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All three White House correspondents covered the visit of Hamid Karzai, the President of Afghanistan, to the White House. ABC' Jonathan Karl and NBC's Kristen Welker concentrated on the plans for the withdrawal of US troops; CBS' Major Garrett focused on the prospects for diplomacy between Karzai and the leaders of the Taliban. CBS followed up with stunning landscape photography from Bamiyan Province, courtesy of Kelly Cobiella.
The aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting continues. NBC's Janet Shamlian showed us teachers in Texas learning how to handle concealed firearms in the classroom. CBS' Chip Reid took on the idea that playing violent videogames can lead to real-life violent behavior: he found two teenage brothers in the DC suburbs who are more riled up by online soccer than Call of Duty. For CBS' closer, Steve Hartman's On The Road feature accomplished its aim of tugging at your heartstrings.
In theory, there is nothing wrong with using a newscast for cross-promotion. Anchor Scott Pelley on CBS, for example, aired his questioning of The Bronx' own Sonia Sotomayor on her attitudes towards affirmative action -- herself being its beneficiary -- as a quite legitimate means of promoting Sunday's 60 Minutes profile of the Justice. In practice, however, there has been very little newsworthy information in the three closing features offered by ABC this week, each functioning more as an extended advertisement for its own non-news programing than as bona fide journalism. Monday, Josh Elliott shilled for ESPN's coverage of college football. Thursday, David Wright in Hollywood offered an early preview of ABC's Academy Awards extravaganza. Now, David Muir travels to Las Vegas to offer Alexis Wineman, an 18-year-old autistic stand-up comedienne, as ABC's Person of the Week. Ms Wineman happens to be Miss Montana. Guess which network is airing the Miss America pageant on Saturday night.
Surprise, surprise! Paul Emsley's portrait of Duchess Kate was not deemed worthy of coverage by an ABC correspondent. For the past couple of years that network has been especially devoted to all things royal. Instead it was Kate Snow of NBC who was assigned to offer the snide jab that Emsley's expertise is in rendering the rhinoceros...before quoting a critic that the duchess' nose seems odd. Snow did not land a trip to London out of the assignment. Instead she landed her very own portrait -- and invaluable free publicity for the commission-seeking portraitist Marvin Mattleson, who apparently specializes on petite blonde reporters, not horned beasts of the watering hole.
News You Can Use does not enjoy an time-honored tradition on the network nightly newscasts. Such so-called service journalism usually finds its place in local news timeslots or in the latter half-hours of the morning programs. An occasional exception is all right, though, like Dr Nancy's advice on NBC about personal hygiene to prevent us from spreading the 'flu. But Bob Woodruff's advice, via WXYZ-TV, ABC's local news affiliate in Detroit, to carry hand-held mini-ice-picks in our coats in case we fall into frigid water was just laughable, not news we are at all likely to use. In truth, Woodruff's feature was nothing more than a pretext to string together Jackass style video of Dr Popsicle and his foolhardy friends.
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