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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 24, 2013
When Edward Snowden exposed some of the National Security Agency's secrets, he explained his motive: to kickstart a debate about the extent of the federal government's spying. No such luck. The NSA, sure enough, qualified as Story of the Day yet again -- but all of the coverage concerned Snowden's whereabouts, none concerned the NSA's espionage. NBC and CBS both led with Snowden's flight to Moscow from Hong Kong. ABC chose to lead with domestic news instead: the opening arguments in the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman. It was a busy day of news: not only did all three newscasts assign a correspondent to both Snowden and Zimmerman, all three also had a legal eagle at the Supreme Court to cover student Abigail Fisher's lawsuit against the University of Texas.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 24, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
SNOWDEN, ZIMMERMAN, FISHER -- A HEAVY NEWS TRIFECTA When Edward Snowden exposed some of the National Security Agency's secrets, he explained his motive: to kickstart a debate about the extent of the federal government's spying. No such luck. The NSA, sure enough, qualified as Story of the Day yet again -- but all of the coverage concerned Snowden's whereabouts, none concerned the NSA's espionage. NBC and CBS both led with Snowden's flight to Moscow from Hong Kong. ABC chose to lead with domestic news instead: the opening arguments in the Florida murder trial of George Zimmerman. It was a busy day of news: not only did all three newscasts assign a correspondent to both Snowden and Zimmerman, all three also had a legal eagle at the Supreme Court to cover student Abigail Fisher's lawsuit against the University of Texas.
The Image of the Day was Seat 17A on the Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Havana. It was empty. It signified that Snowden was not, as had been expected, trying to travel from Russia, via Cuba, to Ecuador where he had applied for political asylum, following the trail blazed by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, who was already being sheltered by Ecuador from arrest by the United States. All three newscasts reported that WikiLeaks.org was the sponsor that paid for Snowden's escape from Hong Kong to Moscow, after Hong Kong decided to discontinue negotiations with Washington about extradition.
Each of the three newscasts assigned primary coverage of the Snowden manhunt to a single correspondent -- Brian Ross on ABC, Bob Orr on CBS, Andrea Mitchell on NBC -- and then peppered its coverage with input from other reporters. The inability of the federal government to arrest Snowden on espionage charges was clearly exasperating. It is amusing to note the different shadings of mood attributed to the feds by the three correspondents: ABC's Ross saw outrage; CBS' Orr desperation; NBC's Mitchell embarrassment.
As for all those the helping hands, the White House beat was handled by Jonathan Karl on ABC; traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry, CBS used Margaret Brennan and NBC used Catherine Chomiak (folded into the Mitchell videostream); covering the Justice Department were CBS' John Miller and ABC's Pierre Thomas (at the head of the Karl videostream); from foreign bureaus, ABC had Gloria Riviera in Hong Kong (folded into the Ross videostream), and NBC had Jim Maceda in Moscow and Miguel Almaguer in Quito (both folded into the Mitchell videostream).
Get ready for month-long drumbeat coverage of the neighborhood watch killing in Sanford Fla. All three newscasts started to introduce the cast of characters as the murder trial of George Zimmerman got under way (and get ready for the ritual disclaimer that will follow each and every report on the trial from NBC, namely that NBC is the defendant in a lawsuit for defamation filed by the accused murderer Zimmerman).
As they have done throughout their coverage, ABC and CBS assigned their main man to the trial's opening statements, Matt Gutman (who has filed 28 of his network's 30 reports so far) and Mark Strassmann (18 of his network's 22). NBC has used a mixture of correspondents to cover the story, opting this time for Ron Mott, only his second package on the case.
We were introduced to prosecutor John Guy (with his *profanity* punks soundbite) and defender Don West (with his lame Knock-Knock joke). All three newscasts ran the chilling 911 audio of the fatal shot being fired. ABC's homework included a Virtual View computer animation of the crimewatch community that Zimmerman patroled. NBC's Mott added a soundbite from Kendall Coffey, his network's in-house legal analyst. I am sure it will turn out to be the start of a busy month for Mr Coffey.
