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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM JUNE 3, 2013
It was not exactly a guilty conscience. But at least the death of a trio of stormchasers over the weekend, when a tornado in Oklahoma turned on its pursuers, prompted sober reflection. There had been 64 separate reports on tornadoes on the three nightly newscasts in the month of May alone. Clearly, the networks' awestruck fascination with nature's fury shares the same mentality with the adrenaline-pumped excitement that inspires stormchasing. Perhaps it even facilitates it. Scores of chasing teams now risk their lives in Tornado Alley and this particular trio -- National Geographic Explorer's Tom Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young -- lost theirs. None of the newscasts led with the trio's deaths, but the three somber features, reflecting on lessons learned, made stormchasing the Story of the Day.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR JUNE 3, 2013: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
POST MORTEM ON OKLAHOMA STORMCHASERS It was not exactly a guilty conscience. But at least the death of a trio of stormchasers over the weekend, when a tornado in Oklahoma turned on its pursuers, prompted sober reflection. There had been 64 separate reports on tornadoes on the three nightly newscasts in the month of May alone. Clearly, the networks' awestruck fascination with nature's fury shares the same mentality with the adrenaline-pumped excitement that inspires stormchasing. Perhaps it even facilitates it. Scores of chasing teams now risk their lives in Tornado Alley and this particular trio -- National Geographic Explorer's Tom Samaras, Paul Samaras, and Carl Young -- lost theirs. None of the newscasts led with the trio's deaths, but the three somber features, reflecting on lessons learned, made stormchasing the Story of the Day.
NBC's Tom Costello was most direct at pointing the finger at television news. He showed us the van belonging to Mike Bettes' crew at the Weather Channel, NBC's sibling network, tossed 200 yards by a twister. Costello noted that the lure of television money for extreme twister video has been one incentive for thrillseekers to join the chase. On CBS, Anna Werner cited the 1996 Hollywood movie Twister as the inspiration that attracted so many more amateurs and tourists to Tornado Alley. Ginger Zee, a stormchaser herself and a protégée of Samaras, was both emphatic and defensive on ABC. Zee insisted that the three died as professional meteorologists, dedicated men of science, not reckless adventurers.
Undeterred by the deaths of those covering natural disasters, all three newscasts continued in the same vein. NBC's Katy Tur surveyed the damage from Oklahoma's storms and flash floods, with a death toll of 18. CBS' Kelly Garcia and NBC's Diana Alvear both donned yellow firefighting capes on the frontlines of wildfires around Lake Hughes, near Lancaster Cal. And ABC assigned its lead to Alex Perez for a national roundup of weather porn video: fallen wind turbines, flash floods, sinkholes, wildfires, lightning -- and frightened major leaguers in a thunderstruck dugout.
NBC and CBS both managed to drag themselves away from the weather to select political stories for their leads. From Capitol Hill, CBS' Nancy Cordes monitored House hearings into waste-fraud-abuse at the Internal Revenue Service. NBC was the only newscast to assign a correspondent to the Supreme Court decision allowing police to extract a DNA sample from everyone they arrest for a serious crime. Pete Williams came up with the scary statistic that by the age of 23, one third of the entire population has had the experience of being arrested for one reason or another.
CONDOLEEZZA’S DEBUT Monday marked the evening news debut of Condoleezza Rice as an in-house Contributor for CBS. For more than two years now, CBS has led the way in coverage of Syria, portraying the increasingly embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad as having to resort to desperate measures against growing opposition forces in order to avoid its own decapitation.
Now Rice stands that reporting on its head, portraying the Baath regime as on the offensive, part of Iran's advancing regional coalition. Rice's first foray into journalism gave no indication that she has grasped the difference between this new role, and her previous incarnations in the national security establishment, as NSC Advisor and Secretary of State.
Take her first soundbite. What she appeared to be saying was: "The violence in Syria must stop." What she actually said: "There is no doubt that it is time for the United States to make clear that it is going to engage in this effort to stop the difficult situation in Syria." Diplomats may be trained to be longwinded and obfuscatory. Journalists are supposed to be clear and concise.
