Amidst all the warranted coverage of White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s disturbingly vulgar tirade about Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon, the CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News ignored the poignant White House event honoring the law enforcement officers who responded to the June 14 congressional GOP baseball shooting.
While those two newscasts and ABC’s World News Tonight spent roughly nine minutes and 15 seconds on Scaramucci (with some technical cutting short ABC’s coverage), ABC highlighted the emotional ceremony but only in the form of a 22-second news brief.
Anchor David Muir brought it up at the end of the A-block, prior to commercial break:
At the White House today, President Trump honoring five first responders to rushed to help when that congressional baseball practice came under fire, presenting the Medal of Valor to two U.S. Capitol Police officers, both of them injured, racing through the bullets to help everyone. Three police officers from the Alexandria, Virginia force also honored. The President calling them all American heroes who saved innocent lives.
Again, Scaramucci using repeated f-bombs and oral sex references in his on-the-record interview with The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza is a big deal and was properly treated as such on the network evening newscasts.
As my colleague Rich Noyes stated earlier on the Fox Business network, such drama will never serve the Trump White House any good when it comes to advancing their policy goals (especially the GOP’s current efforts to repeal and replace ObamaCare).
That being said, the media should also be covering an ceremony honoring law enforcement officials that prevented the murder of multiple GOP congressmen, staffers, family members, and friends. Gravely injured Republican Congressman Steve Scalise’s wife was even there and acknowledged by the President.
Instead, NBC used a news brief to promote Jeff Bezos spending a few moments as the world’s richest man while CBS offered an investigative report on a new, severe non-disclosure agreement employees of The Trump Organization have been subjected to since Donald Trump became President.
Here’s the transcript of the brief from ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir on July 27:
ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir
July 27, 2017
6:45 p.m. Eastern[ON-SCREEN HEADLINE: Honoring First Responders]
DAVID MUIR: At the White House today, President Trump honoring five first responders to rushed to help when that congressional baseball practice came under fire, presenting the Medal of Valor to two U.S. Capitol Police officers, both of them injured, racing through the bullets to help everyone. Three police officers from the Alexandria, Virginia force also honored. The President calling them all American heroes who saved innocent lives.
