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The strategy by gun control activists of leveraging the grade school massacre in Connecticut to push their issue to the top of the news agenda is succeeding. Monday, President Barack Obama's pep rally in Connecticut was covered by all three networks' White House correspondents, and was picked as the lead by ABC. Now, the lobbying campaign in the corridors of the Senate by a dozen-or-so of the bereaved family members from Newtown is covered by all three Capitol Hill correspondents: it was selected as the lead by CBS, and qualified as Story of the Day. NBC, as it has done on six of the past eight weekdays, led from Seoul on the crisis in Korea. ABC, with substitute anchor George Stephanopoulos, led with knife-slashing violence at a community college outside Houston.

The Senator in the Spotlight as a result of this firearms lobbying was Johnny Isaacson, Republican of Georgia. He found a middle-of-the-road sweet spot between the Second Amendment absolutism of party comrades and the heartfelt pleas of bereaved petitioners. He would not support gun control proposals, but neither would he support any filibuster to prevent them coming to a vote. Isaacson's photo-op was covered by all three newscasts: by ABC's Jeff Zeleny, NBC's Kelly O'Donnell, and CBS' Nancy Cordes.

On CBS, Wyatt Andrews followed up with Sen Jim Risch, Isaacson's more hardcore colleague from Idaho. Well, he appeared to be more hardcore, as he insisted that the filibuster against gun control would go ahead. Then, Andrews concluded, Risch predicted that blocking the vote would fail, so delaying tactics would not make any difference anyway.

Only O'Donnell's report on NBC included the personal testimony of Majority Leader Harry Reid, which was an especially jarring argument for putting a speed-bump in the way of those who feel driven to purchase a firearm.
Andrew Tyndall 4/10/13 8:21:43 pm

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