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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 06, 2013
The Story of the Day came with a hat tip to The Guardian of London. It snared the scoop of a secret search warrant granted by the secret court set up by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. The warrant allowed spies at the National Security Agency to add the logs of three months of telephone calls across the entire Verizon network to its database. All three newscasts filed double-barreled coverage of the scoop. All were certain that this one Verizon warrant was no aberration. Instead it is typical of a seven-year-old industrywide program of secret data collection. CBS and NBC, with substitute anchor Ann Curry, led with the NSA. Even though ABC gave it just as much coverage, unaccountably it decided that weather should be its lead, making this the sixth day out of the last nine weekdays with an ABC weather lead.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 06, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
BIG BROTHER COLLECTS BIG DATA The Story of the Day came with a hat tip to The Guardian of London. It snared the scoop of a secret search warrant granted by the secret court set up by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act. The warrant allowed spies at the National Security Agency to add the logs of three months of telephone calls across the entire Verizon network to its database. All three newscasts filed double-barreled coverage of the scoop. All were certain that this one Verizon warrant was no aberration. Instead it is typical of a seven-year-old industrywide program of secret data collection. CBS and NBC, with substitute anchor Ann Curry, led with the NSA. Even though ABC gave it just as much coverage, unaccountably it decided that weather should be its lead, making this the sixth day out of the last nine weekdays with an ABC weather lead.
CBS' Major Garrett and ABC's Jonathan Karl filed from the White House on the spying. CBS' Garrett told us that the Obama Administration admits that its spies are tracking the telephone numbers involved in calls and how long the conversations last, but not the content of the conversations nor the identities of those speaking. ABC's Karl pointed out that Barack Obama had been outraged at such NSA surveillance when he was a senator back in 2007.
NBC assigned its round-up of the controversy to Andrea Mitchell in its DC bureau. Mitchell, as she often does, included a couple of soundbites she had gathered earlier in the day on her own lunchtime cable news Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC. ABC also assigned the story to its investigative reporter Brian Ross. He noted that both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration had tried to make their data collection obscure. Both ran the incriminating soundbite from Congressional hearings:
Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR): "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?"
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: "No, sir."
CBS went to its in-house ex-spook John Miller for an explanation of meta-data-mining. He reckoned that the NSA is currently storing the telephone logs in a system called PRISM, a scaled-back successor to the overreaching Stellar Wind surveillance system. He claimed PRISM had led to the search warrant that led to the protection of the New York City subway system from the Denver-based bomb plot of Najibullah Zazi. This is how the nightly newscasts covered that foiled plot when the story broke back in the fall of 2009.
NSA spies are not only keeping tabs on our telephone calls, NBC's Pete Williams added. With a second hat-tip to The Guardian and to Washington Post, Williams reported that it is also live-monitoring the content of Internet communications via warrants against the servers of Internet Service Providers. ABC's Ross and CBS' Miller reported on the same monitoring.
An Investigates feature also showed up later on NBC. Michael Isikoff revealed that, according to the FBI, spies from the People's Republic of China had been active back in 2008, when an invitation.zip virus wormed its way into the computer systems of the Presidential campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain. Isikoff publicized the efforts of Kroll Securities at protecting Obama's secrets. He also told us that China denies the accusation.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS Nancy Cordes, CBS' Capitol Hill correspondent, moved the investigation into the IRS and the Tea Party forward. She obtained access to interviews with Elizabeth Hofacre and Gary Muthert, a couple tax bureaucrats at the Cincinnati office, who were handling the applications for non-political status by Tea Party groups. The cases were referred to an IRS lawyer at headquarters, only to be strangled by red tape.
All three newscasts covered the first storm of this year's Atlantic Ocean hurricane season. NBC used Mike Seidel of the Weather Channel, its sibling cable network. ABC kicked off its newscast with Good Morning America weathercaster Sam Champion. On CBS, the storm track forecast for Tropical Storm Andrea was filed by David Bernard of WFOR-TV, its Miami affiliate.
Monsanto's insecticide-resistant FrankenFood is on the loose in the wheatfields of rural Oregon and CBS' Ben Tracy is on the case.
Ernest Greene and Collin Smith form an odd couple that makes America Strong, as ABC would put it. Smith, aged 22, earned his bachelor's degree from High Point University in North Carolina. And, in his way, Greene, aged 72 and a devout Christian, earned his too. Josh Elliott explains why.
