Read More of the Same Day's Blog

If it had not been for a single soundbite by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel -- referring to North Korea as "a real and clear danger" -- the day's news agenda would have been irredeemably flippant. All three newscasts ran the Hagel quote, but only NBC chose to lead with it; and after that, NBC filled its newscast with fluff. CBS decided to focus on crime, kicking off with Bill Plante's almost-content-free coverage of President Barack Obama's lobbying for gun control legislation. ABC both started and ended with the trivial topic of college basketball. It turned out that ABC's lead, the firing of Mike Wise, the head coach at Rutgers University, was the lightweight Story of this lightweight Day.

All three newscasts covered the North Korean story but, Hagel's soundbite apart, they chose divergent angles. NBC's Richard Engel, leading off his newscast from Seoul for the third straight day, went nuclear, with excellent ICBM-filled stock footage of precision-marching by North Korea's military. ABC's Martha Raddatz, as she likes to do, landed a sitdown with a general: Tuesday she was at the DMZ with Gen James Thurman; now she brings us Gen Jan-Marc Jouas.

How can you tell the difference between North Korea and South Korea? Raddatz tells us: one is the place with no trees; the other has taller men.

For the Washington angle on the Korean peninsula, go to NBC's Andrea Mitchell and CBS' David Martin at the Pentagon. Mitchell did little except reiterate the main points of Engel's reporting from Seoul. Martin chose to emphasize the closure of the cross-border Kaesang Industrial Park -- and he warned that next week the United States and South Korea would ratchet up military maneuvers one more level, with amphibious landings and live-fire exercises. So this drumbeat can keep going.
Andrew Tyndall 4/4/13 9:53:52 pm

© 2010 Tyndall Report