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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM MAY 8, 2013
Correspondents stayed in Cleveland for day two of coverage of the Seymour Avenue captivity, again the Story of the Day. All three newscasts led with the return of two of the three captive women -- Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus -- to their celebrating families: David Muir filed for ABC, Dean Reynolds for CBS, and Ron Allen for NBC. Reynolds reported that the trio had been bound during much of their captivity; Allen said they lived most of the time, unchained, in upstairs rooms. Who knows? Lydia Esparra, a reporter for WOIO-TV, the CBS local affiliate in Cleveland, managed to grab a word with the bilingual DeJesus but she had lost her Spanish during her decade-long confinement.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR MAY 8, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
HOMECOMING FOR A PAIR OF CLEVELAND CAPTIVES Correspondents stayed in Cleveland for day two of coverage of the Seymour Avenue captivity, again the Story of the Day. All three newscasts led with the return of two of the three captive women -- Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus -- to their celebrating families: David Muir filed for ABC, Dean Reynolds for CBS, and Ron Allen for NBC. Reynolds reported that the trio had been bound during much of their captivity; Allen said they lived most of the time, unchained, in upstairs rooms. Who knows? Lydia Esparra, a reporter for WOIO-TV, the CBS local affiliate in Cleveland, managed to grab a word with the bilingual DeJesus but she had lost her Spanish during her decade-long confinement.
ABC had also sent Alex Perez to Cleveland. He looked for background on Ariel Castro, the only suspect in the case, after his brothers were released without charges following their arrests. Perez came up with video of Perez, a jazz bassist, from the dashboard camera of a police cruiser from 2008. From CBS' DC bureau, Bob Orr worked his federal contacts, and reported that Castro had faced domestic violence complaints in 2005 that were ultimately dropped.
ABC also assigned Dan Harris to the most tenuous of follow-ups. No matter that two of the three Cleveland women were taken prisoner as teenagers and the third, Michelle Knight, when she was an adult, aged 20: Dan Harris gave us three examples of the abduction of children, a nine-year-old girl in Texas, a boy in Oregon in 2004, and Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped at age eleven, who has been featured so frequently with anchor Diane Sawyer as a rescued adult, 18 years later. Harris consulted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, whose advocacy proposes the astonishing ratio that 1,000 false suspicions against innocent people are justified if they result in a single abducted child being found. That ratio provoked no skepticism from Harris.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS The hearings on Capitol Hill into the arson of the Benghazi Consulate last September was the other main story of the day, attracting coverage by correspondents at all three networks. Testifying was Gregory Hicks, the deputy to the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens at the embassy in Tripoli. ABC's White House correspondent Jonathan Karl hyped the hearings by dramatically claiming that Hicks would likely have been the last American that Stevens talked to, in a telephone call while the consulate was under attack. Almost certainly not: Stevens was with Sean Smith, the embassy's flack, when he died. NBC had Andrea Mitchell cover the testimony and CBS, which has covered Benghazi more heavily than its rivals, assigned Sharyl Attkisson to the hearings and Pentagon man David Martin to the feasibility of a military response. Martin pointed out that intervening at the burning consulate, where the two diplomats died, was never an option. Second-guesses could only apply to the follow-up mortar attack on spies, six hours later.
Behind rebel lines in Syria, NBC's Richard Engel had urine samples tested and photographic evidence examined. He came up with no evidence of a chemical weapons attack by government forces using Sarin. Anyway, rebels told him, conventional massacres in villages such as al-Bayda are more lethal.
Remembering Cartagena, Secret Service agent Gregory Stokes told John Miller of CBS This Morning that he wants his job back, even after have sex with a prostitute. Escort services are legal in Colombia. Miller cross-promoted his morning segment with an excerpt: listen to the mealy-mouthed Stokes unable to spit out the words for what he paid for in plain English. Agents "did what they did and said See Ya Later."
What is one of the most famous things Charles, Prince of Wales, has done while waiting to inherit his mother's crown? According to Keir Simmons' ermine-clad report for NBC, loaded with pomp and circumstance, it was agreeing to a sit-down interview with his anchor Brian Williams.
Hundreds of thousands of men have suffered unnecessarily from impotence and incontinence as a result of treatment for prostate cancer that they should not have had. That is the scandal Robert Bazell reported on NBC. A new genetic test, called Oncotype DX, may help men decide whether their tumors are life-threatening or whether they can be monitored undisturbed. Who is going to pay the $3,800 for each screening?
