COMMENTS: Sprinter Pistorius Wins by Default, Again
There was absolutely no consensus about the news agenda. In a repeat of what happened on Monday, all three newscasts chose a different lead item and the Story of the Day turned out to be none of their choices. In a repeat of what happened on Monday, the prosecution of Oscar Pistorius turned out to occupy the day's #1 spot, even though it was no newscast's lead. At least CBS selected a story that was deemed newsworthy enough for coverage by a correspondent on all three newscasts: Dean Reynolds covered the disgrace of ex-Rep Jesse Jackson -- gotta love that $16K pair of stuffed elk heads -- from his home base of Chicago; ABC's Pierre Thomas and NBC's Pete Williams narrated the politician's guilty plea from the Justice Department. Elsewhere, ABC led with snow and Good Morning America's weathercaster Sam Champion. NBC had Andrea Mitchell follow up on her lead story from Tuesday: the cyberspies of the People's Liberation Army.
See, it is not that difficult, is it? After all the special pleading by the network news divisions that budget constraints force them to cut back on foreign and international coverage, suddenly the resources are available for a juicy celebrity trial. In fact, it is not even a trial proper, just a pre-trial bail hearing. Yet again, all three networks assigned a correspondent to file from Pretoria on the latest on Oscar Pistorius. Of the last five weekdays, ABC's Bazi Kanani has filed all five days; NBC's Michelle Kosinski four; and CBS' Emma Hurd three. The story has now become more newsworthy than the last headliner from that continent, January's hostage siege at the BP natural gas plant in Algeria (for which not a single report was filed from an African dateline).
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