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Only CBS followed up on Tuesday's Story of the Day, the looming $85bn cuts in federal spending. Chip Reid served up the same alphabet soup of agencies that NBC's John Yang cited: FBI, TSA, Head Start, WIC, FDA, NIH. From the Pentagon, David Martin filed the fourth CBS story on the impact of defense cuts: neither NBC nor ABC has so far shown such solicitude for the DoD.
Having gone Inside Syria with Terry Moran on Monday and Tuesday, ABC now adds Inside Iran with David Muir in Teheran's gender-segregated subways and inflation-ravaged bazaars. Moran followed up (at the tail of the Muir videostream) with a marvelous Damascene nut merchant and the tranquility of the Umayyad Mosque.
The Conclave of Cardinals is looming but the American networks are finding it hard to find a universal rather than a parochial angle. Tuesday ABC's David Wright chose His (sandaled) Eminence from Boston; now CBS' Ben Tracy turns to His (scandaled) Eminence from Los Angeles.
NBC's Andrea Mitchell failed to play it straight at the end of her second report on Unit 61398, the Shanghai-based operation accused of industrial espionage against major American corporations. Having focused on the threat from the People's Republic of China, she slipped in a mention of the so-called hacktivists of Anonymous, as if there were some equivalence between he two.
Somewhere, a speculator with a Goldman Sachs account and Swiss bank deposits is holding financial options worth $1.8m for a bet on the HJ Heinz takeover. CBS' Anthony Mason told us that the Securities & Exchange Commission will slap insider-trading charges on the person who tries to cash the options in. If they go unclaimed, no harm, no foul.
ABC has specialized in consumer alerts on the credit card beat for the last couple of years but there was some sketchy math in Cecilia Vega's latest entry on so-called cramming. Via the Federal Trade Commission, Vega warned us to check our credit card bills for spurious fine-print extra charges -- $30 here, or $40 there. She told us that the FTC had discovered $24m in fraudulent billing using the cramming technique, victimizing 20m customers -- but that means the average fraud is closer to one dollar than to 30 or 40.
NBC's new series Road to Retirement is an example of the demographically-targeted feature that a nightly newscast resorts to for a ratings-booster. In its premiere, Chris Jansing touts a move to a college town for intellectual stimulation and a youthful vibe. Her cases in point are Oxford Miss and Ponoma Cal.
Check out the enchanting Annabelle Butterfly from 1894 in Seth Doane's visit to the digital archive of the Library of Congress (a CBS favorite) in Culpepper.
Amid the giddy jubilation -- thank you Good Morning America's Josh Elliott -- surrounding Robin Roberts' return to work after a 174-day cancer medical leave for a bone marrow transplant, just one churlish question. What are the journalistic ethics of an anchor implicitly endorsing an exposed liar and cheat by continuing to wear the Livestrong bracelet? Take the yellow off, Robin.
Sports on a lighter note was the closer on both NBC and ABC. Stephanie Gosk and John Schriffen each featured Julian Newman, the 11-year-old 4'5" point guard, already playing high school hoops. They each challenged the boy to some one-on-one. ABC's Schriffen, using clips from the cheesey-looking ScoutsFocus.com, yet again forget the W's of journalism: last month he failed to tell us where a firefighter was based; now he fails to tell us where Julian plays (the answer is Downey Christian Academy in Orlando). NBC's Gosk remembered the letters of H-O-R-S-E, before losing. She told us that Julian models his moves on the Clippers' Chris Paul -- illegal ones, it seems. The Paul clip she showed on broadcast television was a clear travel; online she replaces the violation (for copyright purposes presumably) with a still photo.
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