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Since each of the newscasts had decided to lead with the potential attack on Times Square, you would think that they had decided to take the threat of further terrorism seriously, until you listen to the words their reporters used to describe the so-called plan: "they came up with the idea" -- NBC's Pete Williams; "the decision was spur of the moment" -- ABC's Brian Ross; "disorganized bombers" -- CBS' John Miller. So it turns out that treating the incompetence of the brothers as a headline is either reassuring -- they were not such a threat to public safety after all -- or scaremongering -- even their impractical panic must be taken seriously.
Rounding out the Boston coverage was a couple of packages for CBS. From Dagestan, Charlie d'Agata relayed the "anguished and angry" complaint of Zubeidat Tsarnaeva, the mother of the accused brothers, that America had failed in her expectation that it would keep her sons free from harm. And to close its newscast, CBS did what it so often does, honor photography. In this instance, Elaine Quijano paid tribute to Boston Globe photojournalist John Tlumacki.
ABC's current White House correspondent Jonathan Karl traveled to Dallas for the dedication of the Bush Library along with alumni of that beat from the other two networks: CBS' Jim Axelrod and David Gregory of NBC's Meet the Press. The loyal Karl made sure to fold in a clip from his anchor's Wednesday Exclusive with the former President in which Diane Sawyer gushed over the Bush brushwork. As for Sawyer, she was escorted around the exhibit by Laura Bush, who mentioned one of the many controversial issues of her husband's tenure -- hanging chads -- that Sawyer had omitted in her Wednesday sitdown. As ABC's Karl pointed out, the dedication proceedings made no mention of the Iraq War. And still no mention of torture by anybody.
NBC also threw in a cross-promotion for Matt Lauer and Today by publicizing the soundbite he obtained from Barbara Bush, discouraging her son Jeb from running to be the third Bush President in 2016. And check out George W Bush himself, answering Lauer's question in David Gregory's package: he implicitly acknowledged that his exhibit will not succeed in persuading opponents that the Iraq War was a legitimate and just component of the Global War on Terrorism.
Besides Boston and the Bush Library, all three newscasts also covered clues that an attack using small amounts of Sarin nerve gas had taken place as part of the civil war in Syria. The official statement from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was larded with conditions -- "assesses with some degree of varying confidence"…"some uncertainties about what was used, what kind of chemical was used, where it was used, who used it" -- which were faithfully reported by two Pentagon correspondents: NBC's Jim Miklaszewski, CBS' David Martin.
Inexplicably, ABC's Martha Raddatz skipped those two qualifying soundbites from Hagel, thus offering plausibility to the misleading graphic that ABC superimposed over her report: Proof Syria Has Used Chemical Weapons. Yet there is no proof. CBS followed up with Major Garrett from the White House telling us that there was not proof enough for the United States to launch military action. NBC had Andrea Mitchell add that there is not proof enough for Russia to change its United Nations vote in the Security Council.
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