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"The embodiment of the Olympic creed." That was the assessment of Oscar Pistorius by NBC's Mary Carillo in her up-close-and-personal of the amputee sprinter during the London Olympic Games last summer. Other previous profiles of Pistorius have been by ABC's Josh Elliott, ABC's Jeffrey Kofman and CBS' Mark Phillips.
Now Pistorius stands accused of the murder of Reeva Steenkamp, his model girlfriend, who was shot four times at his Pretoria home. CBS assigned the story to Mark Phillips in London, who included clips from a Larry King interview with Pistorius on ora.tv. NBC gave it to Rehema Ellis in New York, who folded in soundbites by a startled Carillo and by Rohit Kachroo in South Africa. ABC actually had a correspondent, Bazi Kanani, on the scene: she, along with Phillips, noted Nike's now-withdrawn advertising slogan for the Bladerunner: "I am the bullet in the chamber."
The story that dominated headlines Tuesday and Wednesday -- the southern Californian manhunt for a onetime Los Angeles policeman -- received scant follow-up. ABC did not even bother to correct Wednesday's error by Cecilia Vega that Dorner's hideout had been discovered by a pair of cleaning ladies. NBC did set the record straight, without telling us that Miguel Almaguer had been wrong in the first place, with a brief clip of videotape: Jim and Karen Reynolds, the pair who found Dorner and were tied up by him, are owners not cleaners of the condo in question. CBS was the exception: Carter Evans followed up on his excellent eyewitness video scoop of Wednesday, with audio evidence that police discussed burning Dorner to death rather than trying to arrest him. The tear gas police used, Evans reported, was a known fire hazard. Shades of the Branch Davidians.
Both NBC and ABC warned us about DA-14, the asteroid that was due to pass within 17,000 miles of Indonesia on Friday. They both tried to give us an idea of its size: NBC's Kristen Dahlgren said that its mass is "half the size of a football field," which makes no sense, since a football field is a two-dimensional object; ABC's Neal Karlinsky told us that the rock weighs 130K metric tonnes. I have no clue how much that is and I bet you don't either. Please, Neal, tell us what other well-known object is that heavy. And Dahlgren committed the journalistic sin of using a clip of fictional Hollywood-created video as an actual illustration of the damage asteroids can cause. No, Kristen, Paramount Studios' Deep Impact does not count news footage.
In news on the economy…
NBC's Tom Costello followed up on Sharyl Attkisson's coverage on CBS Wednesday on the consolidation of the airline industry. The new American Airlines will be one of just four carriers, which, together, will account for fully 70% domestic traffic. Costello quotes farecompare.com as predicting annual fare inflation of between 5% and 10% starting next year.
CBS has now filed its third warning in the past two months about the adverse impact of budget cuts at the Department of Defense on business and employment: first by Lee Cowan, then by David Martin, now by Wyatt Andrews. Neither of the other two newscasts have so far viewed Pentagon spending in this Keynesian light.
ABC's report on the improving real estate market was ostensibly about a new law in California requiring banks to accept short sales of houses as an alternative to foreclosure, even if the bank has to take a haircut. I say ostensibly, because David Muir did not really report these facts himself: they emerged second-hand as he offered free publicity to Suze Orman, the personal finance guru, and to Stephanie Walker, blogger at Love in the Time of Foreclosure.
Cyberwarfare is a bee in Bob Orr's bonnet at CBS: of the 26 stories on the topic in our database, 16 have been aired by CBS, and nine filed by Orr himself. This time, he gives free publicity to Mandiant, the computer security firm, and its lobbying efforts before Congress.
You would think that stories about treatments for blindness would be more of a beat for radio than for television. NBC's Robert Bazell and CBS' in-house physician Jon LaPook disagree. Of the 13 stories on treatments for blindness in our database, eight have been filed by those two correspondents. LaPook brought us a bionic eyeglass-implant treatment for retinitis pigmentosa last September; Bazell files now.
The McInnis auction house in Massachusetts snared free publicity for its upcoming sale of JFK memorabilia from NBC anchor Brian Williams last month. Now Anthony Mason on CBS lends a hand, too.
Ah love! For Saint Valentine's Day, ABC chose new media, NBC settled for old media. NBC's Katy Tur profiled Lois Smith Brady, author of the Vows column in the Styles Section of The New York Times for the past 20 years. Oddly though, one of Smith Brady's couples tied the knot in 1992, a year before Tur told us the column started. ABC's Paula Faris chose the dating game, recommending four different smart-phone apps for instant hook-ups: Crazy Blind Date, OK Cupid Locals, Singles Around Me, and Tinder.
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