In Profile: Evening News Edition

By A.J. Katz 

ABC World News Tonight anchor David Muir recently sat down with Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan for an interview on a New York City park bench.

Sullivan writes:

While it’s not Muir’s role to dictate coverage, he can influence it, like when he recently called Texas-based correspondent Marcus Moore, who was interviewing people waiting in long lines at a San Antonio food bank.

Advertisement

“I asked him to let them tell their stories while looking into the camera,” Muir recalled, adding that he was grateful to have the kind of working relationship that made such a conversation productive.

Moore’s segment landed with emotion. Out-of-work Texans described how they never imagined themselves needing charity, or, in the case of one father, the pain of not knowing how to answer a child’s question about what’s for dinner.

CBS Evening News anchor Norah O’Donnell was recently profiled by Glamour.

She tells the magazine:

“With each person I see, I’ve tried to take that extra moment to ask them how they’re doing and to understand that when people show up on a conference call or show up at work, there’s a silent struggle that people are having. It’s hard. People who have substance abuse problems—and we talked about this on the air—that’s going to be exacerbated by what’s going on right now. I’m on a text chain with all my girlfriends from Texas and girlfriends from college, who live all across America. I get those messages too. ‘I’m getting furloughed.’ ‘They just cut my pay 50%.’ ‘You may not have known this, but I’m very, very depressed.’ ‘I’m having trouble in my marriage.’ I’m really acutely aware that there’s a lot of private suffering that’s going on and unlike I’ve ever witnessed before.”

NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt and NBC medical correspondent Dr. John Torres spoke with The Associated Press’ David Bauder about the NBC Nightly News: Kids Edition that the network launched last week. “It’s healthy to have someone who will talk to them in as plain a language as possible and really walk them through what we know and what the coping techniques are for all of us,” said Holt, who added that the show won’t address the grimmer aspects of the story, like the death toll.

From the AP story:

The questions that some children sent in to Torres weren’t all that different from what some adults would ask. One wanted an explanation of what “flattening the curve” meant and another wondered whether coronavirus survived in the water and whether it would be safe to swim (Torres said the most important issue would be not getting too close to fellow swimmers.)

“The important thing that this program will provide is an affirmation to kids that it’s OK to be a little freaked out by this, because all of us are, too,” he said. “It’s really important that we convey, even if it’s in a very subtle manner, that what you’re feeling is completely normal.”

Chicago Tribune columnist Jerry Davich calls Holt, Kate Snow, and José Díaz-Balart “three of my favorite messengers of the evening news these days,” and concludes his piece by writing: “We can get the day’s news from anywhere. Heck, from everywhere (probably even from TikTok videos). Instead, we choose to get it from people we trust. People we believe we know. Night after night. Crisis after crisis. Especially now, when every day seems to bring a new challenge to first understand, then overcome.”

Advertisement