David Martin, CBS' man at the Pentagon, having already war-gamed Benghazi, returned to close the newscast with one of his signature profiles of men mutilated by war. This time weight training guru Tyler Hobson helps the paralyzed Josh Himan pump iron once more.
Why, I asked myself, does ABC find Venus and Serena a new documentary from Magnolia Pictures on the champion tennis sisters newsworthy? Watch Linsey Davis' bland report and you will be as mystified as me. Then check IMDb.com for the credits of the co-director Michelle Major and all will be revealed. She was a producer at Good Morning America while Diane Sawyer was anchor there, from 2002 through 2009.
ABC had also sent Alex Perez to Cleveland. He looked for background on Ariel Castro, the only suspect in the case, after his brothers were released without charges following their arrests. Perez came up with video of Perez, a jazz bassist, from the dashboard camera of a police cruiser from 2008. From CBS' DC bureau, Bob Orr worked his federal contacts, and reported that Castro had faced domestic violence complaints in 2005 that were ultimately dropped.
ABC also assigned Dan Harris to the most tenuous of follow-ups. No matter that two of the three Cleveland women were taken prisoner as teenagers and the third, Michelle Knight, when she was an adult, aged 20: Dan Harris gave us three examples of the abduction of children, a nine-year-old girl in Texas, a boy in Oregon in 2004, and Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped at age eleven, who has been featured so frequently with anchor Diane Sawyer as a rescued adult, 18 years later. Harris consulted the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, whose advocacy proposes the astonishing ratio that 1,000 false suspicions against innocent people are justified if they result in a single abducted child being found. That ratio provoked no skepticism from Harris.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS The hearings on Capitol Hill into the arson of the Benghazi Consulate last September was the other main story of the day, attracting coverage by correspondents at all three networks. Testifying was Gregory Hicks, the deputy to the late Ambassador Christopher Stevens at the embassy in Tripoli. ABC's White House correspondent Jonathan Karl hyped the hearings by dramatically claiming that Hicks would likely have been the last American that Stevens talked to, in a telephone call while the consulate was under attack. Almost certainly not: Stevens was with Sean Smith, the embassy's flack, when he died. NBC had Andrea Mitchell cover the testimony and CBS, which has covered Benghazi more heavily than its rivals, assigned Sharyl Attkisson to the hearings and Pentagon man David Martin to the feasibility of a military response. Martin pointed out that intervening at the burning consulate, where the two diplomats died, was never an option. Second-guesses could only apply to the follow-up mortar attack on spies, six hours later.
Behind rebel lines in Syria, NBC's Richard Engel had urine samples tested and photographic evidence examined. He came up with no evidence of a chemical weapons attack by government forces using Sarin. Anyway, rebels told him, conventional massacres in villages such as al-Bayda are more lethal.
Remembering Cartagena, Secret Service agent Gregory Stokes told John Miller of CBS This Morning that he wants his job back, even after have sex with a prostitute. Escort services are legal in Colombia. Miller cross-promoted his morning segment with an excerpt: listen to the mealy-mouthed Stokes unable to spit out the words for what he paid for in plain English. Agents "did what they did and said See Ya Later."
What is one of the most famous things Charles, Prince of Wales, has done while waiting to inherit his mother's crown? According to Keir Simmons' ermine-clad report for NBC, loaded with pomp and circumstance, it was agreeing to a sit-down interview with his anchor Brian Williams.
Hundreds of thousands of men have suffered unnecessarily from impotence and incontinence as a result of treatment for prostate cancer that they should not have had. That is the scandal Robert Bazell reported on NBC. A new genetic test, called Oncotype DX, may help men decide whether their tumors are life-threatening or whether they can be monitored undisturbed. Who is going to pay the $3,800 for each screening?
David Martin, CBS' man at the Pentagon, having already war-gamed Benghazi, returned to close the newscast with one of his signature profiles of men mutilated by war. This time weight training guru Tyler Hobson helps the paralyzed Josh Himan pump iron once more.
Why, I asked myself, does ABC find Venus and Serena a new documentary from Magnolia Pictures on the champion tennis sisters newsworthy? Watch Linsey Davis' bland report and you will be as mystified as me. Then check IMDb.com for the credits of the co-director Michelle Major and all will be revealed. She was a producer at Good Morning America while Diane Sawyer was anchor there, from 2002 through 2009.
