 |
         
|
Sometimes Andrea Mitchell on NBC is more like a media correspondent than a political one. Her report on Snowden, the confessed leaker, consisted almost entirely of snippets from other reports about Snowden, the confessed leaker. See a soundbite from NBC's Meet the Press, two soundbites from FOX News Channel, a preview of a Charlie Rose interview on PBS, a quote from an online q-&-a session at The Guardian, a reporter from The New York Times quoted on Mitchell's own lunchtime Reports program on MSNBC -- and a clip of Mitchell herself covering a previous example of Spies at the Summit on NBC Nightly News in 1995.
ABC's Brian Ross relied on his network's in-house national security consultant Richard Clarke for a series of insults against the "no good" Snowden. If ABC is going to include ad hominem insults by someone on its payroll against a newsmaker in its reporting then it should at least identify the affiliation. Instead the ABC consultant was labeled, blandly, as a former official. Ross duly reported Snowden's assurance that he had not leaked any secrets to China, but only after Clarke had blasted Snowden as "the equivalent of a Chinese spy" before adding a weasely "if" to water down his insult.
On CBS, Bob Orr gave Snowden a somewhat fairer hearing, quoting from his 100-minute online q-&-a session at The Guardian. In Orr's summary, Snowden complains that he could not receive a fair trial in the United States; he chastises Director James Clapper for "baldly lying" to Congress; he reassures the Pentagon that his leaks had not compromised any military operations; and he denies he is a spy for the People's Republic of China.
As for the G8 diplomacy, ABC gave Jonathan Karl only a brief stand-up, in which he had to touch on both the serious and the flippant: the talks on Syria between Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin, and the Irish genealogy of the First Family Obama. On CBS, Major Garrett held out hope that the war in Syria may yet be resolved at a peace conference in Geneva, which is supported by both Obama and Putin, despite their mutual "awkward and indifferent" body language. NBC's Chuck Todd noticed the waning support for Obama among the Europeans at G8. The President is under fire for his policies on espionage, Guantanamo Bay, Syria, and climate change.
President Putin was also the topic of a light-hearted closer on NBC, in which Stephanie Gosk offered a tip of the hat to the New York Post for its investigation into Putin's ring, the one that marks him as a winner of the 2005 Super Bowl. Gosk's report included topless pix of Vladimir himself, plus her chance to get up-close-and-personal with David Diehl, another ring wearer. Diehl was a two-time-champion lineman for the NFL's New York Giants.
The Supreme Court story, striking down Arizona's voter identification law, was covered in full by CBS' Jan Crawford, in a brief stand-up by NBC's Pete Williams, and mentioned only in passing on ABC.
You must be logged in to this website to leave a comment. Please click here to log in so you can participate in the discussion.
