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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 19, 2013
The set-piece speech by President Barack Obama at the Brandenberg Gate, where the Berlin Wall used to be, was Story of the Day. All three White House correspondents covered it but only NBC chose it as its lead, with Chuck Todd on Obama's proposal to Russia that both powers should reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons by one third. CBS' Major Garrett filed only a brief stand-up, noting that nuclear cuts were opposed not only by the Kremlin, but by Republicans too. ABC's Jonathan Karl chose the angle that the President's speech capped a generally underwhelming trip to Europe. CBS and ABC, with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, led instead with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board: ABC chose Bernanke's impact on the housing market; CBS his impact on the bond market's long-term interest rates.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 19, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
OBAMA LEFT NO MAJOR BRANDENBERG SOUNDBITE The set-piece speech by President Barack Obama at the Brandenberg Gate, where the Berlin Wall used to be, was Story of the Day. All three White House correspondents covered it but only NBC chose it as its lead, with Chuck Todd on Obama's proposal to Russia that both powers should reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons by one third. CBS' Major Garrett filed only a brief stand-up, noting that nuclear cuts were opposed not only by the Kremlin, but by Republicans too. ABC's Jonathan Karl chose the angle that the President's speech capped a generally underwhelming trip to Europe. CBS and ABC, with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, led instead with Chairman Benjamin Bernanke of the Federal Reserve Board: ABC chose Bernanke's impact on the housing market; CBS his impact on the bond market's long-term interest rates.
The plutonium pollution left by the nuclear weapons arsenal that the President wants to cut happened to be the topic of a feature by Carter Evans on CBS. He traveled to the Hanford Reservation in Washington State, where its 177 underground storage tanks have been plagued by leaks since 2000. He pointed the finger of blame at the Department of Energy's contractor, Bechtel, for clean-up delays and cost overruns.
As for the Federal Reserve Board, CBS' Anthony Mason filed a brief summary on the improving macro-economy. ABC's Rebecca Jarvis had a lopsided view of residential real estate and the impact of rising 30-year home mortgage rates. Her emphasis was on inflation -- the prospect that higher rates translate into higher monthly payments for homebuyers. We have to wait until the end of her report to get the anti-inflationary alternative -- that higher borrowing costs may lead to lower selling prices to home purchasers.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS Desert war game video was filed by CBS' Clarissa Ward and ABC's Martha Raddatz from Jordan, as the Pentagon put on its annual show, along with local forces. Of course, the Hashemite Kingdom itself was not the reason why these maneuvers were newsworthy. The next door Baath Republic was. CBS' Ward pointed out that Syria was the nation whose name nobody mentioned. ABC's Raddatz landed a royal soundbite, from Prince Faisal bin al-Hussain.
CBS' Mark Phillips, who was invited to his 94th birthday party last July, feels sorry for Nelson Mandela. Staked out on the death watch outside an hospital in Johannesburg, Phillips speculated about pressure on the Mandela family to keep their patriarch artificially alive for symbolic political motives, rather than just turning off the machines to allow him to pass away in peace.
When Sojourner Truth's bust was unveiled at the Capital Rotunda four years ago, CBS had Bill Whitaker cover it. Now it is a Rotunda statue for Frederick Douglass and CBS gives the assignment to Jim Axelrod. Douglass' descendant Kenneth Morris protests the continuing existence of 27m slaves worldwide. Unfortunately, Axelrod told us about Morris, a marketing executive turned educator, instead of about those still toiling under the bondsman's lash.
Transportation for America, a lobbying group, issued a report requesting the federal government to fork over $76bn for repairs to its sector, highway bridges. NBC's John Yang offered uncritical publicity.
Customs and the Border Patrol do it. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms do it. Last year ABC's Jim Avila told us that local police forces do it, and this year NBC's John Yang told us the same. So why did Bob Orr find it newsworthy when the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted at Senate hearings that it too, sometimes uses small, unmanned drone aircraft for surveillance? I suppose it was because Orr had Director Robert Mueller's soundbite.
ABC's Pierre Thomas was so excited about the prospect of an assassination van mounted with a hidden killer X-ray machine that he commissioned his network's in-house computer animators to prepare a Virtual View enactment of how it would work, as well as playing a clip of a fictional version, as imagined in the Hollywood movie Real Genius. The inspiration for Thomas' imaginings was the arrest of a Ku Klux Klan engineer in upstate New York on charges of planning to use the X-ray-gun -- "Hiroshima with a light switch" -- against Moslems, and against Barack Obama.
