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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 20, 2013
All three newscasts led with the state of the stock market, where investors were in a selling mood for the second straight day, amid warnings from the Federal Reserve Board that it will cut back on its monetary stimulus sooner rather than later. Yet these financial stirrings were not newsworthy enough to qualify as Story of the Day. A pair of softer stories were each covered by correspondents at all three networks: one was the back story behind the viral video of the astonished face of the toddler Grayson Clamp, which ABC assigned to its substitute anchor David Muir; the other was the untimely death of James Gandolfini, the actor who embodied HBO's Tony Soprano, which NBC assigned to its anchor Brian Williams. Gandolfini was Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 20, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
DEAD SOPRANO, VIRAL TODDLER: BOTH TRUMP FALLING STOCKS All three newscasts led with the state of the stock market, where investors were in a selling mood for the second straight day, amid warnings from the Federal Reserve Board that it will cut back on its monetary stimulus sooner rather than later. Yet these financial stirrings were not newsworthy enough to qualify as Story of the Day. A pair of softer stories were each covered by correspondents at all three networks: one was the back story behind the viral video of the astonished face of the toddler Grayson Clamp, which ABC assigned to its substitute anchor David Muir; the other was the untimely death of James Gandolfini, the actor who embodied HBO's Tony Soprano, which NBC assigned to its anchor Brian Williams. Gandolfini was Story of the Day.
The state of the financial markets was not a straightforward story to report, since the negative development of the withdrawal of support by the Federal Reserve Board, is prompted by a positive development, namely that the economy is becoming strong enough not to need that support.
So on the negative side, Carter Evans on CBS and CNBC's Maria Bartiromo on NBC both offered reasons why the price of major stock market indices have fallen by 5% in two days. Evans offered a slowdown in manufacturing in China; Bartiromo offered investors switching from stocks to bonds. On ABC, Rebecca Jarvis told us to look at the trends of the year so far, during which the price of financial assets has risen by 10%.
On the positive side, CBS' Anthony Mason cited the reasons for the Federal Reserve's optimism on Wednesday, and his colleague Dean Reynolds now offers a concrete example of boom times: the full employment in Thief River Falls in Minnesota, thanks to Digi-Key and Arctic Cat.
On the mixed side, both ABC's Rebecca Jarvis on Wednesday and NBC's Tom Costello now, brought us both sides of the housing market. There is more buying than ever going on, yet mortgage interest rates are starting to rise. Costello quoted Diana Olick, the real estate maven at CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news network. Because of a mixture of high prices and higher rates, buyers can afford "a whole lot less house than a month ago."
The reason why all three newscasts felt compelled to tell us about experimental brain implant surgery at the University of the North Carolina's Medical Center is that the patient's mother had her video camera rolling when the implant was tested. Grayson Clamp was born without an auditory nerve in his head, so he had lived the first three years of his life without sound. The microchip plugged straight into his brain stem and when it was switched on little Grayson registered a double-take of astonishment and awe at hearing his father's voice. The fact that the voice was telling him that his father loved him added to the emotional power of the video, even though, obviously, the boy would have been unable to divine any meaning from the words -- they would have been mere sounds. Anyway both ABC and CBS deployed their in-house computer animators to demonstrate how the implant works. ABC had substitute anchor David Muir narrate the viral video; NBC used Kate Snow; CBS went with its in-house physician Jon LaPook.
As for the actor Gandolfini, dead at age 51, ABC treated his surprise death as a news story, with Lama Hasan filing from the hospital in Rome. All three newscasts also filed obituaries. ABC sent Dan Harris to the very driveway in North Caldwell NJ where Gandolfini's character would routinely pick up the morning's edition of the Star Ledger. CBS had Ben Tracy file from Los Angeles while NBC's Jersey-born anchor Brian Williams invoked Garden State pride. All three obituaries gave credit to Gandolfini as a trailblazer in developing the flawed anti-hero character, now so common as a leading man in television dramas. All three dug into their own interview archives: CBS with Bob Simon in 2005, ABC on Nightline in 2012, NBC with Williams himself in 2007, promoting an HBO documentary on disabled combat veterans.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS Apart from the Federal Reserve and its contracting monetary stimulus, there were two political stories that qualified for coverage. The Congressional correspondents at NBC and CBS both told us about a $20bn plan to intensify the policing of the border with Mexico: 20K newly hired patrol agents, 700 more miles of fencing, hi-tech sensors, cameras, drones. Both Kelly O'Donnell and Nancy Cordes saw the expense as an inducement to attract Republican support in the Senate to the proposed bipartisan immigration legislation. NBC's O'Donnell offered some cross-promotion to Maria Bartiromo at CNBC, who obtained a skeptical soundbite from Speaker John Boehner on the bill's potential.
