Well done, Anna Nawaz, for her NBC Exclusive, packed with take-your-breath-away vistas from the top of the world. See her startled jump as artillery exploded in mid-interview with the bearded Gen Ali Abbas.
The gathering of the cardinals for the Conclave did not contain much hard news. NBC anchor Brian Williams contented himself with a brief voiceover of the scarlet visuals. ABC's David Wright showed us the fake Corpus Dei bishop, purple scarf posing as sash. CBS' Mark Phillips tried to make bricks without straw, as the Good Book puts it.
Besides the Vatican, last week's other big story was the sequester. Only CBS offered a follow-up on the spending cuts, with Chip Reid on the impact that an alphabet soup of agencies may have on airline travel. Remember how ABC's Jonathan Karl pooh-poohed the sequester, since cuts of less than 3% to any budget are easy to absorb? Well now his colleague David Kerley contradicts that pooh-poohing for his Washington Watchdog feature. As far as Kerley is concerned, federal spending of close to $400K over two years demands scrutiny -- and he ridiculed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack for suggesting otherwise.
NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd left his beat to provide a plug for Jeb Bush as he begins his book tour for Immigration Wars in New York. Yet Todd made Bush seem incoherent: the sitdown started with Bush's plea for the Republican Party to be more welcoming to Hispanics; but Bush's book advocates a more punitive policy towards undocumented residents than many of the GOP's leaders -- yes to a path to a green card but no to a path to naturalization.
That was hardly a very difficult interview to land for David Muir. He just had to walk down the hallway at ABC News to get a hug and an air kiss from his subject. As for Barbara Walters herself, she is such a kidder. People always told her that she should have her head examined!
Robby Kid President Novak insisted to Elaine Quijano that he should not be thought of as "the kid who breaks a lot." You would never imagine that the nine-year-old boy's osteogenesis imperfecta would be the heart-tugger in her CBS report, would you?
When NBC's Ron Allen told us, in his story on the midcourt basketball buzzerbeater at New Rochelle High School, that the mother of the scorer, Khalil Edney, had died six years ago, you would have thought the teenager's middle name was Manti.
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