As controversial as the killing was at the time -- actually, it was not the killing that caused the controversy but the initial decision by local prosecutors not to file charges -- this court case would not be booked for non-stop national attention if it were not being televised. I should be more precise, so that I do not leave the wrong impression: the problem is not the presence of video cameras in Sanford, but their absence elsewhere. If video cameras were allowed inside all courtrooms, including the Supreme Court, as they should be, in order to ensure that justice is seen to be done, then the Sanford trial would be merely one among many, and would not be the object of the national fixation that now seems inevitable.
Speaking of the Supreme Court, the technical non-decision on race-based affirmative action at the University of Texas received more attention than it deserved. The Court decided that diversity on campus was a desirable objective, but that to include racial criteria to achieve it should be a last resort. CBS' Jan Crawford used a gridiron metaphor for that football-crazy university: she called the instruction that a lower court subject its admissions system to yet more intense scrutiny nothing but "a punt." ABC's Terry Moran made note of the fact that plaintiff Fisher is aligned with the American Enterprise Institute. NBC's Peter Williams used his airtime to offer a plug for author Greg Stohr's book, A Black and White Case.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS Ever since the story broke about the Internal Revenue Service and the Tea Party, ABC has found it less newsworthy than either NBC or CBS. So ABC has some excuse for not following up with the revelation by IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel that the BOLO scrutiny ("be on the lookout") of social welfare organizations for signs of non-exempt political activism applied to self-styled progressives as well as to self-styled patriots. NBC had no such excuse for its failure to set the record straight. CBS did, with Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill.
CBS spotted a looming headline grabber by assigning Manuel Bojorquez to the special session of the Texas legislature and its debate over an abortion bill. Bojorquez was exquisitely even-handed in characterizing both the bill's pro-life benefits -- improving the quality of women's healthcare facilities, preventing fetal pain in utero -- and its anti-choice restrictions, namely that all but five of the state's 42 abortion clinics would be shuttered if the legislation passes.
He is not dead yet, but both Keir Simmons on NBC and Ron Claiborne on ABC filed a brief stand-up from Pretoria to tell us that they are in poisition on the Nelson Mandela death watch. Debora Patta did the same for CBS on Friday.
In its News You Can Use enthusiasm, sometimes ABC turns its newscast into a video version of high school Drivers Ed. Just in the last three months, we have had Matt Gutman on handling highway flash floods, Paula Faris on improving the daily commute, David Kerley on driving through fog and ice, Lisa Stark on escaping from submerged cars. Now, Gio Benitez files the latest Drivers Ed episode, offering coping tips for road rage from automotive psychologist Ryan Fuller.
Thursday, I complimented Clayton Sandell at ABC on his efforts to cover the Colorado wildfire season with journalistic value, rather than merely filing out-of-control weatherporn. Well, Sandell does it again: sure, he voices over a video reel of calamity -- tornadoes, winds, floods, fires -- but then he delivers federal NOAA data on how climate change has hiked the cost of disasters in the last 30 years. Well done Gabe Gutierrez on NBC too, offering an ecological reason for why the forests in Colorado burn so fiercely. Damn you, spruce bark beetle!
NBC and CBS both mentioned Rusty, the escaped red panda from the National Zoo, in passing. What was ABC thinking, on such a heavy news day, when it made time for an entire package by correspondent David Kerley?
Alex Weprin at mediabistro's TVNewser points out that the previous high-wire tightrope stunt by Nik Wallenda, over Niagara Falls, had been hosted by Josh Elliott of ABC's Good Morning America. NBC's Anne Thompson now gives us highlights of Wallenda's latest walk, over the Little Colorado River gorge near the Grand Canyon, as covered by cable TV's Discovery Channel. Thompson did offer a Wallenda soundbite from NBC's Today, but she omitted the detail that Weprin notes when he called the two stunts "a proxy war between ABC News and NBC News" -- namely that Discovery may have aired the Canyon walk but NBC News produced it and provided its hosts. What message was Thompson trying to send with such a glaring omission?