Secondarily, ABC and CBS followed up on Tuesday's coverage of looming diplomacy with Afghanistan's Taliban at its newly-opened office in Qatar. On Tuesday, NBC's Dustin Golestani covered the talks from Kabul and CBS' Major Garrett did so from the traveling White House in Berlin. Now Margaret Brennan, CBS' woman at the State Department, tells us that a prisoner exchange, involving five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay, would be a pre-condition for diplomacy. ABC's David Wright took us to Idaho, the home of Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, the PoW who might be exchanged for the Gitmo Five.
Unusually, ABC's Clayton Sandell did the right thing when he described a western wildfire season that sees blazes twice the size of 40 years ago and a season lasting two months longer. He blamed climate change, and 28 years of warmer temperatures. On NBC Gabe Gutierrez told us that the drought in the southwest is intensifying with its center heading westwards. Yet when Gutierrez showed us that the town well had run dry in Magdalena NM, neither the words "global warming" nor "climate change" passed his lips.
The coverage of the deaf toddler Grayson Clamp was not the only report to use viral video as a news hook. CBS' Mark Strassmann reminded us of his network's heart-tugger from a month ago in Oklahoma: Barbara Garcia, aged 74, finding Bowser, her pet Schnauzer, in the rubble from the tornado that rampaged through Moore. Strassmann told us that Bowser logged 4m views online, netting Garcia $61K in donations to rebuld her home.
ABC's Matt Gutman has been the go-to correspondent on the killing of Trayvon Martin since the start. All but two of ABC's reports on the case have been filed by him, 27 out of a three-network 76. Gutman was the only reporter to file on the jury that will hear the murder prosecution of George Zimmerman. The fact that all of them are female is "highly unusual."
Steve Osunsami, in Atlanta for ABC, brought us the brouhaha at cable TV's Food Network, where Savannah's celebrity chef Paula Deen is giving southern hospitality a bad name. Osunsami quoted Deen as waxing nostalgic for those old plantation days, when slaves would dress in white jackets and black bowties to serve their masters. Osunsami found outrage on ABC's daytime yakker The View and worry at the public relations counseling firm Reputation.com. ABC also found Deen newsworthy last year, when Josh Elliott covered the revelation that she was a secret diabetes patient, even as she touted the wholesomeness of recipes that increase the risk of the disease.
The state of the financial markets was not a straightforward story to report, since the negative development of the withdrawal of support by the Federal Reserve Board, is prompted by a positive development, namely that the economy is becoming strong enough not to need that support.
So on the negative side, Carter Evans on CBS and CNBC's Maria Bartiromo on NBC both offered reasons why the price of major stock market indices have fallen by 5% in two days. Evans offered a slowdown in manufacturing in China; Bartiromo offered investors switching from stocks to bonds. On ABC, Rebecca Jarvis told us to look at the trends of the year so far, during which the price of financial assets has risen by 10%.
On the positive side, CBS' Anthony Mason cited the reasons for the Federal Reserve's optimism on Wednesday, and his colleague Dean Reynolds now offers a concrete example of boom times: the full employment in Thief River Falls in Minnesota, thanks to Digi-Key and Arctic Cat.
On the mixed side, both ABC's Rebecca Jarvis on Wednesday and NBC's Tom Costello now, brought us both sides of the housing market. There is more buying than ever going on, yet mortgage interest rates are starting to rise. Costello quoted Diana Olick, the real estate maven at CNBC, NBC's sibling financial news network. Because of a mixture of high prices and higher rates, buyers can afford "a whole lot less house than a month ago."
