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A suspected splinter group of Jemaah Islamiyah was all that prevented this summer Friday from providing an extremely light ending to the week's news. ABC anchor Charles Gibson, insightfully, took the day off with Elizabeth Vargas substituting. A pair of suicidal bombers, believed to be operatives from the Indonesian radical Islamist cell, attacked luxury hotels in Jakarta, the city's Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott. ABC and CBS led with the bombs that left ten-or-so dead. They were the Story of the Day, the only development deemed worthy of coverage by a reporter on all three newscasts. President Barack Obama was NBC's lead as he addressed the 100th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the NAACP.

ABC was on the scene in Indonesia. Clarissa Ward filed from Jakarta and her colleague Bob Woodruff had been a guest at that very Marriott just two weeks ago. Ward quoted Woodruff recalling the hotel's lax security: no one stopped guests even if they did set off alarms at metal detectors. Ward reported that the two bombers had apparently checked in as guests--Room #1808--before killing themselves over breakfast in the hotels' dining rooms. She showed surveillance camera videotape of the blast sending shockwaves through the lobby.

CBS had Terry McCarthy narrate videotape of the attacks from its bureau in Beijing. He generalized that "luxury hotels patronized by westerners have become soft targets for terrorists from Islamabad and Amman to Mumbai and Jakarta." NBC used Bangkok-based Ian Williams, who reminded us that Jemaah Islamiyah had attacked the Marriott before, with a truckbomb in 2003, but since then "the group has splintered under a crackdown." ABC's Brian Ross, reporting from New York City, speculated that a cell led by Nordin Top was responsible for both this Marriott attack and the one six years ago.

Andrew Tyndall 7/20/09 7:29:35 pm

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