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How summits have fallen from their peak in the Reagan-Gorbachev era! ABC did not even find the looming confab between Barack Obama and Xi Jinping worthy of a mention. CBS' Seth Doane filed a preview from Beijing, where he told us that the Annenberg Estate at Rancho Mirage would be a "casual setting" for the superpower talks. NBC's Andrea Mitchell showed us a photomontage of the luxurious complex to set us straight: it's not casual, it's a fairytale.
There was a shootout on a community college campus in Santa Monica. There was no aspect of this crime story to elevate its status from local significance -- appropriate for coverage by the local stations in Los Angeles -- to a national event, worthy of interest on the network nightly newscasts. The only ingredient of note was that the confrontation was still unresolved at airtime. In other words, this was breaking news. The nightly newscasts fooled themselves into thinking that they belong to the same journalistic genre as 24-hour cable news, and jumped to the scene with NBC's Mark Potter, CBS' Carter Evans, and ABC's John Schriffen. This was not a good use of the limited newshole of a half-hour newscast.
Also covered by all three newscasts was Tropical Storm Andrea. Each took a different angle. On NBC, the Weather Channel's Chris Warren filed a straightforward weekend forecast. On CBS, Elaine Quijano worried about reservoir control and flood prevention around New Jersey's Woodcliff Lake. Andrea brought out the stormchaser in ABC's Ginger Zee, who raced up the Atlantic seaboard in her van from Florida to Virginia, following the winds and flash floods.
A flash flood: that's what Matt Gutman warned motorists about on ABC. Implausibly, he claimed that water as shallow as 18 inches can cause a Sports Utility Vehicle to roll over. To prove it, he had his network's in-house computer animators prepare a Virtual View depiction of just such a disaster. In February, Gutman's colleague Lisa Stark warned us that 400 people drown each year trapped inside submerged vehicles. Stark offered video from Florida's Collier County Sheriff's Department as a teaching aide for us to save ourselves. Now Gutman tells us that 100 of them drown because the vehicle is trapped in a flash flood. Gutman offers the self-same Collier County video.
And Matt Gutman made it a twofer on ABC, presenting Exclusive audio of the contrasting recorded voices of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Zimmerman is about to go on trial in Florida for murdering Martin in that infamous neighborhood watch confrontation. Gutman has been ABC's go-to guy for this story, filing 25 of its 27 reports since the story broke 15 months ago. In the build-up to the trial over the last year, Gutman has filed more reports than all other nightly correspondents put together. As for this latest cellphone audio, Gutman's expert told him it is no big deal: the forensic quality is not good enough to qualify as evidence.
CBS and NBC both closed with a sporting story. NBC's, from Brian Shactman, was brazen cross-promotion, featuring thoroughbred jockey, actor in Seabiscuit and HBO's Luck, onetime NBC Sports analyst, Gary Stevens, riding Oxbow in the Belmont Stakes, whose broadcast rights happen to be owned by NBC. CBS' On the Road paid a tribute to golf and Luke Bielawski, the 24-year-old duffer, who has turned the entire continent into a single hole. Par is 48,000. Steve Hartman crafted a tribute line to golfers everywhere: "…hitting them as they lie, wishing he could lie about how many he hit…"
How many celebrities has ABC chosen as its Person of the Week in the last seven weeks? Actress Rita Moreno meet pop song writer Carole King, moviemaker JJ Abrams, pop singer Cyndi Lauper, and pop singer Neil Diamond. That's a vocal trio plus a director plus a dancer for the music video. ABC's Dan Harris told us that the 81-year-old Moreno has just written her memoir -- but he did not bother to mention the book's title.
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