For the third time in four years, CBS waxes elegiac about the past glories of Big Steel. Cynthia Bowers traveled to the Monongahela Valley when the NFL Steelers played in Super Bowl XLIII. Sharyl Attkisson mourned the closing of Sparrows Point in Maryland last fall. Now Jim Axelrod takes a tour with 80-year-old Richie Check of the ghost of the mill that was once Bethlehem Steel.
The Image of the Day was Seat 17A on the Aeroflot flight from Moscow to Havana. It was empty. It signified that Snowden was not, as had been expected, trying to travel from Russia, via Cuba, to Ecuador where he had applied for political asylum, following the trail blazed by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.org, who was already being sheltered by Ecuador from arrest by the United States. All three newscasts reported that WikiLeaks.org was the sponsor that paid for Snowden's escape from Hong Kong to Moscow, after Hong Kong decided to discontinue negotiations with Washington about extradition.
Each of the three newscasts assigned primary coverage of the Snowden manhunt to a single correspondent -- Brian Ross on ABC, Bob Orr on CBS, Andrea Mitchell on NBC -- and then peppered its coverage with input from other reporters. The inability of the federal government to arrest Snowden on espionage charges was clearly exasperating. It is amusing to note the different shadings of mood attributed to the feds by the three correspondents: ABC's Ross saw outrage; CBS' Orr desperation; NBC's Mitchell embarrassment.
As for all those the helping hands, the White House beat was handled by Jonathan Karl on ABC; traveling with Secretary of State John Kerry, CBS used Margaret Brennan and NBC used Catherine Chomiak (folded into the Mitchell videostream); covering the Justice Department were CBS' John Miller and ABC's Pierre Thomas (at the head of the Karl videostream); from foreign bureaus, ABC had Gloria Riviera in Hong Kong (folded into the Ross videostream), and NBC had Jim Maceda in Moscow and Miguel Almaguer in Quito (both folded into the Mitchell videostream).
Get ready for month-long drumbeat coverage of the neighborhood watch killing in Sanford Fla. All three newscasts started to introduce the cast of characters as the murder trial of George Zimmerman got under way (and get ready for the ritual disclaimer that will follow each and every report on the trial from NBC, namely that NBC is the defendant in a lawsuit for defamation filed by the accused murderer Zimmerman).
As they have done throughout their coverage, ABC and CBS assigned their main man to the trial's opening statements, Matt Gutman (who has filed 28 of his network's 30 reports so far) and Mark Strassmann (18 of his network's 22). NBC has used a mixture of correspondents to cover the story, opting this time for Ron Mott, only his second package on the case.
We were introduced to prosecutor John Guy (with his *profanity* punks soundbite) and defender Don West (with his lame Knock-Knock joke). All three newscasts ran the chilling 911 audio of the fatal shot being fired. ABC's homework included a Virtual View computer animation of the crimewatch community that Zimmerman patroled. NBC's Mott added a soundbite from Kendall Coffey, his network's in-house legal analyst. I am sure it will turn out to be the start of a busy month for Mr Coffey.
As controversial as the killing was at the time -- actually, it was not the killing that caused the controversy but the initial decision by local prosecutors not to file charges -- this court case would not be booked for non-stop national attention if it were not being televised. I should be more precise, so that I do not leave the wrong impression: the problem is not the presence of video cameras in Sanford, but their absence elsewhere. If video cameras were allowed inside all courtrooms, including the Supreme Court, as they should be, in order to ensure that justice is seen to be done, then the Sanford trial would be merely one among many, and would not be the object of the national fixation that now seems inevitable.
