Read More of the Same Day's Blog

A pair of isolated local healthcare events -- one in Mississippi, one in California's Central Valley -- sparked enough national interest to head the networks' agenda. CBS led with the Mississippi story, as in-house physician Jon LaPook told us about an unnamed baby girl, born HIV-positive and medicated immediately: she is now apparently HIV-negative. NBC led with the other end of life as Miguel Almaguer filed from Bakersfield, where an 87-year-old woman died at Glenwood Gardens, an independent living facility for the elderly. This unremarkable fact became newsworthy because of audiotape of the EMS 911 call after the woman collapsed. We heard a dispatcher urging a nurse at the home to perform CPR and the nurse refusing, under her employer's orders. The CPR dispute was Story of the Day.

What was remarkable was how much support there was for the nurse for refusing to launch first aid. ABC's in-house physician Jennifer Ashton told her colleague Dan Harris that CPR works only 3% of the time. NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman (who also filed on the HIV negative baby) referred to CPR as sometimes "overzealous." NBC's Almaguer quoted Pamela Bradford, the dead woman's daughter and a nurse herself, as endorsing the Glenwood Gardens policy.

Sloppily, ABC's Harris, filing from New York, did not even bother to tell us the name of the town in which the 911 emergency took place. CBS' Ben Tracy covered that Bakersfield story from Los Angeles.

ABC was the only newscast not to lead with a healthcare story. For the fifth time in the last two weeks it chose to kick off with winter weather. An Alberta Clipper is just preparing to head eastwards so Ginger Zee's forecasting story amounted to a highlight reel of the other storms she has covered so far this winter -- thunder blizzards and whiteouts and snowdrifts and roof collapses. This is the playlist of her original stories; this is Zee's summary.
Andrew Tyndall 3/5/13 9:17:38 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report