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The three network newscasts are developing radically different editorial positions with regard to the sequester:
CBS takes it most seriously, as evidenced by anchor Scott Pelley's personal intervention into the coverage, here and here. Its newscast has also taken time to particularize the various cuts that several nooks of the executive branch expect: Ben Tracy on USDA food inspectors, Wyatt Andrews on NIH biologists, David Martin on DoD civilian workers. Now comes Elaine Quijano on ICE detention facilities. Budget cuts mean that visaless immigrant inmates who happen to be non-criminals will be released from detention pending deportation. Yet when Speaker Boehner mischaracterized those very detainees as criminals, anchor Pelley failed to set him straight.
ABC's White House correspondent Jonathan Karl is less upset about the cuts. First (here and here) he could not describe cuts of less than 3% as a serious threat -- either to the level of federal services, or of general economic demand. Now, however, Karl does concede that "it is hard to disagree" with the argument that it is "stupid" to make the cuts automatic, rather than targeted.
Chuck Todd, NBC's man at the White House, is the most relaxed. His argument, first made in a stand-up here, now repeated in a fully-reported package, is that a continuing resolution to keep the government operating will be passed at the end of March, so it will be easy to make adjustments for any serious disruptions that the sequester might have caused at the month's beginning. "Feels a lot like political posturing," Todd shrugs.
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