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The tornado in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore qualified as one of those disasters that warrant a full-court press. All three newscasts extended their regular half-hour format (CBS to 90 minutes, NBC and ABC to an hour). Tyndall Report, as usual, confines its monitoring to just the first half hour, for consistency's sake. NBC and CBS both dispatched their anchors to the scene of the disaster. ABC and NBC declared a Special Edition. NBC's was called Devastation in Oklahoma. ABC chose Direct Hit: Twister Outbreak. This one story occupied fully 100% of the three-network newshole.

Of course, it is possible that they over-reacted. Monday evening, when the decision was made to drop everything to cover Moore, the estimate of the death toll was significantly larger than the now-official 24. Furthermore, many of those believed dead were reportedly children, at the collapsed Plaza Towers Elementary. The prospect of school bereavement of the magnitude of the Newtown massacre in Connecticut would have made Moore a no-brainer for saturation coverage.

As it turned out, only seven -- I say "only" not to be callous but to delve into the calculus of newsgathering decisions -- of those killed by the twister were children at Plaza Towers. NBC anchor Brian Williams, alone of the three, had the good grace to lead off his newscast with the relatively good news that the disaster was much less deadly than had been reported at first. Lester Holt told Williams that it was fog (of war) to blame not a funnel cloud. Unfortunately Holt's vivid and comprehensive report, which was NBC's lead, has not been posted online as a videostream.

This is a demonstration of how much the networks had the school disaster as top-of-mind in their planning:

ABC's lead, by David Muir, showed us his network's Video View computer animation of the contrasting architecture of the two elementary schools that were flattened by the tornado: Briarwood, where all survived, and Plaza Towers, where the deaths happened.

NBC's Kate Snow and CBS' Vinita Nair both profiled Plaza Towers schoolteachers who shielded children. A prayerful Rhonda Crosswhite talked to Snow. A tearful Jennifer Doan sobbed to Nair from her hospital bed.

CBS profiled two schoolchildren: nine-year-old Jenae Hornsby died and Mark Strassmann interviewed her family; eight-year-old Courtney Brown survived and Norah O'Donnell visited her in hospital.

ABC anchor Diane Sawyer did not happen to jet to the scene. Still, she is an old hand at extracting a soundbite. Even by remote feed, see Sawyer persuade Jordan Cobb, the Briarwood Elementary student and daughter of bloodied schoolteacher LaDonna Cobb, to say just what she wanted her to say. Sawyer nailed it so well that she slapped an Exclusive label on it.
Andrew Tyndall 5/22/13 9:19:32 pm

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