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It was quite a surprise that NBC's Andrea Mitchell and ABC's Brian Ross should each lead off their newscasts with the report on state-sponsored hacking by the People's Republic published by Mandiant, the technology security firm, but that CBS should not mention it at all. Mandiant's PR operation has been on a roll, with CBS giving a boost to its inside-the-Beltway lobbying operation last week. Normally cyber-espionage is the specialty of Bob Orr at CBS, but he was otherwise engaged.
CBS kicked off with a pair of follow-ups on recent headline grabbing crime stories -- no surprise, since both the aftermath of the LAPD manhunt for Christopher Dorner and of Adam Lanza's grade school massacre in Connecticut have been covered more heavily there than on the other two newscasts. John Miller, formerly of the LAPD brass, brought us Captain Phil Tingirides and his wife Emada, an LAPD sergeant herself: the Tingirides family had been named on Dorner's published hitlist. Orr ignored Mandiant to follow up on his report on Monday that Lanza had been inspired by Anders Breivik, the Norwegian fascist who killed 77 in July 2011. Orr now quotes police to modify his report: there was no hard connection between Lanza and Breivik -- only obsession and a spirit of competition on Lanza's part.
There were two overseas stories that warranted coverage by correspondents on all three newscasts. Funnily enough, ABC thought both should be illustrated by its Virtual View computer animation system.
The first was the pre-trial hearing for Oscar Pistorius in South Africa. NBC's Michelle Kosinski, CBS' Emma Hurd, and ABC's Bazi Kanani all filed from Pretoria. Kanani's graphic artists illustrated the dispute about whether Pistorius had his legs on when he shot his model girlfriend through a locked bathroom door by animating the scene, no kidding, first with stumps, then with prosthetics.
All three newscasts used computer animators to tell the story of the eight thieves who stole $50m in diamonds from the cargo hold of a Swiss jetliner on the runway at Brussels Airport. ABC's Virtual View, narrated by Dan Harris, had two black vehicles with flashing blue lights. NBC's animation, via Keir Simmons, had two silver vehicles, no lights. CBS' Kelly Cobiella told us about the flashing lights, even though her animation had none: she had one silver vehicle, one black one. Harris reported that the rocks would be hard to fence; Simmons reported that they were already on the black market. Harris used footage from Hollywood's Oceans 13 to illustrate his story; Simmons relied on Goodfellas.
It is bad journalism to use clips from fictional motion picture productions as video to show how actual events happened.
ABC's Terry Moran filed for a second day Inside Syria on the mood in wartorn Damascus, his visa granted courtesy of Bashar al-Assad's embattled Baath regime. CBS' Holly Williams stayed in India after her astonishing visuals (here and here) from the Maha Kumbh Mela pilgrimage for an update on the coverage by her colleague Elizabeth Palmer on the outpouring of feminist outrage in the sub-continent against the routine of rape.
Searching for a local angle on the Conclave of Cardinals, ABC's David Wright turns it into a Rod Sox-vs-Yankees rivalry: His Eminence in sandals vs His Eminence who yukked it up with Diane Sawyer.
Wanna buy sculptor Felix de Weldon's original rendition of the Iwo Jima flag raising? CBS' Jim Axelrod says it's yours for just $1.8m
What on earth did Juju Chang think she was doing when she allowed her sons to be used in this travesty of journalism? ABC's Chang showcased her three boys in order to grant free publicity to Bruce Feiler's self-help book The Secrets of Happy Families. Feiler's thesis is that families grow happier if they organize themselves according to the precepts of military commando squads. Instead of reporting on this preposterous concept, Chang acts it out. Her husband, Neal Shapiro, the former president of NBC News, restrained himself from participating in his wife's ridiculous show-&-tell. Why did he not exercise his veto and save his loved ones from humiliation too?
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