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At first, ABC's Martha Raddatz was downright petrified of North Korea's declaration of pre-emptive nuclear war against the United States, throwing around the adjectives "stunning" and "terrifying" and deploying her network's Virtual View computer-animated graphics to show ICBM flight paths. But then she talked herself down, concluding that there was "nothing imminent" to worry about. CBS was, by contrast, nonchalant, confining itself to only a passing mention of Pyongyang. On NBC, Andrea Mitchell did what she does, and used her lunchtime show on MSNBC as a newsgathering venue to collect soundbites that she folded into her nightly package.
If you look at the last couple of years of coverage of the manhunts for the leadership of al-Qeada, you will see that CBS and ABC have kept track of the Global War on Terrorism, whereas NBC has largely lost interest. So it was no surprise who got the assignment when Sulaiman abu-Ghaith, al-Qaeda's spokesman back in 2002 and a son-in-law of the late Osama bin Laden himself, was arrested in Turkey: CBS' Bob Orr and ABC's Brian Ross. NBC not so much.
After South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Nebraska and Texas imposed stricter and stricter restrictions on abortion, Arkansas became the strictest yet: Supreme Court watchers Jan Crawford on CBS and Pete Williams on NBC were on the case.
The computer graphic artists at ABC were kept busy. Not only did Virtual View have to animate intercontinental ballistic missiles for Martha Raddatz, it had to depict tiny dying hairs inside the cochlear to illustrate the warning of in-house physician Rich Besser against iPod's ear-bud headphones.
For Civil War buffs, CBS' Pentagon man David Martin brings us the artifacts and dead sailors of USS Monitor.
Remember Monday, when ABC's Dan Harris did not even bother to tell us the name of the town -- Bakersfield -- where that eightysomething woman failed to receive CPR. Well Harris' sloppiness is spreading at ABC. Cecilia Vega told us about a lion that mauled a 24-year-old woman to death somewhere or other in California. She posted video from daytime TV's Ellen and Jungle Jenny, which portrayed the killer cat as cute and narrowed the location down to Fresno. Maybe ABC holds a grudge against the Central Valley.
More on the Bolshoi Ballet back stage feud: CBS' Elizabeth Palmer, once based in Moscow, now filing from London, tells us that Pavel Dmitrichenko admits he hired a hitman to intimidate Sergei Filin, possibly at the behest of "too fat" ballerina Anzhelina Vorontsova, but it was the hitman's idea to use acid.
NBC's Anne Thompson admitted it. While kicking her heels waiting for the Conclave of Cardinals to get going, she is on a Roman Holiday. And is she having a ball, too, tooling around town in her electric Twizy!
Back in May 2009, when Nick Watt was based in London for ABC, he filed a promotional piece on the Great Barrier Reef for the Australian Tourism Council, by promoting its Best Job in the World competition. The annual competition is coming round again and Watt, now based in Los Angeles, was only able to mention it in passing before being assigned to find out what occupations make workers feel most happy. Happiness is apparently newsworthy in ABC's eyes -- this was the seventh such feature on that newscast in the last three years. Believe it or not, the clergy, firefighters, and dentists.
By the way, it rained and the winds blowed and the waves crashed against the shore in stormy weather in March. All three newscasts found this normal weather newsworthy: NBC's Ron Allen and ABC's Ron Claiborne in New Jersey; CBS' Jim Axelrod in Massachusetts.
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