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There was absolute unanimity at the top of the three network nightly newscasts on the first day of the papacy of Francis I. All three kicked off from the Vatican, where the new pope showcased his humbler, simpler style: Anne Thompson filed for NBC, Terry Moran for ABC, Mark Phillips for CBS. CBS' anchor, Scott Pelley, who was in Rome for the first three days this week, was back behind his desk in New York. ABC's Diane Sawyer did not make the same return trip and had David Muir substitute for her. After those three lead items, all three newscasts filed a follow-up from the slums of Buenos Aires, where Jorge Bergoglio had been cardinal.

Both CBS' Elaine Quijano and NBC's Miguel Almaguer did the right thing and mentioned the cloud hanging over Bergoglio's record in Argentina: questions concerning the extent of his cooperation with the military junta of the 1970s and the atrocities of its Dirty War. ABC's Matt Gutman did not go there and his colleague Terry Moran offered a peculiar whitewashing special effect, rendering audio of a scratchy movie soundtrack under black-&-white visuals, to make it seem that whatever had happened in the past was dim and distant history.

At least Moran gave us some important information: Bergoglio's team is San Lorenzo.

Following up on the depravities of the church's child sex abuse scandal, CBS has been most diligent in the last year or so. Carter Evans showed us the internal archdiocesan memo that Cardinal Roger Mahony signed off on in Los Angeles agreeing that a molesting priest should not be "forthcoming" with his therapist, because of that therapist's duty to report abuse to civil authorities.
Andrew Tyndall 3/15/13 9:14:03 pm

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