 |           |
TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 10, 2013
Edward Snowden became the face of the National Security Agency spy story. The 29-year-old publicly confessed, via The Guardian's video, that he was the source of the exposed secrets about the NSA's monitoring of telephone call logs and its PRISM system for keeping tabs on the Internet. For the third straight weekday, NSA was Story of the Day: this time ABC joined in and made it a unanimous decision to make spying its lead (Friday and Monday, ABC chose weather instead). CBS kicked off with Seth Doane in Hong Kong, where Snowden had been hiding in the luxurious Hotel Mira. NBC had Lester Holt substituting in the anchor chair.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 10, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
EDWARD SNOWDEN, THE FACE OF EXPOSED SECRETS Edward Snowden became the face of the National Security Agency spy story. The 29-year-old publicly confessed, via The Guardian's video, that he was the source of the exposed secrets about the NSA's monitoring of telephone call logs and its PRISM system for keeping tabs on the Internet. For the third straight weekday, NSA was Story of the Day: this time ABC joined in and made it a unanimous decision to make spying its lead (Friday and Monday, ABC chose weather instead). CBS kicked off with Seth Doane in Hong Kong, where Snowden had been hiding in the luxurious Hotel Mira. NBC had Lester Holt substituting in the anchor chair.
All three newscasts used The Guardian's soundbites of Snowden, video that had been made by a filmmaker close to Julian Assange, creator of WikiLeaks.org, according to CBS' Doane. That would be Laura Poitras, who was credited by ABC and NBC. Snowden's biography was recapitulated by ABC's Brian Ross and NBC's Andrea Mitchell, a high-school dropout and onetime Geneva-based CIA spy, turned IT troubleshooter for Booz|Allen|Hamilton, the NSA contractor, working in Hawaii.
CBS' David Martin explained that it was because Snowden worked in the IT department, debugging software, that he had access to the closely-held secrets that he leaked, which were above his level of clearance. CBS' in-house ex-spook John Miller surmised that this is what Snowden meant when he said he was "authorized" to tap into the NSA's database -- not that he had legal authority to do so, but that he had the IT systems access to do so.
Andrea Mitchell took the opportunity to showcase NBC's newsgathering prowess in her update of the Snowden story. She used a soundbite from her own Exclusive sitdown with Director James Clapper, in which he denounced Snowden's leaks as damaging. She quoted from the appearance by The Guardian's scooper Glenn Greenwald on NBC's Today. She folded in a stand-up from Ian Williams, NBC's correspondent in Hong Kong. And she used a couple of soundbites she had gathered herself earlier in the day on her lunchtime program Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC.
The Snowden manhunt presented the perfect opportunity to draw back the curtain on what David Martin, CBS' man at the Pentagon, dubbed the "espionage-industrial complex." Both he and NBC's Lisa Myers detailed the mushrooming of the spy business in the decade since the attacks of September 11th, 2001. They both counted -- and ABC's Brian Ross did too -- the hundreds of thousands of workers (Ross 850K, Myers 1.4m, Martin 791K plus 483K) with a top secret clearance, both working for the government and for corporations that are the business of government contracting. The boss of Booz|Allen|Hamilton, Snowden's employer, is the former Director of National Intelligence, Martin noted, and the current Director of National Intelligence, is the former boss of Booz|Allen|Hamilton.
NBC's Myers offered a plug to author William Arkin's book Top Secret America. Both she and CBS' Martin went down the list of businesses, both household names and inside-the-Beltway shadows, that profit from the espionage-industrial complex. Those you have heard of: Boeing, General Dynamics, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon; and those whose you have not: Booz|Allen|Hamilton, CACI, CSC, Harris, Intelligent Decisions, L3 Stratis, ManTech, Parsons, Praxis, Proteus, SAIC, Serco, TASC, URS.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS Before Clarissa Ward became CBS' go-to correspondent covering the rebellion in Syria, she had been ABC's woman in Moscow. So it was apt that CBS, the network that has always covered the rebellion in Syria most, should send Ward to Moscow for a sitdown with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Russia's policy towards Syria. No, Russia only supplies Bashar al-Assad's regime with defensive weapons, not arms to be used against civilians. Yes, Russia supports the peace conference in Geneva, and expects the opposition to attend. Yes, war crimes trials for atrocities are appropriate, but only after peace has been established.