Also using a Hollywood movie clip was Ron Allen on NBC. He used Jack Nicholson in The Departed because he was trying to explain why the mobster trial of James Bulger was attracting so much attention in Boston (not just in Boston, but with three reports on CBS, here, here, and here, just in the last week). Allen used the movie clip (a fictionalized biopic), and a soundbite from Dick Lehr, the author of Whitey (a biography), to argue that Bulger was a onetime legendary figure whose myth is now being dismantled. Maybe the truth is that NBC finds mobsters glamorous. After all, Allen could not resist that old tabloid trick of splitting a name with a nickname -- John The Execution Martorano -- and NBC did send Katy Tur to look for Jimmy Hoffa on Wednesday.
NBC anchor Brian Williams had already filed special profiles on the sextet of female amputees from the pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line. NBC's Anne Thompson had already covered the male side, introducing us to amputee Ron Brassard, and the transgenerational friendship he had formed with Robert Wheeler, the marathoner who saved his life. Now Thompson shows us Brassard celebrating their 28-year age difference by attending Wheeler's graduation at Framingham State University.
When Alaska got an early start on summer, setting record temperatures in its 19-out-of-24 hours of daylight, ABC had Neal Karlinsky narrate the scantily-clad images of the Anchorage beach from his bureau in Seattle. Karlinsky did not let the concepts "global warming" or "climate change" pass his lips.
Does the American Medical Association have the best interests of fat people at heart when it proposes that obesity be reclassified as an underlying disease, rather than merely a potential symptom of one? Or is it lobbying the health insurance industry to change its protocols so that more treatments qualify for compensation? NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman skirted round that issue Wednesday and CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook does the same now. Let's have less mealy-mouthed coverage, please.
Why did NBC's Tom Costello and ABC's Brian Ross resurrect the discredited speculation about the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 that killed 230 people? Costello reminded us of the coverage at the time, including that by his anchor Brian Williams, then working for MSNBC and sporting a Peter-Jennings-ish look. ABC substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos was working in Bill Clinton's White House at the time, and reminded Ross that no credence had been given to the rumors of terrorist attacks or errant missile tests back then. So why is the talk of cover-up recurring 17 years later? Because a movie documentary filled with such talk by EPIX, unimaginatively titled TWA Flight 800, is about to be released. Ross did not even dignify the movie by naming its title and even narrated his own network's Virtual View computer animation in order to contradict its thesis.
Cross-promoting ABC's new primetime news magazine The Lookout, Elisabeth Leamy and Queens gearhead Audra Fordin launched a two-woman search for sexist auto repair shops. They found some suspected chauvinists in Jersey City.
This is what I think is going in on in Gio Benitez' report on ABC from New York City's Central Park. Benitez wanted to be on hand when one of those ostentatious proposals of marriage happened. You know that sentimental moment of surprise that gets all those views on YouTube, as ABC's David Wright reminded us last summer. I think Benitez got wind of one involving a flash mob of dancers -- but this time the flash mob was not a viral group of the couple's social media friends. It was commercially-commissioned, instead. The business, Flash Mob of America, I think, gave Benitez inside access to its surprise plan, in return for free publicity for its $80K corporate flash-mob-planning business. Thus the cute image of a romantic engagement was contaminated by crass boosting for Suave hair care, UrtheCAST, and motivational speaking by Rudolph Giuliani.
The plutonium pollution left by the nuclear weapons arsenal that the President wants to cut happened to be the topic of a feature by Carter Evans on CBS. He traveled to the Hanford Reservation in Washington State, where its 177 underground storage tanks have been plagued by leaks since 2000. He pointed the finger of blame at the Department of Energy's contractor, Bechtel, for clean-up delays and cost overruns.
As for the Federal Reserve Board, CBS' Anthony Mason filed a brief summary on the improving macro-economy. ABC's Rebecca Jarvis had a lopsided view of residential real estate and the impact of rising 30-year home mortgage rates. Her emphasis was on inflation -- the prospect that higher rates translate into higher monthly payments for homebuyers. We have to wait until the end of her report to get the anti-inflationary alternative -- that higher borrowing costs may lead to lower selling prices to home purchasers.
WEDNESDAY’S WORDS Desert war game video was filed by CBS' Clarissa Ward and ABC's Martha Raddatz from Jordan, as the Pentagon put on its annual show, along with local forces. Of course, the Hashemite Kingdom itself was not the reason why these maneuvers were newsworthy. The next door Baath Republic was. CBS' Ward pointed out that Syria was the nation whose name nobody mentioned. ABC's Raddatz landed a royal soundbite, from Prince Faisal bin al-Hussain.
CBS' Mark Phillips, who was invited to his 94th birthday party last July, feels sorry for Nelson Mandela. Staked out on the death watch outside an hospital in Johannesburg, Phillips speculated about pressure on the Mandela family to keep their patriarch artificially alive for symbolic political motives, rather than just turning off the machines to allow him to pass away in peace.
