Andrew Tyndall begins his analysis of ABC, NBC and CBS coverage of the Wikileaks story by criticizing Ben Craw and Jason Linkins for their HuffPo analysis: WikiLeaks Media Reaction: A Frenzy Of Frantic Yawning Over Nine-Year Long War (VIDEO).

Few soundbites in their mashup, he writes, "came from the network nightly newscasts." He then writes a long post arguing that the nightly news coverage gave the story the "respect" that it warranted.

So, the nightly newscasts had a unanimous thumbs up for Assange, right?

Not quite. The documents he provided were greeted as newsworthy. His political intervention in the debate over the war was treated as effective. There was no yawn. There was something new here. As an Afghanistan story, it had bona fides.

I took issue with Tyndall's implication that the networks weren't dismissive of the Wikileaks story in the same manner as many columnists. I prepared a long comment ... and then noticed the warning: HTML will be stripped.

Well, I was using HTML to link to the same videos as Tyndall. So here's my response, where I *can* use HTML.

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I don't watch TV news -- haven't done so in decades. I have a print (text) bias. Hats off to you for the diligence.

However, your coverage does not include CNN and FOX, which are primary news sources for Americans. Jon Stewart's monologue on Tuesday highlighted four "nothing new" talking heads -- someone on CNN/Anderson Cooper ("there's nothing new, really, here"), someone on Larry King CNN/Larry King ("storm in a teacup"), someone on CBS ("the substance is not new"), and Charles Krauthammer (a print columnist) on FOX ("nothing is essentially, fundamentally, new").

It's not clear in this article (I haven't spent a lot of time on your site) if you are talking about the "evening news" or if you also include morning news shows and mid-day news shows and shows like Good Morning America. Or are you including only news from the big three that is also posted online? (The chart for 26 July lists only news bits that have online video.)

Here's an itemized review of those links that deal specifically with this claim:

1. NBC: Leaked war docs provide details, no bombshells.
2. NBC : Will WikiLeaks data dump damage diplomacy? ... "the documents do support widely held suspicions that Pakistan's intelligence agency secretly supports the Taliban."
3. CBS : Gov't Secrecy Vs. Right to Know - profile of Wikileaks with explanation of how it is different from media/traditional gatekeepers
4. ABC : Who Sprung the Leak? - profile of Bradley Manning

Of the two stories you've highlighted in TYNDALL PICKS FOR JULY 26, 2010 that actually deal with the substance of the story ... both have a "nothing new" headline or summary. One of them is the source of your Jim Miklaszewski quote that you're using to buttress your argument that the electronic media gave this story "respect." The lead, however, by Brian Williams, positions the information as something insiders have known all along. (His comment about the Pentagon having not had the time to read the documents seems, ummm, odd; one would hope that people at the Pentagon read them more than once before they saw the light of day.)

You quote CBS' David Martin as not dismissing the Wikileaks data ... but ignore his singing the same refrain: "most of the reports document what is already well known" (0.50).

I'm not seeing the big difference in reporting pattern that you seem to see.

Finally, if, as these columnists, reporters and talking heads say, the MSM has known how badly the war in Afghanistan is going ... why haven't they reported it? That's Their Job! Notice no one in any story acknowledges this.