The news about the grave condition of Nelson Mandela sent Mark Phillips of CBS and Keir Simmons of NBC to stand watch outside his hospital from London. ABC did not join in for Mandela's last hospitalization in March, and it has not yet done so this time.
Crime coverage saw Matt Gutman, as usual, assigned to ABC's coverage of the Trayvon Murder case. As mentioned on Friday, Gutman has been his network's stalwart since the teenager was murdered. Ron Mott covered the start of the selection of a jury to hear the prosecution of George Zimmerman for NBC, to which substitute anchor Lester Holt properly appended the note that Zimmerman is suing NBC News for defamation. CBS' crime coverage consisted of a follow-up to Friday's shooting at Santa Monica College. That death toll is now six, and Carter Evans brought us the account of Debra Fine, injured by four bullets from the gun of John Zawahri, the dead 23-year-old.
This time last year, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman warned children that the aggressive diagnostic use of CT scan machines can increase their risk of developing cancer. Now, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman warns children that the aggressive diagnostic use of CT scan machines can increase their risk of developing cancer.
The modification to the Find My iPhone app that Apple will offer for its smart phone is nothing like the technology depicted in the TV classic Mission Impossible but that was no deterrent to Gio Benitez. He included a clip anyway, as he recycled street theft surveillance video from his ABC colleague Pierre Thomas last September and Linsey Davis last month. The updated app has nothing to do with secret agents -- it just deters Applepicking.
Also on the hi-tech beat, NBC's Stephanie Gosk paid tribute to the non-profit nonPareil Institute in Plano, and to software firms SAP and Alliance Data for their Big Idea that many autistic adults have a special aptitude for writing code for computer games and smartphone apps.
Reporters who confuse doing journalism with being a character in their own reality show…
…see ABC's Ron Claiborne giggle as his hair is groomed by a baby clouded leopard…
…see CBS' Ben Tracy prove that he cannot cycle up Colorado hillsides as fast as the winner of the Fleche Wallonne…
…see ABC's Jennifer Ashton humiliated, as her complaints against her snoring husband for disturbing her slumber are proven to be groundless by sleep expert Wendy Troxel.
All three newscasts used The Guardian's soundbites of Snowden, video that had been made by a filmmaker close to Julian Assange, creator of WikiLeaks.org, according to CBS' Doane. That would be Laura Poitras, who was credited by ABC and NBC. Snowden's biography was recapitulated by ABC's Brian Ross and NBC's Andrea Mitchell, a high-school dropout and onetime Geneva-based CIA spy, turned IT troubleshooter for Booz|Allen|Hamilton, the NSA contractor, working in Hawaii.
CBS' David Martin explained that it was because Snowden worked in the IT department, debugging software, that he had access to the closely-held secrets that he leaked, which were above his level of clearance. CBS' in-house ex-spook John Miller surmised that this is what Snowden meant when he said he was "authorized" to tap into the NSA's database -- not that he had legal authority to do so, but that he had the IT systems access to do so.
Andrea Mitchell took the opportunity to showcase NBC's newsgathering prowess in her update of the Snowden story. She used a soundbite from her own Exclusive sitdown with Director James Clapper, in which he denounced Snowden's leaks as damaging. She quoted from the appearance by The Guardian's scooper Glenn Greenwald on NBC's Today. She folded in a stand-up from Ian Williams, NBC's correspondent in Hong Kong. And she used a couple of soundbites she had gathered herself earlier in the day on her lunchtime program Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC.
