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Tuesday's news agenda was much like Monday's. It was a light day of news, resulting in the waning Mexican swine 'flu outbreak qualifying as a lackluster Story of the Day--just eight minutes--by default. The 'flu news, such as it was, was that the Centers for Disease Control rescinded its previous guidelines that entire schools should be closed if even a single student became infected. ABC, which led with signs of economic recovery Monday, was the only newscast to lead with influenza. Conversely, economic prospects happened to be the lead on both CBS and NBC, both of which used substitute anchors, Jeff Glor and Ann Curry respectively.

ABC led off with Ryan Owens from Fort Worth, where the districtwide closings caused the most disruption, 140 schools in all. "Never mind," was his paraphrase of the CDC's "stunning reversal…Health officials say the reasoning for the reversal is simple--the swine 'flu just is not as bad as feared." NBC's Robert Bazell noted that the virus causes "mild or moderate illness" and that it spread at the same rate in communities with closed schools as with open schools. The death toll from the 'flu in Texas has now risen to two as a thirtysomething woman with "some chronic health problems," as ABC's Owens put it, succumbed.

ABC's 'flu follow-up was a public relations effort on behalf of hog farmers. Steve Osunsami explained that this should be prime selling season for pork--Easter hams followed by summer barbecues. Yet the swine has put a stigma on the other white meat even as "the government has tried to change the name from swine 'flu to H1N1." Why should ABC News be solicitous about the financial health of hog farms? It was returning a favor. Osunsami reminded us that the farmer whose tractor pulled anchor Charles Gibson's Battleground Bus out of the Iowa mud last October was in the pig business.


Andrew Tyndall 5/7/09 5:05:11 pm

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