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It was unfortunate that anchor Charles Gibson's tribute to John McWethy to close ABC's newscast should run simultaneously with NBC's closing feature, showing Peter Alexander schussing on the slopes of Aspen in his piece on skier safety in avalanche zones. McWethy had been Gibson's own skiing buddy before he was killed, the anchor noted. McWethy was an innovator on the national security beat, starting at the State Department and then expanding his role at ABC to include the Pentagon. CBS performed the same merger the other way round, assigning Pentagon correspondent David Martin to diplomatic coverage too. Of the three broadcast news divisions only NBC still keeps the two beats separate, with Andrea Mitchell on diplomacy and Jim Miklaszewski on the military.
Gibson's obituary of McWethy included a montage of hotspot datelines--Antarctica (well not so much of a hotspot), Bosnia, Port-au-Prince, Afghanistan, Somalia, Kosovo, Baghdad--culminating in his coverage from the Pentagon itself on September 11th, 2001. McWethy's reporter's mantra: "It is not unpatriotic to question the government. It is unpatriotic not to."
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