Speaking of the Supreme Court, the technical non-decision on race-based affirmative action at the University of Texas received more attention than it deserved. The Court decided that diversity on campus was a desirable objective, but that to include racial criteria to achieve it should be a last resort. CBS' Jan Crawford used a gridiron metaphor for that football-crazy university: she called the instruction that a lower court subject its admissions system to yet more intense scrutiny nothing but "a punt." ABC's Terry Moran made note of the fact that plaintiff Fisher is aligned with the American Enterprise Institute. NBC's Peter Williams used his airtime to offer a plug for author Greg Stohr's book, A Black and White Case.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS Ever since the story broke about the Internal Revenue Service and the Tea Party, ABC has found it less newsworthy than either NBC or CBS. So ABC has some excuse for not following up with the revelation by IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel that the BOLO scrutiny ("be on the lookout") of social welfare organizations for signs of non-exempt political activism applied to self-styled progressives as well as to self-styled patriots. NBC had no such excuse for its failure to set the record straight. CBS did, with Nancy Cordes on Capitol Hill.
CBS spotted a looming headline grabber by assigning Manuel Bojorquez to the special session of the Texas legislature and its debate over an abortion bill. Bojorquez was exquisitely even-handed in characterizing both the bill's pro-life benefits -- improving the quality of women's healthcare facilities, preventing fetal pain in utero -- and its anti-choice restrictions, namely that all but five of the state's 42 abortion clinics would be shuttered if the legislation passes.
He is not dead yet, but both Keir Simmons on NBC and Ron Claiborne on ABC filed a brief stand-up from Pretoria to tell us that they are in poisition on the Nelson Mandela death watch. Debora Patta did the same for CBS on Friday.
In its News You Can Use enthusiasm, sometimes ABC turns its newscast into a video version of high school Drivers Ed. Just in the last three months, we have had Matt Gutman on handling highway flash floods, Paula Faris on improving the daily commute, David Kerley on driving through fog and ice, Lisa Stark on escaping from submerged cars. Now, Gio Benitez files the latest Drivers Ed episode, offering coping tips for road rage from automotive psychologist Ryan Fuller.
Thursday, I complimented Clayton Sandell at ABC on his efforts to cover the Colorado wildfire season with journalistic value, rather than merely filing out-of-control weatherporn. Well, Sandell does it again: sure, he voices over a video reel of calamity -- tornadoes, winds, floods, fires -- but then he delivers federal NOAA data on how climate change has hiked the cost of disasters in the last 30 years. Well done Gabe Gutierrez on NBC too, offering an ecological reason for why the forests in Colorado burn so fiercely. Damn you, spruce bark beetle!
NBC and CBS both mentioned Rusty, the escaped red panda from the National Zoo, in passing. What was ABC thinking, on such a heavy news day, when it made time for an entire package by correspondent David Kerley?
Alex Weprin at mediabistro's TVNewser points out that the previous high-wire tightrope stunt by Nik Wallenda, over Niagara Falls, had been hosted by Josh Elliott of ABC's Good Morning America. NBC's Anne Thompson now gives us highlights of Wallenda's latest walk, over the Little Colorado River gorge near the Grand Canyon, as covered by cable TV's Discovery Channel. Thompson did offer a Wallenda soundbite from NBC's Today, but she omitted the detail that Weprin notes when he called the two stunts "a proxy war between ABC News and NBC News" -- namely that Discovery may have aired the Canyon walk but NBC News produced it and provided its hosts. What message was Thompson trying to send with such a glaring omission?
For the third time in four years, CBS waxes elegiac about the past glories of Big Steel. Cynthia Bowers traveled to the Monongahela Valley when the NFL Steelers played in Super Bowl XLIII. Sharyl Attkisson mourned the closing of Sparrows Point in Maryland last fall. Now Jim Axelrod takes a tour with 80-year-old Richie Check of the ghost of the mill that was once Bethlehem Steel.
