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Wednesday's second half of the Supreme Court marriage doubleheader was not as newsworthy as Tuesday's first. Sure enough, it was still Story of the Day. But coverage was confined to straight court reporting: NBC's Pete Williams, ABC's Terry Moran, and CBS' Jan Crawford each delivered a play-by-play of the arguments about the federal Defense of Marriage Act. There were no accompanying sidebars nor anecdotal features. CBS, unlike the other two newscasts, did not even make the court case its lead, kicking off instead with Bob Orr's inside look at the 27,000 pages of police investigation files into the assassination attempt against Rep Gabrielle Giffords two years ago.

The strange thing about the drop-off in coverage of the same-sex marriage debate was that it had a couple of ingredients that should have made it more attractive as a video news story. First, there was a dynamic individual in the center, Edith Windsor, the 83-year-old lesbian widow, who was slammed with a $363,000 bill for estate taxes because the IRS did not recognize the legitimacy of her marriage to Thea Spyer, her late wife. Second, there was the resonant soundbite, delivered from the bench by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, that DoMA allowed same-sex couples only a "skim-milk marriage" not the creamy whole.

CBS' decision to lead with Jared Loughner's mass shooting in Tucson made for an especially grisly newscast, since anchor Scott Pelley closed it with a tearjerker about the bereaved Hubbard family, whose daughter Catherine was killed at school in Newtown Ct three months ago. Catherine, Pelley declared, was "the prettiest little girl anybody ever saw." You be the judge.
Andrew Tyndall 3/29/13 12:13:40 am

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