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The breaking news that criminal espionage charges have been filed, under seal, against Edward Snowden, the confessed leaker of National Security Agency secrets, came too late to be fully reported on the nightly newscasts. Both NBC and CBS led with the news from federal prosecutors, but both Pete Williams and Bob Orr had to confine themselves to live studio-based summaries rather than completely-edited packages. ABC, with substitute anchor David Muir, only mentioned the prosecution's charges in passing, so the NSA did not qualify as Story of the Day. That honor went to Paula Deen, chosen by ABC as its lead. The bestselling southern-hospitality TV chef has lost her job with the Food Network.

So this was the second day in a row that the national TV news treated news about TV as its Story of the Day. Thursday, the untimely death of James Gandolfini in Rome grabbed headlines: now Alex Marquardt on ABC files a brief update on the actor's autopsy. Paula Deen was covered for the second day in a row by ABC's Steve Osunsami (Thursday's here), as the chef released a brief video apology for her racially-offensive behavior, and then replaced it with a second one that was more fulsome. ABC followed up with its in-house legal eagle Dan Abrams (at the tail of the Osunsami videostream), who was surprised that Chef Deen allowed herself to be interrogated under oath about using the N-word and her love for antebellum plantation dining, rather than settling the lawsuit for which she had been deposed so embarrassingly. Katy Tur covered Chef Deen on NBC, noting that she had been a no-show on NBC's Today, pleading exhaustion.

ABC piled on with a third television-related package in one newscast. Substitute anchor David Muir selected Bill Nye, of the Science Guy children's educational series, as his network's Person of the Week for inspiring a generation of children, now grown and graduating college. STEM -- science, technology, engineering, mathematics -- was also the topic of Rehema Ellis' profile of the summer fieldwork Project Exploration at Chicago's Ariel Community Academy for NBC. See how Ellis finds a student who believes that criminal forensic science has its high profile thanks to NBC's own Law & Order drama series. CBS' CSI gets nary a mention. As for CBS, STEM education already caught Anthony Mason's attention on Tuesday, when he bestowed a free plug on the virtual reality from Raytheon, the Pentagon contractor.
Andrew Tyndall 6/25/13 4:28:46 pm

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