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The aftermath of last week's bombing of the Boston Marathon was Story of the Day again. CBS and NBC both led with the filing of federal charges against 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in his hospital room, accusing him of setting off the explosions at the race's finish line last week with his dead brother Tamerlan. NBC's Pete Williams and CBS' Bob Orr summarized the highlights of the prosecutor's affidavit from their DC bureaus. ABC had Dan Harris file from the front of the hospital itself, even though its lead happened to originate with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police instead. The Mounties notwithstanding, continuing coverage of last week's megastory still hogged the day's agenda, accounting for 62% of the three-network newshole.

Boston's mix of mourning and recovery was rendered by NBC's Katy Tur and CBS' Elaine Quijano: the afternoon's memorial silence exactly one week later was followed by the reopening of Boylston Street to the public.

The personality of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in his Cambridge home was scrutinized: CBS anchor Scott Pelley aired clips from his 60 Minutes sitdown with Al Ammon, Tsarnaev's neighbor, recounting their disputations over theology and imperialism; ABC's Brian Ross told us about Tamerlan's Rhode Island wife, converting from Christianity to Islam, changing her name from Katherine to Karima. Ross also told us that three Cambridge men, including Tamerlan's roommate, had been found brutally murdered, covered in marijuana and cash.

Brother Tamerlan had visited his parents in Dagestan on the Caspian Sea for six months last year. NBC's Adrienne Mong enjoyed the rare experience of filing a nightly news package with a Makhachkala dateline. CBS' Charlie d'Agata also looked into the trip: his reporting, from the far-less-exotic bureau in Moscow, found a disavowal of the Brothers Tsarnaev's alleged actions by local Islamist radicals, who style themselves Caucasus Emirate Dagestan. As for ABC, reporter Kirit Radia also found himself on the streets of Makhachkala, but he found too little for his own package, and his soundbite was folded into Brian Ross' report.

Rounding out the Boston survey, all three newscasts closed with a vignette of recovery and rehabilitation. CBS' Dan Dahler brought us Steve Byrne, deafened in one ear and riddled with shrapnel, who was a guest of the Red Sox at Fenway Park. NBC's Anne Thompson introduced us to a new pair of fast friends, Ron Brassard, aged 51, and Rob Wheeler, aged 23: Rob was the just-finished marathoner who tore of his shirt to serve as a tourniquet for Ron's blasted foot. On ABC, we met Adrianne Haslet-Davis, the teacher of ballroom dancing at Arthur Murray, who will now have to cha-cha on one foot. Rio Benitez' feature was marred by his inability to resist the urge to pander to his anchor.

Did you know that Diane Sawyer, too, once met an amputee, one who runs legless down a beach in her bikini, one who has nothing whatsoever to do with Boston?
Andrew Tyndall 4/23/13 8:58:15 pm

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