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In a neat sandwich, the Super Bowl in New Orleans was Story of the Day both in its run-up (last Friday) and in its aftermath. Yet, as is often the case with sports stories, bound up with copyright constraints, only one of the five packages that went to air on the broadcast versions of the nightly newscasts lived on online. ABC's Steve Osunsami was the lucky survivor. Even though the big game was heavily covered, it did not qualify as the lead item on any of the three newscasts. They were unanimous in selecting the fatal end to the hostage siege in Dale County, Alabama. The FBI rescued a five-year-old boy kidnapped from a school bus and held underground for six days. They killed his 65-year-old captor.

News organizations are allowed to override the claims of copyright owners in order to include material such as Super Bowl sports footage in their online stories with claims of fair use -- that the footage was necessary for the proper telling of an important news story. So, in fact, there is no reason why Armen Keteyian's report on CBS should not be posted. Fair use indeed it was: Keteyian explained that a feed from the Entergy substation in New Orleans to the Superdome had failed, thereby blacking out much of the stadium and causing the 34-minute delay of game.

On the other hand, Josh Elliott on ABC can feel relieved at his network's reticence: it spares his blushes that his asinine reporting does not get wider dissemination. Elliott told us that the blackout was caused by "nothing more than the surreal and historic kicking of a plug from its socket."

The post-Super-Bowl story by ABC's Steve Osunsami that did survive online was a follow-up to his Blind Side pregame feature last Tuesday. It focused on the happy family ending for Leigh Anne Tuohy and Michael Oher. I preferred the earlier one, with its appalling glimpse of Dickensian beginnings.
Andrew Tyndall 2/5/13 10:30:18 pm

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