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On such a light day of news, all three networks turned to special features, each with its own angle on poverty. ABC's A Closer Look had Kate Snow accompany former President Bill Clinton to Malawi where his foundation is trying to alleviate rural malnutrition by sponsoring a 1200-member peasant farmers' cooperative, providing loans for fertilizer and a mill contract for their winter wheat harvest.
NBC sent Bob Faw to the slums of Matamoros for its series Faith in America. Faw followed 50 members of Teenmania, the Christian youth movement, to the "squalor and sweltering heat of northern Mexico" for their two week ministry: they played with the children, fed the hungry, helped build homes and performed morality plays--all "to show them the love of Jesus," as one young missionary testified.
Back in May, we noted (text link) how "monochromatic" Katie Couric's portrayal of Philadelphia was when she went on the road to anchor from that city. Well, that deficit was certainly redressed by Byron Pitts in the start of his two-parter for CBS Battleline Philadelphia on the "urban genocide" there amid sky-high unemployment and school dropout rates. With 10,000 people wounded or killed from gunfire in the city in the past six years, Pitts confronted Sylvester Johnson, the city's soon-to-retire police commissioner: "Is it an urban problem? Is it a black problem?" "Philadelphia is definitely a black problem because 85% of the people who are being killed--close to 80%--are Afro-American males." Next Pitts asked a 19-year-old ex-con, newly released from jail for shooting a fellow teen four times, why he walks the streets with a concealed handgun. "Everywhere. I cannot go anywhere without it. Nowhere. Bad. Either dead or in jail. That is to talk like it is."
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