CBS has a soft spot for the Library of Congress. Here is a playlist of 13 reports from all three newscasts; eight of them have been filed by CBS. Chip Reid on the Veterans History Project is the latest.
Esther Williams, the bathing beauty of Hollywood's Golden Age, has died at age 91. The obituary on each newscast was filed by its anchor; each included file footage of interviews Williams had granted to each network. NBC's Ann Curry never told us whose questions Williams was responding to. On ABC, the 2007 sitdown was with Diane Sawyer herself. CBS' Scott Pelley had the pick of the bunch, showing Williams with Ed Murrow in black-&-white in 1960 on Person to Person. Did you know that she used to finish a lap swim of an entire quarter of a mile before she turned up to work at MGM each morning? "Kinda ridiculous!"
CBS' Major Garrett and ABC's Jonathan Karl filed from the White House on the spying. CBS' Garrett told us that the Obama Administration admits that its spies are tracking the telephone numbers involved in calls and how long the conversations last, but not the content of the conversations nor the identities of those speaking. ABC's Karl pointed out that Barack Obama had been outraged at such NSA surveillance when he was a senator back in 2007.
NBC assigned its round-up of the controversy to Andrea Mitchell in its DC bureau. Mitchell, as she often does, included a couple of soundbites she had gathered earlier in the day on her own lunchtime cable news Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC. ABC also assigned the story to its investigative reporter Brian Ross. He noted that both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration had tried to make their data collection obscure. Both ran the incriminating soundbite from Congressional hearings:
Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR): "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions, of Americans?"
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: "No, sir."
CBS went to its in-house ex-spook John Miller for an explanation of meta-data-mining. He reckoned that the NSA is currently storing the telephone logs in a system called PRISM, a scaled-back successor to the overreaching Stellar Wind surveillance system. He claimed PRISM had led to the search warrant that led to the protection of the New York City subway system from the Denver-based bomb plot of Najibullah Zazi. This is how the nightly newscasts covered that foiled plot when the story broke back in the fall of 2009.
NSA spies are not only keeping tabs on our telephone calls, NBC's Pete Williams added. With a second hat-tip to The Guardian and to Washington Post, Williams reported that it is also live-monitoring the content of Internet communications via warrants against the servers of Internet Service Providers. ABC's Ross and CBS' Miller reported on the same monitoring.
An Investigates feature also showed up later on NBC. Michael Isikoff revealed that, according to the FBI, spies from the People's Republic of China had been active back in 2008, when an invitation.zip virus wormed its way into the computer systems of the Presidential campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain. Isikoff publicized the efforts of Kroll Securities at protecting Obama's secrets. He also told us that China denies the accusation.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS Nancy Cordes, CBS' Capitol Hill correspondent, moved the investigation into the IRS and the Tea Party forward. She obtained access to interviews with Elizabeth Hofacre and Gary Muthert, a couple tax bureaucrats at the Cincinnati office, who were handling the applications for non-political status by Tea Party groups. The cases were referred to an IRS lawyer at headquarters, only to be strangled by red tape.
All three newscasts covered the first storm of this year's Atlantic Ocean hurricane season. NBC used Mike Seidel of the Weather Channel, its sibling cable network. ABC kicked off its newscast with Good Morning America weathercaster Sam Champion. On CBS, the storm track forecast for Tropical Storm Andrea was filed by David Bernard of WFOR-TV, its Miami affiliate.
Monsanto's insecticide-resistant FrankenFood is on the loose in the wheatfields of rural Oregon and CBS' Ben Tracy is on the case.
Ernest Greene and Collin Smith form an odd couple that makes America Strong, as ABC would put it. Smith, aged 22, earned his bachelor's degree from High Point University in North Carolina. And, in his way, Greene, aged 72 and a devout Christian, earned his too. Josh Elliott explains why.
CBS has a soft spot for the Library of Congress. Here is a playlist of 13 reports from all three newscasts; eight of them have been filed by CBS. Chip Reid on the Veterans History Project is the latest.
Esther Williams, the bathing beauty of Hollywood's Golden Age, has died at age 91. The obituary on each newscast was filed by its anchor; each included file footage of interviews Williams had granted to each network. NBC's Ann Curry never told us whose questions Williams was responding to. On ABC, the 2007 sitdown was with Diane Sawyer herself. CBS' Scott Pelley had the pick of the bunch, showing Williams with Ed Murrow in black-&-white in 1960 on Person to Person. Did you know that she used to finish a lap swim of an entire quarter of a mile before she turned up to work at MGM each morning? "Kinda ridiculous!"
