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The week started as last week ended. The political ferment on the streets of Teheran was the unanimous choice as Story of the Day. All three newscasts led from Iran, even though Richard Engel, NBC's man in Teheran on Friday, had his visa revoked and was back in New York City. NBC took the feed from its British newsgathering partner ITN. Defeated presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi finally appeared in public to address a mass rally of his supporters. They were protesting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been reelected by fraud. The rally culminated in some skirmishing and a single fatality. Both CBS and ABC had substitute anchors on a day of such heavy news that President Barack Obama's major policy speech on healthcare reform was relegated to secondary status. ABC used George Stephanopoulos; CBS had Jeff Glor.

CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed to non-stop action since the election result was announced: "Extraordinary events every single day have made the outcome of this epic political power struggle impossible to predict." NBC's Engel explained why the complaints of ballot rigging were so plausible. "The timing--people were still in voting stations at 9pm, 10pm, and then just about three hours later the state news agency said that Ahmadinejad had won. All of those ballots, about 35m to 40m ballots, were pieces of paper. It was not computerized at all so it seemed very suspicious." CBS' Palmer reported that the state's "highest religious council" will rule on whether fraud was committed in ten days.

People are not waiting. ABC's Jim Sciutto saw them "flood to downtown Teheran by the hundreds of thousands, possible the largest demonstration here since 1979, the Islamic revolution…Unlike previous protests dominated by young people, today's mixed young and old, students and professionals." ITN's Bill Neely, filing for NBC, noted that "the protestors are taking a defiant but very dangerous stance. This demonstration has been branded not only illegal or criminal but treacherous." He reported on the deadly conclusion to a peaceful day: "Opposition protestors attack a building manned by a militia loyal to President Ahmadinejad. The militia fires shots in the air. The stones keep coming. Then one militiaman fires into the crowd. The protestors take revenge burning the building down."

Iranian authorities revoked ABC's permission to cover the protests with a camera so Sciutto filed from his cellphone. CBS' Palmer told us that "text messaging has been switched off for days; cellphone service is intermittent; and Internet sites and satellite channels from abroad have been blocked." Back in New York, NBC's Engel observed that "the Iranian government has completely failed in its attempts to contain images out of Iran. The Iranian government has cut off international cellphones and has detained many reporters but now a lot of people are using Twitter and Facebook and other online sites to circulate images."

So much for those media analysts who portray old media and new media as incompatible competitors. The old media of the network newscasts seem quite happy to incorporate new media feeds into their packaged reporting.


Andrew Tyndall 6/17/09 12:42:23 pm

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