ANDREW TYNDALL: THE TOP NEWS STORIES ON TV FOR 2007

Andrew Tyndall is a media researcher par excellence and a great counter. He tracks what stores are covered on the networks and how much time they devote to each. Here is part of his count for 2007. See his website for more at tyndallreport.com

TOP TV NEWS STORIES OF 2007

The War in Iraq was Story of the Year by a wide margin.

The networks monitored the progress of Commander in Chief George
Bush’s troop build-up—-the so-called surge—in Iraq and the
simultaneous debate on Capitol Hill about bringing troops home.
That storyline effectively ended in September when Gen David
Petraeus testified to Congress that violence in Iraq was moderat-
ing and the President ordered the extra troops home. Before that
testimony, the Iraq War averaged 30 minutes of coverage each
week; in the year’s final 15 weeks the average was a scant four
minutes.

Non-war coverage of Iraq continues its steady decline.
In the fall, the networks turned their attention to Campaign
2008. Next year’s race for the White House attracted more
coverage than the last four penultimate years combined.
Only two other international hotspots—Pakistan and Iran—
appeared in the year’s Top 20 besides Iraq. The networks’
foreignbureaus had their lightest workload since 2001.
The War on Terrorism is cooling down even as Planet Earth, as
Nobel Laureate Al Goreinconveniently warns us, is heating up.
Coverage of the Environment (476 min v 302 last year) now
matches that of Terrorism(483 min v 1191 last year).
The Healthbeat (1110 min) had its third-busiest year since 1993,
when Hillary Rodham Clinton, in vain, proposed universal
care. CBS (423 min v 334 in ‘06, 279 in ‘05) leads the way.
The Most Newsworthy Woman of the Year: Benazir Bhutto,
assassinated during her bid to return to power in Pakistan. The
Year’s Most Newsworthy Man: the aforementioned Petraeus.

TOP TWENTY STORIES OF 2007
mins Total ABC CBS NBC

Iraq: US-led combat continues 1157 370 379 407
Virginia Tech campus massacre 244 79 80 84
Wildfires in southern California 221 76 79 66
NYSE-NASDAQ market action 208 51 76 80
Winter blizzards, icestorms 182 59 47 77
Pakistan in political turmoil 165 53 48 63
Military injuries, disabilities 160 57 55 48
Real estate mass foreclosures 133 51 35 46
Illegal immigration debate 124 47 39 39
2008 Rodham Clinton campaign 120 41 44 35
Military families face problems 119 41 40 38
Hurricane Katrina aftermath 116 20 25 71
USAttorneys fired by DoJ 116 33 46 37
Tornado season 112 41 39 32
Airline delays, cancellations 108 39 26 43
Iran military expansion feared 106 32 37 36
2008 Iowa caucuses previewed 104 39 33 31
Global warming climate change 103 38 25 41
2008 Rudolph Giuliani campaign 95 30 28 36
Crude oil, gasoline prices increase 92 42 23 27

GLOBAL WARMING—THE NON ISSUE FOR PUNDITS

Marc Cooper writes:

The New York Times lead editorial on January 1, 2008, “The One Environmental Issue,” provides a perfect example of how big media undermines efforts to address important progressive issues.

The editorial opens with the statement that “The overriding environmental issue of these times is the warming of the planet. The Democratic hopefuls are in the 2008 campaign are fully engaged… The Republicans do not go much farther than conceding that climate change could be a problem.” It goes on to note that “Polls suggest, however, that voters are increasingly alarmed… There is also a growing appetite for decisive action, everywhere, it seems, except the White House. Governors in more than two dozen states are fashioning regrional agreements to lower greenhouse gases, the federal courts have order the executive branch to begin regulating these gases, and the Senate has begun work on a bipartisan bill.”

In addition to the White House there is another major institution that has failed to notice this important issue – big media. The editorial concludes that the media has missed the issue, “In a recent study, the League of Conservation Voters found that as of two weeks ago, the five main political talk-show hosts has collectively asked 2,275 questions of candidates in both parties. Only 24 of these questions even touched on climate change.”

The editorial points out the important consequences of the failure of the press to play its proper role. “One result is that even candidates who urge comprehensive change have not been pressed on important questions of cost.” The more important result is that the public is not made fully aware of the differences between the candidates on this critical issue.”

PUBLIC IS ALARMED EVEN IF MEDIA ISN’T

Despite the media lag on the issue, public awareness of global warming grew—another sign of the diminishing audience and respect for TV News.

