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The networks really did make a good faith effort to preserve their reputations as purveyors of serious news. They each, appropriately, consigned the fate of that late Playmate to a flippant placement low in their rundown. Instead, NBC led with an Investigation into porous security along the Afghanistan border. ABC chose the backlash against the cervical cancer prevention vaccine. CBS went to Baghdad for the latest twist in terrorist bombmaking. But because of that split vote, Anna Nicole Smith ended up with the most total time on all networks combined. Like it or not, she was the Story of the Day.

Chlorine is the extra ingredient in the carbombs of Baghdad, emitting toxic fumes that burn eyes and lungs after exploding. Lara Logan led CBS' newscast with video clips from an unnamed jihadist Website showing guerrillas in gas masks assembling purported chemical warheads. She then played a CBS-made computer animation of a US military raid on a suspected bombmaking factory near Fallujah. The raid claimed to have uncovered a half-built truckbomb and other vehicles equipped with chemicals. The chlorine is easy to obtain in Iraq, NBC's Jane Arraf explained, because it is necessary to purify drinking water. Her colleague Robert Bazell recently traveled to Iraq to report on war-zone healthcare: he was on hand in Balad in January for the first diagnosis of a chlorine casualty. Arraf cautioned against hyperbole: "Chlorine does not afflict mass casualties."

Andrew Tyndall 2/23/07 3:57:20 pm

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