Next, anchor Scott Pelley asked her to explain the nature of the crisis. Study her responses: first, it is a humanitarian problem, because the "difficult situation in Syria" must stop; then it is one of diplomatic stability, with the "Middle East state system as we know it" at stake; lastly it is geo-strategic, with Iran and its allies "on the march," threatening Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Diplomats may be trained to pile one rationale onto another. Journalists are supposed to separate and prioritize.
Lastly, Rice devoted her segment to asserting -- without weighing costs and benefits, without assessing risks and consequences -- that it is imperative for the United States to use military force to intervene in the Middle East once more. It "does not have an option of no action." Diplomats may be trained to lobby the public on national security policy by, for example, portraying choices as inevitabilities. Journalists are supposed to elucidate those options, so the public will be better informed when it encounters such lobbying.
Someone at CBS should go over this video with Contributor Rice and show her how she is undercutting the network's journalism, rather than contributing to it.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS CBS' international desk performed double duty: Holly Williams on the riots in Istanbul was clearer than Contributor Rice on Syria. Neither NBC nor ABC had a correspondent file from abroad. Williams' final insight into why the Turkish government is unpopular: its ban on booze.
Given that all three newscasts are saturated with Low-T ads for testosterone supplements by AndroGel and the like, ABC made the principled decision to assign Neal Karlinsky to cover their risks and likely overuse. There was not much fresh in Karlinsky's report however: compare it to his feature from last September and you'll see the same buff babyboomer booster and the same six-pack-abs graphics.
America! America! See David Muir test drive a Winnebago on the Las Vegas Strip for ABC's Made in America series. See Bob Woodruff praise Lisa Vasiloff's Birthday Wishes charity (the same one Rehema Ellis showcased on NBC four years ago) for ABC's America Strong.
NBC anchor Brian Williams followed up on Friday's five-minute preview for his primetime Rock Center segment. On Friday he sat down with six legless women, all amputees from the Boston Marathon pressure-cooker bombs. Now Williams gives us a close-up of one of them, Erika Brannock, the last of the six to leave the hospital. Turn to CBS in the same closing segment and you will see Lee Woodruff sit down with the same Brannock, and her sister Nicole Gross, and the runner they were cheering when the explosion happened, their mother, Carol Downing.
Did you catch that? Lee Woodruff filed the closing feature on CBS from Boston while Bob Woodruff filed the closing feature on ABC from Roxbury. Compare Mr and Mrs Woodruff and you'll hear that he is the professional broadcaster, warzone brain damage and all. He crowned the family weekend by including birthday homevideo of the Woodruff toddler twins in his feature. I wonder which network covered the expenses for the family weekend in Massachusetts.
NBC's Tom Costello was most direct at pointing the finger at television news. He showed us the van belonging to Mike Bettes' crew at the Weather Channel, NBC's sibling network, tossed 200 yards by a twister. Costello noted that the lure of television money for extreme twister video has been one incentive for thrillseekers to join the chase. On CBS, Anna Werner cited the 1996 Hollywood movie Twister as the inspiration that attracted so many more amateurs and tourists to Tornado Alley. Ginger Zee, a stormchaser herself and a protégée of Samaras, was both emphatic and defensive on ABC. Zee insisted that the three died as professional meteorologists, dedicated men of science, not reckless adventurers.
Undeterred by the deaths of those covering natural disasters, all three newscasts continued in the same vein. NBC's Katy Tur surveyed the damage from Oklahoma's storms and flash floods, with a death toll of 18. CBS' Kelly Garcia and NBC's Diana Alvear both donned yellow firefighting capes on the frontlines of wildfires around Lake Hughes, near Lancaster Cal. And ABC assigned its lead to Alex Perez for a national roundup of weather porn video: fallen wind turbines, flash floods, sinkholes, wildfires, lightning -- and frightened major leaguers in a thunderstruck dugout.
