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As for the NSA, ABC's Brian Ross covered the Hong Kong angle: Edward Snowden, the confessed leaker, told the South China Morning Post that the NSA facility in Hawaii, where he worked as an IT troubleshooter for the contractor Booz|Allen|Hamilton, was the hub for computer hacking against the People's Republic of China by US cyberspies. NBC covered the Hong Kong angle by shoehorning Ian Williams stand-up into Andrea Mitchell's report from the DC bureau. Both Mitchell and CBS' Bob Orr focused on the testimony of NSA Director Keith Alexander before a Senate committee. Alexander asserted that the spying programs that Snowden had exposed had helped prevent dozens of terrorist events.
Unfortunately, the correspondents let Director Alexander's claim just lie there, unamplified. Which particular program -- the Internet PRISM program or the Verizon telephone log database? How many is dozens and over what period of time? Was that preventive help indispensible or ancillary or supplementary? And what is the definition of an event?
On the weather front, ABC's stormchaser Ginger Zee did not have an actual Derecho to report on so she had her network's computer animators imagine a Virtual View of how shelf clouds form the system's characteristic bow shape. NBC was less graphic, relying on the Weather Channel's Mike Seidel for a straightforward forecast. CBS did not consider the possibility of such a storm to be newsworthy enough to warrant a correspondent.
Neither did CBS use one of its own staffers for its lead item from the fire zone in Colorado. It relied on KCNC-TV, its local affiliate in Denver instead. Kelly Werthmann won some network airtime. NBC and ABC each had their own reporters on the scene: Miguel Almaguer and Clayton Sandell. Tourism promoters in Colorado will at least be gratified that all three newscasts included a plug for its scenic and historic Royal Gorge Bridge.
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