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For the second day in a row the Middle East was the source of the Story of the Day. Tuesday was the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War; Wednesday saw all three White House correspondents travel with Barack Obama to Jerusalem. NBC led with press-conference-hogging Chuck Todd on the President's meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. CBS, with substitute Bob Schieffer in the anchor chair, had Pentagon correspondent David Martin kick off on Syria, as a rocket attack in Aleppo may or may not have used chemical weapons. As for ABC, it chose a domestic crime for its lead: the murder -- possibly an assassination -- of the director of the Colorado prison system.

The main message of the Obama-Netanyahu press conference was to project a united front on their diplomacy towards Iran concerning its nuclear enrichment program. Chuck Todd filed for NBC, Major Garrett for CBS, and Jonathan Karl for ABC. Karl, yet again, relied on his network's Virtual View computer animation shop. Last Friday, VV animated an imaginary intercontinental ballistic missile war between the United States and North Korea; this time it visualized an antiseptic regional ballistic missile conflict between Iran and Israel.

NBC turned to Richard Engel for its follow-up to the press conference. He offered a vivid video travelogue of the new look for Israel's borders, a reaction to the Arab Spring. The Zionist state is walling itself off from its Moslem neighbors. Pick your state-of-siege metaphor: fortress or prison?

CBS' David Martin and ABC's Alex Marquardt both covered the speculation about the rocket attack in Syria. Marquardt made the point that it was a neighborhood controled by the regime's army that came under attack. Martin noted that there were no symptoms of either mustard gas or Sarin. He suggested a non-WMD tear-gas attack.

Later, Martin returned to conclude CBS' newscast with a tribute to the Semper Fi charity, which has disbursed $72m to disabled veterans of the Iraq War. Double amputee Eddie Wright accounted for the source of his anger, when he vents to his wife, as being "because my career got cut short." Wright appeared to use the term "career" as coded shorthand for "arms."

The shooting death of the prison boss at his home in the forest outside Colorado Springs was sinister enough to warrant coverage by a correspondent on all three newscasts. Only ABC had its own reporter, Clayton Sandell, on hand. NBC had Los-Angeles-based Kristen Dahlgren narrate the video remotely. CBS turned to Brian Maass of KCNC-TV, its Denver local affiliate, with its own correspondent Mark Strassmann filing a supporting package on Colorado's bereaved governor signing the state's new firearms regulations into law.
Andrew Tyndall 3/21/13 9:15:10 pm

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