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The task of digesting the Oscar buzz after Sunday night's ceremonies qualified the Academy Awards the Story of the Day even though they were treated as mere celebrity trivia by ABC and NBC and as the basis for a movie industry trend feature on CBS. As far as hard news was concerned, NBC led with the countdown to the vote on healthcare reform and CBS chose Toyota's runaway car crashes. ABC decided to lead with an investigative feature into one of Merck's best selling prescription drugs. The only news story to be covered by a correspondent on all three newscasts was the parliamentary election in Iraq.

All three networks sent a reporter to Baghdad to cover the vote. "The results are going to take a few days to come in and even when they do, they are unlikely to produce one clear winner with enough power to rule," CBS' Elizabeth Palmer pointed out. "That means furious horse trading all summer to come up with a ruling coalition." So the angle of the day was the massive turnout--12m votes cast, 62% of those eligible. ABC's Miguel Marquez consulted the vox pop in the Karrada District: "No matter how many bombings there were in Baghdad yesterday, they would have gone out to vote." NBC's Richard Engel noted that organizing the vote and maintaining precinct security was an entirely Iraqi affair, with no role for the US military: "After seven years of war it seems Iraqis have grown hard to intimidate."

Andrew Tyndall 3/10/10 9:20:52 pm

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