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Never let it be said that the networks always skimp on international coverage. The House of Windsor never fails to find a slot on the news agenda. This is the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. From London, NBC's Keir Simmons filed a dutiful tribute to the loyalty and affection of Her Majesty's subjects. CBS and ABC offered contradictory remembrances of the TV history of that day in 1953. ABC anchor Diane Sawyer told us it was a "global television event." She recalled viewers being terrified on the Queen's behalf as they watched "through the flickering screens." On CBS, Elizabeth Palmer pointed out that in the United States no one watched it live: film had to be rushed by her own network's chartered plane across the Atlantic for delayed transmission, narrated by her own network's Walter Cronkite.
Royalty was not the only international news: NBC's in-house physician Nancy Snyderman brought us the skinny on a study of white-skinned people in Australia. If one daubs with sunscreen on a daily basis, skin becomes less wrinkled.
That Saturday tornado that was Story of the Day on Monday for killing a trio of National Geographic Explorer stormchasers in Oklahoma was again covered by all three newscasts. The twister that touched down in El Reno measured 2.6 miles across at its base, wider than any other funnel cloud in the 60-year record. CBS' Anna Werner told us about it from Dallas; ABC's David Kerley narrated StormChasingVideo from his network's DC bureau; NBC relied on its sibling cable network, the Weather Channel, and meteorologist Kelly Cass.
This is the signature sweetspot of feature reporting on CBS. Take a public policy issue and find an anecdotal example to give it emotional power. Since the New Year, CBS has covered the gun control debate more intensely than the other two newscasts -- although that intensity has subsided since legislation was blocked in the Senate in April. Now Seth Doane travels to Missouri's Polk County to bring us the desperate plight of Blaec Lammers and his parents.
The Governor of Mississippi had no facts to back up his claim that a shortage of stay-at-home mothers accounts for the shortfall in global reading scores registered by American students. ABC's Linsey Davis filed a Mommy-Wars fact-check. She gave a hat-tip to Washington Post for sponsoring the symposium at which the governor blundered, and to Working Mother Media (also her source for last Wednesday's breadwinner-by-gender report) for pointing her to OECD data. Davis did not even dignify Governor Bryant with his first name (although you could see "Phil" signage behind his head in one clip).
Those high-rise window-washers who try to charm pediatric hospital patients by dressing in superhero costumes -- the ones that NBC's Mark Potter found Making a Difference in February. Well, they now appear on ABC, via John Donvan.
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