Read More of the Same Day's Blog

The bipartisan proposal by a group of senators to break the gridlock over immigration policy was Story of the Day. CBS' Nancy Cordes and NBC's Kelly O'Donnell both covered the announcement from Capitol Hill, with CBS choosing Cordes' package as its lead. ABC gave the story to Cecilia Vega in Los Angeles, where she sat down with an undocumented Peruvian mother and daughter, now glimpsing at last the possible prospect of legal papers. NBC's lead was Saturday night's horrendous nightclub fire in Santa Maria, the Brazilian college town. ABC chose the Boy Scouts of America, which is about to welcome gay members and leaders -- or, at least, to delegate its ban on them to local groups rather than have it enshrined as national policy.

It is no surprise that CBS should choose immigration as its lead. Over the past couple of years it has covered the controversy as heavily as ABC and NBC combined. John Blackstone filed a follow-up from Los Angeles on so-called maternity tourism. Package trips are organized from China for pregnant women so that they can give birth here: the newborn becomes a citizen of the United States; and the birth is not counted against the People's Republic's one child policy, so it can have siblings. Blackstone is friendlier than his colleague Byron Pitts had been in his notorious anchor baby reporting five years ago.

Check out Chuck Todd's follow-up from the White House to O'Donnell's report from the Senate. Anchor Brian Williams sets Todd up with a question that completely contradicted Todd's reporting. Poor Chuck, recovering from a cold, has to smile and agree, before tying himself in knots in order to say what he means.

Andrew Tyndall 1/29/13 8:23:00 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report