NBC and CBS both managed to drag themselves away from the weather to select political stories for their leads. From Capitol Hill, CBS' Nancy Cordes monitored House hearings into waste-fraud-abuse at the Internal Revenue Service. NBC was the only newscast to assign a correspondent to the Supreme Court decision allowing police to extract a DNA sample from everyone they arrest for a serious crime. Pete Williams came up with the scary statistic that by the age of 23, one third of the entire population has had the experience of being arrested for one reason or another.
CONDOLEEZZA’S DEBUT Monday marked the evening news debut of Condoleezza Rice as an in-house Contributor for CBS. For more than two years now, CBS has led the way in coverage of Syria, portraying the increasingly embattled regime of Bashar al-Assad as having to resort to desperate measures against growing opposition forces in order to avoid its own decapitation.
Now Rice stands that reporting on its head, portraying the Baath regime as on the offensive, part of Iran's advancing regional coalition. Rice's first foray into journalism gave no indication that she has grasped the difference between this new role, and her previous incarnations in the national security establishment, as NSC Advisor and Secretary of State.
Take her first soundbite. What she appeared to be saying was: "The violence in Syria must stop." What she actually said: "There is no doubt that it is time for the United States to make clear that it is going to engage in this effort to stop the difficult situation in Syria." Diplomats may be trained to be longwinded and obfuscatory. Journalists are supposed to be clear and concise.
Next, anchor Scott Pelley asked her to explain the nature of the crisis. Study her responses: first, it is a humanitarian problem, because the "difficult situation in Syria" must stop; then it is one of diplomatic stability, with the "Middle East state system as we know it" at stake; lastly it is geo-strategic, with Iran and its allies "on the march," threatening Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain. Diplomats may be trained to pile one rationale onto another. Journalists are supposed to separate and prioritize.
Lastly, Rice devoted her segment to asserting -- without weighing costs and benefits, without assessing risks and consequences -- that it is imperative for the United States to use military force to intervene in the Middle East once more. It "does not have an option of no action." Diplomats may be trained to lobby the public on national security policy by, for example, portraying choices as inevitabilities. Journalists are supposed to elucidate those options, so the public will be better informed when it encounters such lobbying.
Someone at CBS should go over this video with Contributor Rice and show her how she is undercutting the network's journalism, rather than contributing to it.
MONDAY’S MUSINGS CBS' international desk performed double duty: Holly Williams on the riots in Istanbul was clearer than Contributor Rice on Syria. Neither NBC nor ABC had a correspondent file from abroad. Williams' final insight into why the Turkish government is unpopular: its ban on booze.
Given that all three newscasts are saturated with Low-T ads for testosterone supplements by AndroGel and the like, ABC made the principled decision to assign Neal Karlinsky to cover their risks and likely overuse. There was not much fresh in Karlinsky's report however: compare it to his feature from last September and you'll see the same buff babyboomer booster and the same six-pack-abs graphics.
America! America! See David Muir test drive a Winnebago on the Las Vegas Strip for ABC's Made in America series. See Bob Woodruff praise Lisa Vasiloff's Birthday Wishes charity (the same one Rehema Ellis showcased on NBC four years ago) for ABC's America Strong.
NBC anchor Brian Williams followed up on Friday's five-minute preview for his primetime Rock Center segment. On Friday he sat down with six legless women, all amputees from the Boston Marathon pressure-cooker bombs. Now Williams gives us a close-up of one of them, Erika Brannock, the last of the six to leave the hospital. Turn to CBS in the same closing segment and you will see Lee Woodruff sit down with the same Brannock, and her sister Nicole Gross, and the runner they were cheering when the explosion happened, their mother, Carol Downing.
Did you catch that? Lee Woodruff filed the closing feature on CBS from Boston while Bob Woodruff filed the closing feature on ABC from Roxbury. Compare Mr and Mrs Woodruff and you'll hear that he is the professional broadcaster, warzone brain damage and all. He crowned the family weekend by including birthday homevideo of the Woodruff toddler twins in his feature. I wonder which network covered the expenses for the family weekend in Massachusetts.
