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The President's trip to Connecticut to lobby the Senate for an unfilibustered vote on gun control explicitly capitalized on that state's still-raw grief after December's grade school massacre. As such, CBS' 60 Minutes functioned as an component of the legislative effort when Scott Pelley aired his focus-group-style interview with the bereaved families of Newtown, now energized as gun control activists. NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd acknowledged as much, by running a clip from 60 Minutes in his report. As for Pelley, he reran highlights from Sunday's report, often repeating the same soundbites that had appeared in his previews last Wednesday and last Thursday.
So often so far this year, ABC has downplayed the gun control debate. Not this time. Jonathan Karl filed on the President's lobbying effort from the White House. CBS rounded out its coverage with a pair of brief stand-ups: Major Garrett on the road with the President, and Nancy Cordes from Capitol Hill.
Remember February's coverage by CBS' Seth Doane and ABC's David Muir of the youth orchestra from Afghanistan, the one that performed at Carnegie Hall? Organizing that trip was part of the cultural outreach by Anne Smedinghoff. NBC's Stephanie Gosk recapped us on her truncated career; CBS' Wyatt Andrews brought us her proud parents, regretting nothing despite a life cut short.
As he was on Friday, ABC's in-house physician Richard Besser is still nervous about a spread of the H7N9 virus, the strain of avian influenza detected in Shanghai's poultry markets. As they were on Friday, the other two newscasts were silent on the potential pandemic.
As for NBC's in-house physician Dr Nancy, she comes very close to advocating for veganism. And it is not just red meat that worries her, but the carnitine ingredient in energy drinks and boby-building supplements, too.
It is usually ABC's Martha Raddatz who likes to hang out with general officers (lately, Gen Joseph Dunford, Gen James Thurman, Gen Jan-Marc Jouas). CBS' David Martin, it appears, is not immune to some scrambled eggs. Here is Adm Matthew Klunder on the Pentagon's money-saving weapon of the future.
All three newscasts do remain on the alert for the prospects of all-out war on the Korean peninsula. ABC's Bob Woodruff, CBS' Margaret Brennan, and NBC's Richard Engel each filed from Seoul. Engel's report was the most detailed, and the most ghoulish, but, for some reason, was not posted online.
Let me repeat a comment that I made in January:
"The idea of Seth Meyers' Weekend Update satire on Saturday Night Live is to make fun of the foibles of the news agenda of the mainstream media. So it is journalistically nonsensical to quote a Meyers joke as evidence that the story being ridiculed was indeed actually newsworthy."
This time, David Kerley of ABC falls into that trap.
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