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Andrea Mitchell, NBC's State Department correspondent, was the only reporter to win an assignment from the initial shuttle diplomacy of Secretary of State John Kerry, on his first trip abroad since taking office. Syria overshadows all other items on his agenda.
ABC, which normally uses foreign datelines the least, filled in with a couple of short packages: from Johannesburg, Amy Robach was the only correspondent to file a follow-up from last week's every-nighter, the Oscar Pistorius case; from The Philippines, Alex Marquardt filed a preview of his Nightline expose on under-age sex tourism. The Crow Bar in Subic Bay is where to find jail-bait prostitutes, Marquardt claimed -- yet he failed to procure the goods. The girls he found were young enough, to be sure, but a legal sweet sixteen.
Try as he might to exploit his Bully Pulpit about the looming crisis implied by that fiscal sequester, President Barack Obama has not made the case to the networks' assignment editors. He has not yet created a sense of urgency to warrant a fully-reported package on all three newscasts on the same night. This time he succeeded with NBC's Peter Alexander and CBS' Major Garrett; ABC passed.
As for lighter fare, all three newscasts geared up last week (ABC's Paula Faris here, NBC anchor Brian Williams here; CBS did not post Mark Strassmann's preview online) for godaddy.com's Danica Patrick to make NASCAR history and become the first woman to win the Daytona 500. Well she didn't. But there was a gruesome crash in Saturday's under-card race, so ABC's Matt Gutman and CBS' Strassmann showed carnage as the next best thing.
And then there were the Academy Awards. ABC's substitute anchor David Muir mostly rehashed his network's Good Morning America rehashing of his network's live telecast the night before. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren narrated highlights on the broadcast newscast yet, presumably because of copyright issues, did not have her report posted online. CBS closed its newscast with an oblique reference to the Oscars: nominated-yet-unawarded Zero Dark Thirty was criticized for disrespectful use of the last telephoned words of World Trade Center office workers. Seth Doane traveled to Connecticut to bring us parents Frank and Mary Fetchet, still bereaved twelve years later.
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