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Utmost dissent reigned at the three network newscasts about the day's news agenda. ABC led with a massive lawsuit against Wal-Mart that the other two networks dismissed as only worthy of a passing mention. NBC led with a follow-up to Monday's Story of the Day: the winter weather is still cold. CBS selected sensational tabloid fare in the form of the astronaut love triangle. Yet none of these three leads represented the Story of the Day. NBC singlehandedly made the aftermath to Hurricane Katrina the day's most heavily covered story as it broadcast from New Orleans.

Anchor Brian Williams introduced a three-parter in NBC's Long Road Back series. Ann Curry, from Today, profiled Michael Miller, an anxious and insecure eight-year-old, who wonders "whether his sadness will ever end…his fear of another hurricane is compounded by how long it takes for life to get back to normal." Williams himself visited the temporary trailer that serves as a firehouse for the city's downtown NOFD engine company. Every firefighter in the firehouse lost his own house in the floods. "These are nice digs," Williams looked around. "No they are not," a firefighter told him.

And Martin Savidge listed the reasons--violent crime, skepticism about the levees, red tape preventing rebuilding--why the population of New Orleans may never recover to even half the 440,000 it was before the levees broke. "The big comeback that many people hoped to see post-Katrina just simply has not happened," he declared. But he did not explain why smaller is worse. Neither did he suggest what the optimum population for the new Crescent City might be.

Andrew Tyndall 2/7/07 6:58:26 pm

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