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The Conclave of Cardinals was deemed newsworthy enough by CBS and ABC to warrant an anchor's attendance. Both Scott Pelley and Diane Sawyer were in The Vatican on the eve of the beginning of the papal balloting, which was the Story of the Day. ABC even designated its newscast as a Special Edition. NBC not so much: not only did Brian Williams anchor from New York; he did not even choose Rome for his lead. Instead Andrea Mitchell kicked off the NBC newscast with Pyongyang's decision to abandon the armistice that ended the Korean War, an announcement that neither of the other two newscasts deemed worthy of even a mention in passing.

ABC's Josh Elliott and NBC's Anne Thompson both filed on the ecclesiastical horse race. Thompson likened the Eternal City to New Hampshire during primary season. Only two contenders appeared on both of their tipsheets: Marc Ouellet of Quebec, and Sean O'Malley, the Capuchin friar, who had already been profiled by ABC's David Wright and CBS' Jim Axelrod.

The visiting anchors each filed a pre-race one-on-one: ABC's Sawyer with an actual cardinal, Wilfrid Napier of South Africa, although she did not bother to mention his Christian name; CBS' Pelley with a non-contender, Father Tom Rosica, a Vatican flack. Meanwhile, ABC's Cecilia Vega (at the tail of the Elliott videostream) kept as far away as possible from serious journalism on the conclave, with a feature on the special-effects canisters that color the smoke signals that puff from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

There were four more side features about various aspects of the Catholic Church, from the scandalous (CBS' Mark Phillips on moneylaundering and political bribery by the Vatican bank) to the credulous (ABC's David Wright on the search for miracles by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints). NBC skipped any religious side features. The remaining two were filed by CBS: anchor Pelley with a nervous-looking trio of young American seminarians; and the unlucky Manuel Bojorquez, on the demographics of the church in this country.

Bojorquez was unlucky because he missed out on the junket. His trip, instead, took him all the way to the parish of Saint Athanasius in deepest southern Brooklyn, not in Rome. It turns out that all roads do not lead there, after all.
Andrew Tyndall 3/12/13 7:38:17 pm

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