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The Boston Marathon bombing was Story of the Day again, as it has been every weekday since it happened. ABC led with an Exclusive from WCVB-TV, its affiliate in Boston: local anchor Ed Harding scooped a one-on-one with David Henneberry, the Watertown boat owner, who discovered the 19-year-old fugitive Dzhokhar Tsarnaev hiding in his backyard. CBS' John Miller sat down with four members of the transit police SWAT unit who made the subsequent arrest. Miller revealed that, far from being armed and dangerous, as police had warned, the wasted Tsarnaev had no weapon -- so the shootout consisted of gunplay between police officers. NBC and CBS both led their newscasts with an update on the hospital-room interrogation of the wounded youth. ABC had Diane Sawyer anchor its newscast from Dallas, where she was preparing a q-&-a with George W Bush, to publicize the opening of his Presidential Library.

Among the tidbits extracted from the interrogation of Tsarnaev: ABC's Brian Ross revealed that he had been able to say only a single word, No; CBS' Bob Orr reported that the gunpowder in the pressure-cooker bombs had been purchased from Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook NH; NBC's Pete Williams said the attacks were intended as retribution for the dead of Iraq and Afghanistan. The same three correspondents suggested last Tuesday (here, here, and here) that the bomb followed a recipe published in Inspire magazine. ABC's Ross and NBC's Williams now report that speculation as fact.

Britain's Channel Four News landed an interview with Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the suspects' mother, in Dagestan, a soundbite from which, asserting her sons' innocence, was excerpted on all three newscasts (there is no link to Charlie d'Agata's report on CBS). ABC's Ross was skeptical that she would ever return to Boston to comfort her hospitalized son: he said she herself is a wanted fugitive, accused of shoplifting apparel worth $1,600 from Lord & Taylor department store.

Anne Thompson rounded out NBC's Boston reporting with a survey of the mood in the community, complete with cross-promotion for her colleague Savannah Guthrie's interviewing on Today, and publicity for The One Fund charity for the wounded. CBS' Elaine Quijano put Boston's preoccupation in perspective by reminding us that its homeless population remains destitute. She profiled the eponymous Women of Means charity, run by the steel-kneed Roseanna Means, a physician from Brigham & Women's Hospital, that offers healthcare to the female street population.
Andrew Tyndall 4/24/13 6:35:01 pm

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