Tyndall Report — 2013 Year in Review (nightly newscasts)

Tyndall Report — 2013 Year in Review
Source: Tyndall Report

2013 marks the year when ABC World News finally rejected the mission of presenting a serious newscast. ABC covered all four of the major domestic policy stories least heavily: the Budget debate, the Healthcare rollout, Gun control, and National Security Agency surveillance. Same with foreign policy: ABC spent least time on the civil war in Syria and its chemical weapons disarmament, the military coup in Egypt, and on Afghanistan.

Instead, ABC stepped up its coverage of Sports and Show Business, and highlighted morning-style reporters Ginger Zee (weather) and Paula Faris (personal finance tips). Weather aside, the only major stories that ABC covered competitively were True Crime — the George Zimmerman trial and Ariel Castro’s Cleveland hell house — and Celebrity: London’s baby prince. ABC’s newscast is now certifiably Disneyfied.

All three newscasts overcovered the Story of the Year. The pressure-cooker bombs at the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed only three people. Yet emotional video from the scene and an all-out manhunt in a grieving city made up for the lack of carnage.

In contrast to ABC, NBC’s DC Bureau was heavily used, housing four of the top eight correspondents, led by Tom Costello, a latterday Robert Hager. Yet it was CBS that covered both foreign policy and those four major policy debates in most depth. Unusually, Nancy Cordes, its lead Beltway correspondent, was based on Capitol Hill rather than at the White House.

The Most Newsworthy Man of the Year was Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who kept the Boston manhunt alive. The Woman was Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for botching Obamacare.