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There was unusual unanimity among the three newscasts about the day's agenda. All three assigned a Chicago correspondent to the late-season snowstorm blanketing the midwest. All three assigned a correspondent from their DC bureau to cover the relaxation of the TSA's ban on airline passengers' pocket-knives. All three assigned a financial correspondent to the return of stock prices to pre-recession highs. All three assigned a diplomatic correspondent to Secretary of State John Kerry's travels to Qatar. And all three assigned a correspondent to the death of Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, succumbing to cancer at age 58. Chavez was the lead on NBC; the stock exchange was the choice on ABC and CBS. Stocks were the Story of the Day.

Both ABC and CBS filed a prepared obituary for President Chavez, a task given to Matt Gutman and Jim Axelrod respectively. Both featured the classic Chavez soundbite -- "You're a donkey, Mr Bush" -- with Gutman adding his bit at the General Assembly podium at the United Nations, when Chavez play-acted the stench of satanic sulfur that W had left behind the day before. ABC's obit included Chavez' one-on-one with Barbara Walters for 20/20. CBS, similarly, included his one-on-one with Steve Kroft for 60 Minutes: "…you are somewhat loco…" Kroft suggested.

NBC did not file an obit. Instead Andrea Mitchell used her State Department byline to summarize the current relations -- or lack of them -- between Venezuela and the United States. Margaret Brennan, Mitchell's counterpart at CBS, focused on her networks' foreign policy specialty, the insurgency in Syria. On ABC, Martha Raddatz surveyed North Korea and Iran and Syria (but not Venezuela) and came up with this blatantly misleading and astonishingly ahistorical conclusion: "The intractable threats facing America have never been more real."
Andrew Tyndall 3/7/13 12:32:09 am

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