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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 22, 2013
Yesterday's sneaking suspicion that the nightly newscasts had gone overboard in their saturation coverage of the tornado in Moore Okla is starting to ring true. NBC's lead had Lester Holt remarking how low the death toll was, considering the twister's severity. And for its closer, NBC sent Erica Hill in Joplin Mo, where precisely two years ago a tornado of similar ferocity accounted for 162 deaths -- many more than the 24 who died in Moore on Monday. ABC has already moved on, deciding to lead with the grisly murder of an off-duty soldier in London instead. Nevertheless, Moore was still Story of the Day, accounting for 31% of the three-network newshole (21 min out of 56).
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 22, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
| click to play | story | angle | reporter | dateline | |
| NBC | Tornado season | Surprising survival from severe Moore twister | Lester Holt | Oklahoma |
| CBS | Tornado season | Moore residents return to scene of wasteland | Anna Werner | Oklahoma |
| ABC | Tornado season | Survival in elementary school bathroom on video | David Muir | Oklahoma |
| CBS | Tornado season | Many schools have no safe-room storm shelters | Elaine Quijano | Oklahoma |
| ABC | Tornado season | Oklahoma survivors display pride, resiliency | Mike Boettcher | Oklahoma |
| NBC | Tornado season | Rebuilding proceeds in Joplin two years later | Erica Hill | Missouri |
| NBC | IRS targeted Tea Party conservatives for scrutiny | Bureaucrat Lois Lerner invokes Fifth Amendment | Kelly O'Donnell | Capitol Hill |
| CBS | Boston Marathon bomb attack at finish line | Associate of dead brother grilled, killed by FBI | Bob Orr | Washington DC |
| NBC | London attack kills British soldier out of uniform | Killer with cleaver videos anti-military rant | Michelle Kosinski | London |
| CBS | Apparel sweatshop labor violations in Bangladesh | Fire safety, child labor problems exposed | Holly Williams | Bangladesh |
MOORE DOES NOT HOLD A CANDLE TO JOPLIN Yesterday's sneaking suspicion that the nightly newscasts had gone overboard in their saturation coverage of the tornado in Moore Okla is starting to ring true. NBC's lead had Lester Holt remarking how low the death toll was, considering the twister's severity. And for its closer, NBC sent Erica Hill in Joplin Mo, where precisely two years ago a tornado of similar ferocity accounted for 162 deaths -- many more than the 24 who died in Moore on Monday. ABC has already moved on, deciding to lead with the grisly murder of an off-duty soldier in London instead. Nevertheless, Moore was still Story of the Day, accounting for 31% of the three-network newshole (21 min out of 56).
The fact that a couple of elementary schools was flattened by the tornado continues to be its most newsworthy angle. CBS kicked off with Elaine Quijano on the lack of safe-room storm shelters in Oklahoma schools, the same issue that Tom Costello covered for NBC on Tuesday. ABC claimed an Exclusive for David Muir's exploration of the ravaged corridors of Briarwood Elementary with schoolteacher Robin Dziedzic, whose cellphone recorded the video of the moment of panic. On NBC, Today anchor Matt Lauer got the guided tour of the other ruined school, Plaza Towers Elementary, which was folded into Lester Holt's lead.
All three newscasts closed with a tornado feature. NBC, as said, returned to Joplin Mo. CBS' Mark Strassmann brought us the human interest of the Falwell family, whose adrenaline rushed allowed them to break through their neighbors' fence to use their storm shelter. ABC went to their in-house Oklahoman Mike Boettcher, who composed an essay in praise of the tenacity of his fellow Okies. Okies never give up. They are resilient. They stay and rebuild, Boettcher boasted, apparently forgetting how many tens of thousands left for California, Grapes of Wrath-style, during the Dust Bowl.