Robert Weissman writes:

There were numerous small steps forward to meet the greatest challenge of our day, including in the biggest carbon polluting country, the United States. The U.S. House of Representatives passed a respectable energy bill; the ultimately adopted energy bill will modestly improve energy efficiency in the United States. Many U.S. states are doing much more, most importantly requiring electric utilities to source an increasing amount of their energy from renewable supplies. The Sierra Club and grassroots groups have combined to defeat dozens of coal-fired power plant proposals. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Bali in December ended with a fizzle, thanks largely to U.S. intransigence, but even at Bali, there was agreement that climate change is a real threat.

This last point is probably the main achievement of 2007. There is now no serious argument about the reality of climate change and the need for action. Going forward, the challenge is to generate the political will for meaningful carbon emission cuts, immediately and for the long-term.

THE ROSE PARADE TOOK PLACE IN PASADENA YESTERDAY BUT AS LINDA MILAZZO REPORTS, THERE WAS ALSO ANOTHER ONE THIS YEAR:

On New Years Day, thanks to the 2008 White Rose Coalition (WRC), a GIANT rendering of the Preamble to the Constitution will be carried at the end of the Rose Parade by American patriots in the PEOPLE’S PARADE FOR DEMOCRACY.

The 2008 White Rose Coalition is a convergence of patriots from pro-peace/pro-impeachment organizations across the nation, including the Los Angeles National Impeachment Center (LANIC), CODEPINK, Troops Out Now, World Can’t Wait, ANSWER, Progressive Democrats of America, the Green Party, Veterans For Peace, United For Peace and Justice, The Backbone Campaign, Office Of The Americas, Brave New Films, and more. They have assembled under the banner of the White Rose Coalition in tribute to the resistance movement in Munich in 1942. Caolition members will employ a wide variety of visuals throughout the Rose Parade broadcast to drive home the urgency to end the war in Iraq and impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney. The 2008 WRC is the brainchild of Los Angeles attorney, Peter Thottam. Thottam, a former Green Party candidate for California Assembly and Director of LANIC, has assembled a stellar array of progressive leaders to march in The PEOPLE’S PARADE. They include Camp Casey Peace Institute founder and San Francisco Congressional Candidate, Cindy Sheehan, CODEPINK Co-founder, Jodie Evans, CODEPINK human rights activist, Tighe Barry, who was recently arrested in Pakistan for challenging Musharraf’s martial law, and Marcy Winograd, President of Progressive Democrats of Los Angeles and 2006 Congressional candidate for California’s 36th District….

UNDERNEWS: RECORDING INDUSTRY ONCE SANG A DIFFERENT TUNE ON PERSONAL CD COPYING

BOING BOING - Dan Gillmor points out that the recording industry used to have a different opinion on personal use. It removed the following statement from its website: “If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that’s great. It’s your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail.”

Gillmor adds: “Also, from the Supreme Court oral arguments in the Grokster case, Donald Virrelli, on behalf of the entertainment companies: ‘The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it’s been on their Website for some time now, that it’s perfectly lawful to take a CD that you’ve purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod. There is a very, very significant lawful commercial use for that device, going forward.’”

MARK CRISPIN MILLER ON BILL KIRSTOL AT THE NY TIMES

Here’s some news so shocking that the Times itself announced it in a whisper:
Bill Kristol, an extremist party operative and one of Rupert Murdoch’s staunchest propagandists (he is a FOX News regular, and edits Murdoch’s Weekly Standard), will now have his own column in The New York Times.

Despite what Andrew Rosenthal told Editor & Publisher (below), this certainly is not a question of free speech. Whereas William Safire was, and David Brooks is, a pundit offering mostly right-wing views, Bill Kristol is an avid instrument of BushCo’s most disastrous policies–especially the occupation of Iraq, which
he promoted with a lot of specious claims that all turned out to be completely wrong, and which he keeps defending even now. He is, in short, a specialist in partisan disinformation, and therefore someone whose assertions should be sifted with great care. That he should now be gifted with a weekly forum in
The New York Times is, frankly, staggering. Why not give Karl Rove a weekly column, too?

Kristol’s new assignment is especially remarkable considering his history of wild demagogic thrusts against that very newspaper. As Greg Mitchell notes below, Kristol has routinely scored the Times for failing to support Bush/Cheney, calling the newspaper “irredeemable,” and suggesting at one point that it be prosecuted by the government for having dared report the banking records scandal. Such a call suggests that Kristol’s views are more fascistic than conservative; Safire, a strong libertarian, never would say such a thing. That Kristol has now been ask to hold forth regularly on the Times’s own op-ed page is, again, completely flabbergasting.

It may, however, also be reversible. Here’s something you can do to mark the New Year: contact Clark Hoyt, the paper’s public editor, and tell him what you think of this bizarre new hire:

Clark Hoyt
E-mail: public@nytimes.com
Phone: (212) 556-7652

I was amused to read a blogger from New Jersey who also denounced Kristol’s appointment because he doesn’t conHsider him a real conservative and brands him a radical Trotskyite.