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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 28, 2013
Macro-economic statistics, hardly the source of dynamic visuals, turned out to be an unusual Story of the Day. CBS, with substitute anchor Norah O'Donnell, led with double-barreled coverage of the real estate housing market, first with Anthony Mason, then with John Blackstone. The 20-city Case-Schiller index of home sale prices found that the cost of property is rising and has now reverted to the same levels as seven years ago. Before turning to the state of the economy, NBC and ABC both chose tornadoes on the great plains as their lead item.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 28, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
MACRO-ECONOMIC STATISTICS LACK THE ZING OF A TWISTER Macro-economic statistics, hardly the source of dynamic visuals, turned out to be an unusual Story of the Day. CBS, with substitute anchor Norah O'Donnell, led with double-barreled coverage of the real estate housing market, first with Anthony Mason, then with John Blackstone. The 20-city Case-Schiller index of home sale prices found that the cost of property is rising and has now reverted to the same levels as seven years ago. Before turning to the state of the economy, NBC and ABC both chose tornadoes on the great plains as their lead item.
NBC used Diana Olick from CNBC, its sibling financial news cable channel, to cover the housing statistics. However, it was more interested in the general economy -- including consumer confidence, stock market indices, and automobile sales as well -- so Olick's coverage was folded into John Yang's report from Chicago.
ABC looked at the housing market from the personal-finance viewpoint rather than the macro-economy. Paula Faris offered Real Money tips from realtors to would-be sellers on how to jack up their prices even higher. Faris never explained why it is a good thing for the economy to make housing as expensive as possible. John Blackstone in Oakland for CBS took the opposite side, sympathizing with the plight of the first-time buyer in the Bay Area, facing shrinking inventories of property for sale and competition from cash-only purchasers.
Stormchaser Ginger Zee on ABC offered free publicity to her fellow weather-porn aficionados, Brandon Ivey and Sean Casey, at StormChasingVideo.com. Zee tried to dignify these daredevils as scientific researchers advancing the limits of meteorological knowledge -- but her rationalization did not ring true. She clearly thought that their armored TIV camera car and its IMAX-quality video were so cool. On CBS and NBC, tornado coverage had none of that pumping adrenaline -- just a traditional three-day forecast from David Bernard of WFOR-TV in Miami and Chris Warren from the Weather Channel.
There were three other climate-related packages:
NBC broke its 13-package post-New-Year-women's-only streak of Superstorm Sandy coverage. Finally a man was assigned to the storm's aftermath. President Barack Obama made a trip to the rebuilt boardwalks of the Jersey Shore and so the assignment went to one of NBC's White House correspondents, Peter Alexander. In a tacit admission that his anchor Brian Williams is a Bruce Springsteen fanatic, Alexander's fact-check of the President did not concern the storm damage but the authorship of the song Jersey Girl instead.
CBS' Michelle Miller reported confusingly on a municipal land-use dispute on the Jersey shoreline at Mantoloking. She warned that eminent domain might be invoked to allow an Army Corps of Engineers beach replenishment project to go ahead. I say confusing because it was not clear with the Corps had to do with Mike Becker's boulders. You see if you understand.
One thing I do admire about CBS' newscast is its counter-intuitive recognition that still photography makes for excellent motion-picture video. Here is a playlist of ten different packages on photography filed on CBS in the last year or so. The latest has Dean Reynolds follow the excellent Alpine of the Americas project by Jonathan Byers and Ned LeBlond. And yes, it has a climate-related angle, too.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to the report by the Defense Science Board on the blueprints for 29 different weapons systems that are now in the hands of the People's Liberation Army, thanks to Chinese hackers. NBC and CBS filed from the Pentagon, using Jim Miklaszewski and David Martin. ABC gave the story to Brian Ross, its investigative correspondent. CBS' Martin used the opportunity to show off whiz-bang R&D weapons video, as he likes to do (see drones, here and here, and lasers, here).
Remember that sensational, coordinated $45m ATM-withdrawal bank heist arrest earlier this month? CBS' Elaine Quijano reports that moneylaundering prosecutors have tied it to Arthur Budovsky's online Liberty Reserve bank in Costa Rica. Allegedly, funds end up there via Russia or Vietnam or Nigeria.
As usual, ABC and NBC treat cruise liner misadventures as newsworthy, while CBS downplays them. Matt Gutman jetted to The Bahamas to interview the passengers of Royal Caribbean's Grandeur of the Seas as they disembarked after a shipboard fire. Even Gutman could not keep up a tone of emergency: "Terror turns to tedium," he fessed up. On NBC, Tom Costello pointed to the flags of convenience from The Bahamas, or Panama, or Malta, flying from the liners' masts as an explanation for the lack of consumer protections for vacationing passengers.
Grant Acord, the Oregon teenager with a cache of bombs in his bedroom, was covered by ABC's Linzie Janis on Monday, and now by NBC's Mike Taibbi. Prosecutors allege that Acord's bombs were made from pipes, of napalm, and with Drano. Taibbi told us that Acord has been diagnosed with PANDIS, a strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that at age seventeen, he is being prosecuted as an adult. Look at Acord's mugshot and adult is not what he looks like.
America Strong, ABC's series, turned to religious proselytizing in anchor Diane Sawyer's tribute to a trio of onetime prisoners of war, on the 40th anniversary of their release from Hanoi. CBS' Ben Tracy told us the history of the PoWs and President Richard Nixon (in whose White House Sawyer worked at the time) on Monday.