Boettcher ended with a teenage guitarist singing in celebration of Oklahoma Strong. Enough with Strong: NBC's Holt found strong Oklahomans too. After the marathon bombs in Beantown, it was Boston Strong all the time. After Superstorm Sandy, yes, we were smothered by Jersey Strong. It is even the title for ABC's new regular inspirational feature from Steve Osunsami about teenage virtues: America Strong. Here were the strong racial integrators of rural Georgia. And here was the strong blind pole vaulter of rural Texas.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS What made the mutilation-murder in London of an off-duty British soldier newsworthy was the video of the blood-soaked killer remaining at the scene of his crime to explain his anti-imperialist, pro-Islamist motive to passers-by. ABC's Lama Hasan gave the London tabloid newspaper The Sun credit for the video, along with her own network's Virtual View computer animators. CBS' Charlie d'Agata gave credit to ITV News. NBC, which has a newsgathering partnership with ITV, made no mention of a credit in Michelle Kosinski's report.
The other killing to be covered by all three newscasts was that of Ibragim Todashev. Todashev, a Boston-area martial arts fighter, was killed by the FBI while being interrogated. So all three packages were filed by Justice Department correspondents at the networks' DC bureaus: Pete Williams on NBC, Bob Orr on CBS, Pierre Thomas (hey, Pierre, remember Journalism 101? You should name the city were the killing happened) on ABC. Todashev is newsworthy because his ties to the late Tamberlan Tsarnaev were being investigated -- not on account of the pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon, but for a marijuana-trafficking-related triple homicide two years previously.
Only NBC's Chuck Todd was assigned to other killings by the federal government. Drones have assassinated four US citizens in Yemen and Pakistan. The only one of the four identified by Todd was Anwar al-Awlaki, the jihadist propagandist.
So the word "terrorism" gets used in all three stories. In the first case, since the target was military, not civilian, the term does not apply. In the second, the late Tsarnaev now seems closer to violent narcotics crime than to politically-motivated terrorism. In the third, terrorism was explicitly cited by the Justice Department to justify the targeting of al-Awlaki; about the other three dead citizens, Todd was silent.
Thus, the aftermath of the tornado and this terrorist trifecta suppressed coverage of last week's top story -- the Tea Party scandal at the Internal Revenue Service. The Congressional correspondents at NBC and CBS, Kelly O'Donnell and Nancy Cordes, covered the appearance of tax bureaucrat Lois Lerner before a House committee. Lerner took the Fifth and ABC mentioned it only in passing.
Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, was also on Capitol Hill, to mark her return to NBC News. She labeled her roundtable sitdown with a trio of female Solons Exclusive but it was hardly a scoop to grant publicity to their efforts to crack down on military rape. Shriver came across as a veritable Polonius, pondering whether the Pentagon's crisis was military-cultural-sexual-legal (…pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical…).
Wrangler, Asics, Walmart: these were the three retail brands that Holly Williams came across in her undercover CBS expose of fire safety and child labor violations at the Monde Apparels sweatshop in Bangladesh. Gradually, the nightly newscasts may be stirring themselves in the wake of the Triangle-style factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers in the outskirts of Dhaka last month. Last week, NBC's Stephanie Gosk singled out GAP, JCPenney and Walmart as major retailers of Bangladeshi apparel, even as ZARA and H&M sought to keep their names clean.
The fact that a couple of elementary schools was flattened by the tornado continues to be its most newsworthy angle. CBS kicked off with Elaine Quijano on the lack of safe-room storm shelters in Oklahoma schools, the same issue that Tom Costello covered for NBC on Tuesday. ABC claimed an Exclusive for David Muir's exploration of the ravaged corridors of Briarwood Elementary with schoolteacher Robin Dziedzic, whose cellphone recorded the video of the moment of panic. On NBC, Today anchor Matt Lauer got the guided tour of the other ruined school, Plaza Towers Elementary, which was folded into Lester Holt's lead.
