COMMENTS: Thwarted Local Atrocity is Undeserved National Headliner
You would think it must have been some major headline-grabber. All three newscasts were unanimous in deciding that the Story of the Day was important enough to be chosen as their lead. CBS, with Bob Schieffer sitting in as substitute anchor, managed to get correspondent Mark Strassmann to the scene in Orlando. The other two networks reported remotely: NBC's Mark Potter from Miami; Pierre Thomas from ABC's Washington bureau. Yet it was hard to see what the fuss was about. A 30-year-old student was found dead by suicide in his dormitory at the University of Central Florida. If he had not have killed himself there was evidence that he aspired to mass murder on campus. But aspiration does not constitute calamity -- and a local alert does not warrant national news coverage.
By contrast, a different local story, which has attracted plenty of national buzz elsewhere, has found itself off the nightly news agenda, until now. Elizabeth Vargas became the first correspondent to cover the teenage rape that was the climax of the drunken party thrown by high-school football players in Steubenville, Ohio. Vargas appeared on ABC to promote her extended primetime coverage later in the week on 20/20.
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