The Snowden manhunt presented the perfect opportunity to draw back the curtain on what David Martin, CBS' man at the Pentagon, dubbed the "espionage-industrial complex." Both he and NBC's Lisa Myers detailed the mushrooming of the spy business in the decade since the attacks of September 11th, 2001. They both counted -- and ABC's Brian Ross did too -- the hundreds of thousands of workers (Ross 850K, Myers 1.4m, Martin 791K plus 483K) with a top secret clearance, both working for the government and for corporations that are the business of government contracting. The boss of Booz|Allen|Hamilton, Snowden's employer, is the former Director of National Intelligence, Martin noted, and the current Director of National Intelligence, is the former boss of Booz|Allen|Hamilton.
NBC's Myers offered a plug to author William Arkin's book Top Secret America. Both she and CBS' Martin went down the list of businesses, both household names and inside-the-Beltway shadows, that profit from the espionage-industrial complex. Those you have heard of: Boeing, General Dynamics, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, Raytheon; and those whose you have not: Booz|Allen|Hamilton, CACI, CSC, Harris, Intelligent Decisions, L3 Stratis, ManTech, Parsons, Praxis, Proteus, SAIC, Serco, TASC, URS.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS Before Clarissa Ward became CBS' go-to correspondent covering the rebellion in Syria, she had been ABC's woman in Moscow. So it was apt that CBS, the network that has always covered the rebellion in Syria most, should send Ward to Moscow for a sitdown with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Russia's policy towards Syria. No, Russia only supplies Bashar al-Assad's regime with defensive weapons, not arms to be used against civilians. Yes, Russia supports the peace conference in Geneva, and expects the opposition to attend. Yes, war crimes trials for atrocities are appropriate, but only after peace has been established.
The news about the grave condition of Nelson Mandela sent Mark Phillips of CBS and Keir Simmons of NBC to stand watch outside his hospital from London. ABC did not join in for Mandela's last hospitalization in March, and it has not yet done so this time.
Crime coverage saw Matt Gutman, as usual, assigned to ABC's coverage of the Trayvon Murder case. As mentioned on Friday, Gutman has been his network's stalwart since the teenager was murdered. Ron Mott covered the start of the selection of a jury to hear the prosecution of George Zimmerman for NBC, to which substitute anchor Lester Holt properly appended the note that Zimmerman is suing NBC News for defamation. CBS' crime coverage consisted of a follow-up to Friday's shooting at Santa Monica College. That death toll is now six, and Carter Evans brought us the account of Debra Fine, injured by four bullets from the gun of John Zawahri, the dead 23-year-old.
This time last year, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman warned children that the aggressive diagnostic use of CT scan machines can increase their risk of developing cancer. Now, NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman warns children that the aggressive diagnostic use of CT scan machines can increase their risk of developing cancer.
The modification to the Find My iPhone app that Apple will offer for its smart phone is nothing like the technology depicted in the TV classic Mission Impossible but that was no deterrent to Gio Benitez. He included a clip anyway, as he recycled street theft surveillance video from his ABC colleague Pierre Thomas last September and Linsey Davis last month. The updated app has nothing to do with secret agents -- it just deters Applepicking.
Also on the hi-tech beat, NBC's Stephanie Gosk paid tribute to the non-profit nonPareil Institute in Plano, and to software firms SAP and Alliance Data for their Big Idea that many autistic adults have a special aptitude for writing code for computer games and smartphone apps.
Reporters who confuse doing journalism with being a character in their own reality show…
…see ABC's Ron Claiborne giggle as his hair is groomed by a baby clouded leopard…
…see CBS' Ben Tracy prove that he cannot cycle up Colorado hillsides as fast as the winner of the Fleche Wallonne…
…see ABC's Jennifer Ashton humiliated, as her complaints against her snoring husband for disturbing her slumber are proven to be groundless by sleep expert Wendy Troxel.
