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Macro-economic statistics, hardly the source of dynamic visuals, turned out to be an unusual Story of the Day. CBS, with substitute anchor Norah O'Donnell, led with double-barreled coverage of the real estate housing market, first with Anthony Mason, then with John Blackstone. The 20-city Case-Schiller index of home sale prices found that the cost of property is rising and has now reverted to the same levels as seven years ago. Before turning to the state of the economy, NBC and ABC both chose tornadoes on the great plains as their lead item.

NBC used Diana Olick from CNBC, its sibling financial news cable channel, to cover the housing statistics. However, it was more interested in the general economy -- including consumer confidence, stock market indices, and automobile sales as well -- so Olick's coverage was folded into John Yang's report from Chicago.

ABC looked at the housing market from the personal-finance viewpoint rather than the macro-economy. Paula Faris offered Real Money tips from realtors to would-be sellers on how to jack up their prices even higher. Faris never explained why it is a good thing for the economy to make housing as expensive as possible. John Blackstone in Oakland for CBS took the opposite side, sympathizing with the plight of the first-time buyer in the Bay Area, facing shrinking inventories of property for sale and competition from cash-only purchasers.

Stormchaser Ginger Zee on ABC offered free publicity to her fellow weather-porn aficionados, Brandon Ivey and Sean Casey, at StormChasingVideo.com. Zee tried to dignify these daredevils as scientific researchers advancing the limits of meteorological knowledge -- but her rationalization did not ring true. She clearly thought that their armored TIV camera car and its IMAX-quality video were so cool. On CBS and NBC, tornado coverage had none of that pumping adrenaline -- just a traditional three-day forecast from David Bernard of WFOR-TV in Miami and Chris Warren from the Weather Channel.

There were three other climate-related packages:

NBC broke its 13-package post-New-Year-women's-only streak of Superstorm Sandy coverage. Finally a man was assigned to the storm's aftermath. President Barack Obama made a trip to the rebuilt boardwalks of the Jersey Shore and so the assignment went to one of NBC's White House correspondents, Peter Alexander. In a tacit admission that his anchor Brian Williams is a Bruce Springsteen fanatic, Alexander's fact-check of the President did not concern the storm damage but the authorship of the song Jersey Girl instead.

CBS' Michelle Miller reported confusingly on a municipal land-use dispute on the Jersey shoreline at Mantoloking. She warned that eminent domain might be invoked to allow an Army Corps of Engineers beach replenishment project to go ahead. I say confusing because it was not clear with the Corps had to do with Mike Becker's boulders. You see if you understand.

One thing I do admire about CBS' newscast is its counter-intuitive recognition that still photography makes for excellent motion-picture video. Here is a playlist of ten different packages on photography filed on CBS in the last year or so. The latest has Dean Reynolds follow the excellent Alpine of the Americas project by Jonathan Byers and Ned LeBlond. And yes, it has a climate-related angle, too.
Andrew Tyndall 5/30/13 7:36:15 pm

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