made after State's input. This distinction between "after" and "because of" is never spelled out for viewers.
On the other hand, as said, he did report that some of the intermediary changes were in fact made by either State or the White House, and earlier on the 10th, on Good Morning America, he quoted from an e-mail (again, one he had not seen but had been read to him) that the CIA changed some words after being "directed" to do so by State (later that day on World News, Karl made no stronger claim than "input" from State).
So, Karl's scoop about the fact of the changes in the talking points was a genuine one. His reporting on who made the changes and why they were made is vague or shifting or absent.