All three newscasts closed with a tornado feature. NBC, as said, returned to Joplin Mo. CBS' Mark Strassmann brought us the human interest of the Falwell family, whose adrenaline rushed allowed them to break through their neighbors' fence to use their storm shelter. ABC went to their in-house Oklahoman Mike Boettcher, who composed an essay in praise of the tenacity of his fellow Okies. Okies never give up. They are resilient. They stay and rebuild, Boettcher boasted, apparently forgetting how many tens of thousands left for California, Grapes of Wrath-style, during the Dust Bowl.
Boettcher ended with a teenage guitarist singing in celebration of Oklahoma Strong. Enough with Strong: NBC's Holt found strong Oklahomans too. After the marathon bombs in Beantown, it was Boston Strong all the time. After Superstorm Sandy, yes, we were smothered by Jersey Strong. It is even the title for ABC's new regular inspirational feature from Steve Osunsami about teenage virtues: America Strong. Here were the strong racial integrators of rural Georgia. And here was the strong blind pole vaulter of rural Texas.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS What made the mutilation-murder in London of an off-duty British soldier newsworthy was the video of the blood-soaked killer remaining at the scene of his crime to explain his anti-imperialist, pro-Islamist motive to passers-by. ABC's Lama Hasan gave the London tabloid newspaper The Sun credit for the video, along with her own network's Virtual View computer animators. CBS' Charlie d'Agata gave credit to ITV News. NBC, which has a newsgathering partnership with ITV, made no mention of a credit in Michelle Kosinski's report.
The other killing to be covered by all three newscasts was that of Ibragim Todashev. Todashev, a Boston-area martial arts fighter, was killed by the FBI while being interrogated. So all three packages were filed by Justice Department correspondents at the networks' DC bureaus: Pete Williams on NBC, Bob Orr on CBS, Pierre Thomas (hey, Pierre, remember Journalism 101? You should name the city were the killing happened) on ABC. Todashev is newsworthy because his ties to the late Tamberlan Tsarnaev were being investigated -- not on account of the pressure-cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon, but for a marijuana-trafficking-related triple homicide two years previously.
Only NBC's Chuck Todd was assigned to other killings by the federal government. Drones have assassinated four US citizens in Yemen and Pakistan. The only one of the four identified by Todd was Anwar al-Awlaki, the jihadist propagandist.
So the word "terrorism" gets used in all three stories. In the first case, since the target was military, not civilian, the term does not apply. In the second, the late Tsarnaev now seems closer to violent narcotics crime than to politically-motivated terrorism. In the third, terrorism was explicitly cited by the Justice Department to justify the targeting of al-Awlaki; about the other three dead citizens, Todd was silent.
Thus, the aftermath of the tornado and this terrorist trifecta suppressed coverage of last week's top story -- the Tea Party scandal at the Internal Revenue Service. The Congressional correspondents at NBC and CBS, Kelly O'Donnell and Nancy Cordes, covered the appearance of tax bureaucrat Lois Lerner before a House committee. Lerner took the Fifth and ABC mentioned it only in passing.
Maria Shriver, the former First Lady of California, was also on Capitol Hill, to mark her return to NBC News. She labeled her roundtable sitdown with a trio of female Solons Exclusive but it was hardly a scoop to grant publicity to their efforts to crack down on military rape. Shriver came across as a veritable Polonius, pondering whether the Pentagon's crisis was military-cultural-sexual-legal (…pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical…).
Wrangler, Asics, Walmart: these were the three retail brands that Holly Williams came across in her undercover CBS expose of fire safety and child labor violations at the Monde Apparels sweatshop in Bangladesh. Gradually, the nightly newscasts may be stirring themselves in the wake of the Triangle-style factory collapse that killed more than 1,100 workers in the outskirts of Dhaka last month. Last week, NBC's Stephanie Gosk singled out GAP, JCPenney and Walmart as major retailers of Bangladeshi apparel, even as ZARA and H&M sought to keep their names clean.