Instead, Sawyer turns to the religiosity of three officers -- she explained that the prison was for "ace pilots" -- Colonel Leon Ellis, Captain Charles Plumb, and Captain Guy Gruters. Three months of heavy prayer…God Bless You rapped out in Morse Code…a definition of courage: "fear that has said its prayers"…and that jailhouse hymn, The PoW Prayer, that was performed for Nixon at their welcome-home banquet.
"Oh God, to Thee we lift our Prayer and Sing…"
NBC used Diana Olick from CNBC, its sibling financial news cable channel, to cover the housing statistics. However, it was more interested in the general economy -- including consumer confidence, stock market indices, and automobile sales as well -- so Olick's coverage was folded into John Yang's report from Chicago.
ABC looked at the housing market from the personal-finance viewpoint rather than the macro-economy. Paula Faris offered Real Money tips from realtors to would-be sellers on how to jack up their prices even higher. Faris never explained why it is a good thing for the economy to make housing as expensive as possible. John Blackstone in Oakland for CBS took the opposite side, sympathizing with the plight of the first-time buyer in the Bay Area, facing shrinking inventories of property for sale and competition from cash-only purchasers.
Stormchaser Ginger Zee on ABC offered free publicity to her fellow weather-porn aficionados, Brandon Ivey and Sean Casey, at StormChasingVideo.com. Zee tried to dignify these daredevils as scientific researchers advancing the limits of meteorological knowledge -- but her rationalization did not ring true. She clearly thought that their armored TIV camera car and its IMAX-quality video were so cool. On CBS and NBC, tornado coverage had none of that pumping adrenaline -- just a traditional three-day forecast from David Bernard of WFOR-TV in Miami and Chris Warren from the Weather Channel.
There were three other climate-related packages:
NBC broke its 13-package post-New-Year-women's-only streak of Superstorm Sandy coverage. Finally a man was assigned to the storm's aftermath. President Barack Obama made a trip to the rebuilt boardwalks of the Jersey Shore and so the assignment went to one of NBC's White House correspondents, Peter Alexander. In a tacit admission that his anchor Brian Williams is a Bruce Springsteen fanatic, Alexander's fact-check of the President did not concern the storm damage but the authorship of the song Jersey Girl instead.
CBS' Michelle Miller reported confusingly on a municipal land-use dispute on the Jersey shoreline at Mantoloking. She warned that eminent domain might be invoked to allow an Army Corps of Engineers beach replenishment project to go ahead. I say confusing because it was not clear with the Corps had to do with Mike Becker's boulders. You see if you understand.
One thing I do admire about CBS' newscast is its counter-intuitive recognition that still photography makes for excellent motion-picture video. Here is a playlist of ten different packages on photography filed on CBS in the last year or so. The latest has Dean Reynolds follow the excellent Alpine of the Americas project by Jonathan Byers and Ned LeBlond. And yes, it has a climate-related angle, too.
TUESDAY’S TIDBITS All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to the report by the Defense Science Board on the blueprints for 29 different weapons systems that are now in the hands of the People's Liberation Army, thanks to Chinese hackers. NBC and CBS filed from the Pentagon, using Jim Miklaszewski and David Martin. ABC gave the story to Brian Ross, its investigative correspondent. CBS' Martin used the opportunity to show off whiz-bang R&D weapons video, as he likes to do (see drones, here and here, and lasers, here).
Remember that sensational, coordinated $45m ATM-withdrawal bank heist arrest earlier this month? CBS' Elaine Quijano reports that moneylaundering prosecutors have tied it to Arthur Budovsky's online Liberty Reserve bank in Costa Rica. Allegedly, funds end up there via Russia or Vietnam or Nigeria.
As usual, ABC and NBC treat cruise liner misadventures as newsworthy, while CBS downplays them. Matt Gutman jetted to The Bahamas to interview the passengers of Royal Caribbean's Grandeur of the Seas as they disembarked after a shipboard fire. Even Gutman could not keep up a tone of emergency: "Terror turns to tedium," he fessed up. On NBC, Tom Costello pointed to the flags of convenience from The Bahamas, or Panama, or Malta, flying from the liners' masts as an explanation for the lack of consumer protections for vacationing passengers.
Grant Acord, the Oregon teenager with a cache of bombs in his bedroom, was covered by ABC's Linzie Janis on Monday, and now by NBC's Mike Taibbi. Prosecutors allege that Acord's bombs were made from pipes, of napalm, and with Drano. Taibbi told us that Acord has been diagnosed with PANDIS, a strain of obsessive-compulsive disorder, and that at age seventeen, he is being prosecuted as an adult. Look at Acord's mugshot and adult is not what he looks like.
America Strong, ABC's series, turned to religious proselytizing in anchor Diane Sawyer's tribute to a trio of onetime prisoners of war, on the 40th anniversary of their release from Hanoi. CBS' Ben Tracy told us the history of the PoWs and President Richard Nixon (in whose White House Sawyer worked at the time) on Monday.
Instead, Sawyer turns to the religiosity of three officers -- she explained that the prison was for "ace pilots" -- Colonel Leon Ellis, Captain Charles Plumb, and Captain Guy Gruters. Three months of heavy prayer…God Bless You rapped out in Morse Code…a definition of courage: "fear that has said its prayers"…and that jailhouse hymn, The PoW Prayer, that was performed for Nixon at their welcome-home banquet.
"Oh God, to Thee we lift our Prayer and Sing…"