The reason why all three newscasts felt compelled to tell us about experimental brain implant surgery at the University of the North Carolina's Medical Center is that the patient's mother had her video camera rolling when the implant was tested. Grayson Clamp was born without an auditory nerve in his head, so he had lived the first three years of his life without sound. The microchip plugged straight into his brain stem and when it was switched on little Grayson registered a double-take of astonishment and awe at hearing his father's voice. The fact that the voice was telling him that his father loved him added to the emotional power of the video, even though, obviously, the boy would have been unable to divine any meaning from the words -- they would have been mere sounds. Anyway both ABC and CBS deployed their in-house computer animators to demonstrate how the implant works. ABC had substitute anchor David Muir narrate the viral video; NBC used Kate Snow; CBS went with its in-house physician Jon LaPook.
As for the actor Gandolfini, dead at age 51, ABC treated his surprise death as a news story, with Lama Hasan filing from the hospital in Rome. All three newscasts also filed obituaries. ABC sent Dan Harris to the very driveway in North Caldwell NJ where Gandolfini's character would routinely pick up the morning's edition of the Star Ledger. CBS had Ben Tracy file from Los Angeles while NBC's Jersey-born anchor Brian Williams invoked Garden State pride. All three obituaries gave credit to Gandolfini as a trailblazer in developing the flawed anti-hero character, now so common as a leading man in television dramas. All three dug into their own interview archives: CBS with Bob Simon in 2005, ABC on Nightline in 2012, NBC with Williams himself in 2007, promoting an HBO documentary on disabled combat veterans.
THURSDAY’S THOUGHTS Apart from the Federal Reserve and its contracting monetary stimulus, there were two political stories that qualified for coverage. The Congressional correspondents at NBC and CBS both told us about a $20bn plan to intensify the policing of the border with Mexico: 20K newly hired patrol agents, 700 more miles of fencing, hi-tech sensors, cameras, drones. Both Kelly O'Donnell and Nancy Cordes saw the expense as an inducement to attract Republican support in the Senate to the proposed bipartisan immigration legislation. NBC's O'Donnell offered some cross-promotion to Maria Bartiromo at CNBC, who obtained a skeptical soundbite from Speaker John Boehner on the bill's potential.
Secondarily, ABC and CBS followed up on Tuesday's coverage of looming diplomacy with Afghanistan's Taliban at its newly-opened office in Qatar. On Tuesday, NBC's Dustin Golestani covered the talks from Kabul and CBS' Major Garrett did so from the traveling White House in Berlin. Now Margaret Brennan, CBS' woman at the State Department, tells us that a prisoner exchange, involving five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay, would be a pre-condition for diplomacy. ABC's David Wright took us to Idaho, the home of Sgt Bowe Bergdahl, the PoW who might be exchanged for the Gitmo Five.
Unusually, ABC's Clayton Sandell did the right thing when he described a western wildfire season that sees blazes twice the size of 40 years ago and a season lasting two months longer. He blamed climate change, and 28 years of warmer temperatures. On NBC Gabe Gutierrez told us that the drought in the southwest is intensifying with its center heading westwards. Yet when Gutierrez showed us that the town well had run dry in Magdalena NM, neither the words "global warming" nor "climate change" passed his lips.
The coverage of the deaf toddler Grayson Clamp was not the only report to use viral video as a news hook. CBS' Mark Strassmann reminded us of his network's heart-tugger from a month ago in Oklahoma: Barbara Garcia, aged 74, finding Bowser, her pet Schnauzer, in the rubble from the tornado that rampaged through Moore. Strassmann told us that Bowser logged 4m views online, netting Garcia $61K in donations to rebuld her home.
ABC's Matt Gutman has been the go-to correspondent on the killing of Trayvon Martin since the start. All but two of ABC's reports on the case have been filed by him, 27 out of a three-network 76. Gutman was the only reporter to file on the jury that will hear the murder prosecution of George Zimmerman. The fact that all of them are female is "highly unusual."
Steve Osunsami, in Atlanta for ABC, brought us the brouhaha at cable TV's Food Network, where Savannah's celebrity chef Paula Deen is giving southern hospitality a bad name. Osunsami quoted Deen as waxing nostalgic for those old plantation days, when slaves would dress in white jackets and black bowties to serve their masters. Osunsami found outrage on ABC's daytime yakker The View and worry at the public relations counseling firm Reputation.com. ABC also found Deen newsworthy last year, when Josh Elliott covered the revelation that she was a secret diabetes patient, even as she touted the wholesomeness of recipes that increase the risk of the disease.
