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Tyndall Report takes western weekends off, so the timeline resumes on Monday with the army's announcement that it would not interfere with peaceful protests. Over the weekend, it had become obvious that the crisis in Egypt could be a transformative event and all three networks had their Big Feet on the march. ABC tapped Christiane Amanpour's longstanding regional expertise as a roving reporter at CNN now that she is anchor at This Week. Amanpour led ABC's coverage of the Tahrir Square protests Monday and Tuesday, when Mubarak made his announcement that he will relinquish power "but not just yet," as Amanpour put it.
Monday, CBS had Palmer kick off the protest coverage one more day, since anchor Katie Couric was still en route. Couric arrived in time to lead her network's coverage of Tuesday's so-called Million Man March. NBC anchor Brian Williams arrived Monday to anchor his network's specials, dubbed Rage and Revolution but he was not geared up to do any reporting on the first day. He apologized: "We have found a safe spot to do our broadcast tonight and cobbled together a few ways to get the pictures and sound on the air though it may be something less than our usual broadcast quality." Both days Williams handed off to Engel (here and here) to lead protest coverage.
This is how NBC's Engel reported on Mubarak's promise to resign--but simultaneously to restore law and order: he "seemed to offer concessions but to many people here it looked like he was taking a very hard line. Many Egyptians worried that there will be more violence ahead…Mubarak also hinted a crackdown could be coming. He stressed his ties to the army and said Egypt must choose between chaos and stability."
NBC, with its Rage and Revolution specials, has covered the Egypt story most intensively over the past week (55 min v CBS 42, ABC 34). Egypt was the lead story all three newscasts on Friday and Monday; Tuesday, ABC, the only newscast not to have its anchor in Cairo, chose to lead with winter weather, while the other two continued with Egypt in the top spot.
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