When Sojourner Truth's bust was unveiled at the Capital Rotunda four years ago, CBS had Bill Whitaker cover it. Now it is a Rotunda statue for Frederick Douglass and CBS gives the assignment to Jim Axelrod. Douglass' descendant Kenneth Morris protests the continuing existence of 27m slaves worldwide. Unfortunately, Axelrod told us about Morris, a marketing executive turned educator, instead of about those still toiling under the bondsman's lash.
Transportation for America, a lobbying group, issued a report requesting the federal government to fork over $76bn for repairs to its sector, highway bridges. NBC's John Yang offered uncritical publicity.
Customs and the Border Patrol do it. The Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms do it. Last year ABC's Jim Avila told us that local police forces do it, and this year NBC's John Yang told us the same. So why did Bob Orr find it newsworthy when the Federal Bureau of Investigation admitted at Senate hearings that it too, sometimes uses small, unmanned drone aircraft for surveillance? I suppose it was because Orr had Director Robert Mueller's soundbite.
ABC's Pierre Thomas was so excited about the prospect of an assassination van mounted with a hidden killer X-ray machine that he commissioned his network's in-house computer animators to prepare a Virtual View enactment of how it would work, as well as playing a clip of a fictional version, as imagined in the Hollywood movie Real Genius. The inspiration for Thomas' imaginings was the arrest of a Ku Klux Klan engineer in upstate New York on charges of planning to use the X-ray-gun -- "Hiroshima with a light switch" -- against Moslems, and against Barack Obama.
Also using a Hollywood movie clip was Ron Allen on NBC. He used Jack Nicholson in The Departed because he was trying to explain why the mobster trial of James Bulger was attracting so much attention in Boston (not just in Boston, but with three reports on CBS, here, here, and here, just in the last week). Allen used the movie clip (a fictionalized biopic), and a soundbite from Dick Lehr, the author of Whitey (a biography), to argue that Bulger was a onetime legendary figure whose myth is now being dismantled. Maybe the truth is that NBC finds mobsters glamorous. After all, Allen could not resist that old tabloid trick of splitting a name with a nickname -- John The Execution Martorano -- and NBC did send Katy Tur to look for Jimmy Hoffa on Wednesday.
NBC anchor Brian Williams had already filed special profiles on the sextet of female amputees from the pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line. NBC's Anne Thompson had already covered the male side, introducing us to amputee Ron Brassard, and the transgenerational friendship he had formed with Robert Wheeler, the marathoner who saved his life. Now Thompson shows us Brassard celebrating their 28-year age difference by attending Wheeler's graduation at Framingham State University.
When Alaska got an early start on summer, setting record temperatures in its 19-out-of-24 hours of daylight, ABC had Neal Karlinsky narrate the scantily-clad images of the Anchorage beach from his bureau in Seattle. Karlinsky did not let the concepts "global warming" or "climate change" pass his lips.
Does the American Medical Association have the best interests of fat people at heart when it proposes that obesity be reclassified as an underlying disease, rather than merely a potential symptom of one? Or is it lobbying the health insurance industry to change its protocols so that more treatments qualify for compensation? NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman skirted round that issue Wednesday and CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook does the same now. Let's have less mealy-mouthed coverage, please.
Why did NBC's Tom Costello and ABC's Brian Ross resurrect the discredited speculation about the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996 that killed 230 people? Costello reminded us of the coverage at the time, including that by his anchor Brian Williams, then working for MSNBC and sporting a Peter-Jennings-ish look. ABC substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos was working in Bill Clinton's White House at the time, and reminded Ross that no credence had been given to the rumors of terrorist attacks or errant missile tests back then. So why is the talk of cover-up recurring 17 years later? Because a movie documentary filled with such talk by EPIX, unimaginatively titled TWA Flight 800, is about to be released. Ross did not even dignify the movie by naming its title and even narrated his own network's Virtual View computer animation in order to contradict its thesis.
Cross-promoting ABC's new primetime news magazine The Lookout, Elisabeth Leamy and Queens gearhead Audra Fordin launched a two-woman search for sexist auto repair shops. They found some suspected chauvinists in Jersey City.
This is what I think is going in on in Gio Benitez' report on ABC from New York City's Central Park. Benitez wanted to be on hand when one of those ostentatious proposals of marriage happened. You know that sentimental moment of surprise that gets all those views on YouTube, as ABC's David Wright reminded us last summer. I think Benitez got wind of one involving a flash mob of dancers -- but this time the flash mob was not a viral group of the couple's social media friends. It was commercially-commissioned, instead. The business, Flash Mob of America, I think, gave Benitez inside access to its surprise plan, in return for free publicity for its $80K corporate flash-mob-planning business. Thus the cute image of a romantic engagement was contaminated by crass boosting for Suave hair care, UrtheCAST, and motivational speaking by Rudolph Giuliani.
