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The hook that made the limousine so newsworthy was a seasonal one. This is the time of year for high school proms and college graduations and bridal showers. The nine women who were in the limousine in San Mateo were partying for a newlywed on Saturday night. The bride, Neriza Fojas, was one of the five trapped inside and burned to death. NBC's Miguel Almaguer and ABC's Cecilia Vega narrated the grisly details from bureaus in Los Angeles. Vega used her network's Virtual View computer animation to depict the burning limousine. CBS had Ben Tracy on the scene in front of the seven-mile bridge span, but his report has not been posted online.
It turns out that the choice by both CBS and ABC for their newscast's lead was outside the consensus. ABC's Brian Ross was given the case of Col Jeff Krusinski, whose groping arrest is only of national note because he happens to head the USAF unit in charge of preventing sexual assaults in the ranks. CBS' Pentagon correspondent David Martin focused on the ranks instead of the arrests, reporting on a 6% annual rise in the number of complaints of rape and sexual abuse, a notoriously underreported crime. ABC's Ross gave a nod to the documentary The Invisible War that NBC's Pentagon man Jim Miklaszewski publicized a year ago.
CBS stayed with the Boston story, but had no news. Don Dahler instead presented a profile of Russell, the doctor's daughter and onetime Suffolk University student from Rhode Island. Inspire, the online periodical published by al-Qaeda, was downloaded on her computer, said Dahler: he pointed out that it could have been downloaded by her late husband Tamerlan; he did not point out that even if she did it, it is her Constitutional right to do so. ABC, wisely, skipped the Boston story. NBC's Pete Williams mentioned that there is not a single cemetery in Massachusetts that will agree to bury Tamerlan Tsarnaev's body. Williams did not seem exercised by this scandalous lack of common decency.
The prospects of a new front in the Syrian civil war, one involving Israel, should have been the Story of the Day. All three networks assigned a correspondent. NBC's Richard Engel was in Turkey, close to the Syrian border: he interpreted the airstrike as an attack on Lebanon-based Hezbollah not on Syria, yet he sees Hezbollah as increasing its influence in the rump Syrian state. CBS had Allen Pizzey file from Tel Aviv, where he heard little outrage against Israel across the region, even from its enemies. By contrast, Martha Raddatz, in ABC's DC bureau, warned of retaliation against Israel by Syria, Hezbollah and Iran.
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