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For the third straight day, the first anniversary of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico qualified as Story of the Day. This time CBS' Mark Strassmann focused on the roustabouts--11 dead, 115 survivors--on the rig itself. NBC' Anne Thomson and ABC's Matt Gutman explored Louisiana's coastal marshes to show us the abiding damage from the crude oil that gushed from the seabed. NBC led with the Department of Transportation's new consumer protection rules for airline passengers. ABC chose the skyrocketing increase in popping pain pills. CBS, with substitute anchor Harry Smith, made the best choice: war correspondent Allen Pizzey shipped into the besieged Libyan city of Misurata and narrated footage of its wartorn streets--"parts of it feel like Beirut in the bad old days"--where photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros had been killed. "They had gone up to the front lines to take some pictures of some of the combat, as photographers do. It was just bad luck as far as I could tell, wrong place, wrong time. What can you say?"

All three newscasts assigned a correspondent to the DoT's new airline passenger protections. NBC's Lisa Myers and CBS' Ben Tracy covered the story in the traditional way, as a regulatory announcement. On ABC, Jim Sciutto personalized it, turning the new rules into the triumph of a one-woman crusade by a once-bumped passenger, Kate Hanni, founder of FlyersRights.org. "She won," declared Sciutto, giving her the credit for new rules about tarmac delays, lost luggage, bumped flights and hidden extra fees. Neither Myers nor Tracy saw Hanni's influence at work. Oddly, Sciutto did not name the offending airline that had infuriated Hanni. Sciutto also gave an assist to Dave Carroll for his airline-bashing song on YouTube, which has no such compunction about naming names.

Anyway, what is the big deal about air travel? CBS' Bob Orr chipped in with a survey of the general problems besetting the air-traffic-control system. In the last seven weekdays, this is the fourth time NBC has led with an airline story (in addition to here, here and here); ABC three (here, here and here), CBS three (here, here and here).

Andrew Tyndall 4/22/11 6:37:36 pm

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