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There was rare unanimity among the three network newscasts about the day's news agenda. The Story of the Day was North Korea's nuclear arsenal: the spies at the Pentagon claim that Pyongyang's bomb is now small enough to be delivered by a missile. All three newscasts led with North Korea: ABC's Bob Woodruff and NBC's Richard Engel from Seoul; CBS' David Martin from the Pentagon. But even lower down the news agenda there was general agreement. Correspondents at all three networks were assigned to the tornadoes sweeping across the Deep South…and the vote in the Senate to proceed with a gun control debate…and the posthumous award of the Medal of Honor to Emile Kapaun, a USArmy chaplain in the Korean War.

The story of Father Kapaun was recounted by ABC's White House correspondent, Jonathan Karl, and the Pentagon correspondents at NBC and CBS, Jim Miklaszewski and David Martin (doing double duty). None of them made note that the timing of the medal ceremony -- complete with gruesome details of inhumane atrocities against prisoners of war by their Communist captors -- might be perceived as a propagandistic provocation by the North Korean leadership as the peninsula seems on the brink of renewing the very war in which the priest served. Instead of geopolitical judgments, we heard otherworldly inspiration. "A candidate for sainthood" -- ABC's Karl; "battlefield miracles" -- CBS' Martin; "self-sacrifice and undaunting spirit and faith" -- NBC's Jim Miklaszewski.

The finding by the Defense Intelligence Agency that North Korea now has nuclear-armed ballistic missiles was not so clear-cut. Just listen to all those caveats, qualifications, and weasel-words: "moderate" confidence; "low" reliability; "capable" of delivery; "potential" threat; credible evidence to make a "plausible" case. ABC's Martha Raddatz pointed out (at the tail of the Woodruff videostream) that no other agency has signed on to the DIA assessment.

Meanwhile, the promised launch of North Korea's medium-range Musudan missile has still not materialized. With nothing to report on, what is a newscast to do? Wednesday, ABC's Bob Woodruff gave up on waiting for the real thing, and offered a Virtual View computer animation to help us imagine a launch. Now the computer animators at NBC and CBS join in: this is how Richard Engel imagines Musudan; this is David Martin's version.

Maybe it is time for diplomacy. State Department correspondents Margaret Brennan and Andrea Mitchell are already in Seoul, awaiting Secretary John Kerry's arrival. They each filed brief stand-ups in preview, on CBS and NBC respectively.

NBC's Richard Engel filed another backgrounder from Seoul on what Pyongyang may be up to with all its bluster and threat. This time he speculated that the technology for nuclear weapons and the missiles to deliver them is North Korea's only export industry. Kim Jong Un needs the brinksmanship as a pretext in order to put on a show of his wares for potential customers like the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Andrew Tyndall 4/12/13 9:20:51 pm

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