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ABC's Memorial Day newscast was riddled with non-news. Matt Gutman told us about the fire aboard Grandeur of the Sea, the Royal Caribbean cruise liner, off The Bahamas: no one was hurt. David Kerley told us about a panicked passenger who tried, and failed, to open an emergency exit aboard an Alaskan Airlines flight in midair: no one was hurt. Linzie Janis told us about the bomb cache found in the bedroom of an Oregon teenager that may have been intended to blow up his high school: no one was hurt. Rebecca Jarvis told us about the elevators in the Revel Hotel in Atlantic City that jammed twice, requiring shaftway escapes via ladder: no one was hurt.
Well, that's all right then. ABC seems to be in the business of simultaneously alarming and reassuring us.
Last week's top story, the deadly tornado in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, earned a follow-up from CBS' Vinita Nair and NBC's Charles Hadlock. Hadlock told us that a schoolteacher at Briarwood Elementary School led her students in community hymn-singing as the twister approached. Jesus Loves Me was the devotional of choice. Apparently the First Amendment does not apply in severe weather.
CBS' Anna Werner seemed serious when she told us that the pre-dawn death of a Kentucky police officer on the Bluegrass Parkway was part of a growing trend of cops being killed while on duty. She offered other examples from Santa Cruz and Cambridge Mass. Then she switched to police cruiser dashboard video from Texas of a cop being shot -- and not killed, sort of undercutting her point. But why let the facts of the story get in the way of bang-'em-up video?
PS: next time a newscast runs a cops-killed-on-duty story, please include the number of civilians killed by on-duty-cops during the same time period.
It is rare for a network news correspondent to adopt an activist point of view while covering the pros-and-cons of federal spending. Check Tom Costello on NBC and you'll see from his visually sumptuous report that there is no doubt that he believes that Congress should appropriate that extra $11bn.
Remember Friday, when I checked that playlist of 23 follow-up stories on Superstorm Sandy since the New Year. Of those 23, only one had been filed for ABC, and only three by male correspondents. After Stephanie Gosk's report for NBC from the boardwalk at Seaside Heights on the Jersey Shore those statistics are now 1-of-24 and 3-of-24.
ABC, which has a sibling company in the Disney corporate empire in the cruise business, routinely displays more interest in mishaps on the high seas than its rivals. In the case of Grandeur of the Sea, Matt Gutman was joined by NBC's Mark Potter. Both used the incident to remind us of that juicier cruise story: the sewage-infested voyage of Carnival's Triumph.
If David Kerley's story on the false scare on the Alaska Airlines flight seems familiar, check out this playlist of 17 other reports (here, here, here, here, here and here) on midair emergencies where the alarm turned out to be unwarranted. Of those 17, fully 12 were filed for ABC.
Considering nothing happened on the Alaska Airlines flight, ABC's computer animators would be entitled to feel irritated that their holiday weekend was disturbed by the task of creating a Virtual View recreation of the non-event. Imagine their double irritation when they were also put to work imagining a Virtual View of the Atlantic City elevator shaft rescue for Rebecca Jarvis. For good luck, Jarvis told us that the casino claustrophobia was similar to that suffered by the cast of Modern Family.
Oh, my bad. That Modern Family does not actually exist. It is a fictionalized sitcom ensemble. Jarvis was not depicting genuine claustrophobia she was just shilling for the comedy stylings of the same on her network's primetime schedule.
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