The South Pacific has been pummeled by natural disasters for the past week, with huge death tolls in several countries. On Friday, both Arwa Damon and Dan Rivers reported on rescue efforts in Padang, Indonesia:
Saturday morning, Arwa had a longer piece from the site of a collapsed school in Padang:
Dan Rivers took to the air and got a look at the scope of the destruction:
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For this week's look at BackStory on Domestic, Michael Holmes brought a report from John Vause about covering the celebration of China's "National Day" marking 60 years of communist rule. It's a good look at what it sometimes takes to get a story -- in this case, 10 hours of effort:
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Kevin Flower is the Jerusalem bureau chief, but on Friday he got in front of the camera to report on the "proof of life" video of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, whose kidnapping by Palestinian militants in June of 2006 was a major contributor to the Israel/Lebanon war later that summer:
Kevin also did a second report for The Situation Room, showing more of the PoL video as well as footage of some of the 19 Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for the video:
(You can follow Kevin on Twitter @ KevinFlowerCNN.)
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Sunday on Christiane Amanpour's program, the first focus was on the nuclear agreement with Iran that will have them reducing their uranium stockpile by selling much of it to Russia and France.
Christiane spoke (via translator) with Iran's top diplomat at the Geneva talks, Saeed Jalili. (He emphasized that the not-secret site they have was revealed earlier than was legally required. Nice way to gloss over the SECRET site, huh?)
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Also on to talk about the agreement were Mohammed Marandi, a professor at Tehran University who said that Iran wants US opinions towards Iran to change, and Ray Takeyh, a former Obama administration adviser who said that the US wants Iran to be more transparent, to lower their stockpile of uranium, and to have on-going dialogue rather than episodic.
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The rest of the program focused on the situation in Somalia, including a report from Sudanese journalist Nima Elbagir in Mogadishu. Insurgents now control three-quarters of the city and are encouraging fighters from other countries to come to Somalia and join them.
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Ken Menkhaus, a former UN adviser in Somalia, thinks al Qaeda would be at risk if they based there, that Somali militants would not tolerate a large force of outsiders.
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Another report from Nima Elbagir about the situation for civilians. About one-third of the residents of Mogadishu have fled the city. Refugee camps line the road running north from the city, but the radical Islamic group that controls the area does not tolerate foreign aid groups coming into the area. Half the Somali population, nearly 4 million people, are completely reliant on aid. Oxfam calls it the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
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Where in the World...?
MONDAY: Morgan Neill was in Zurich, Switzerland; Dan Rivers was in Manila, Philippines; Mohammed Jamjoon was in Baghdad. Suzanne Malveaux was in for Wolf Blitzer.
TUESDAY: Awra Damon tweeted that she was heading to Viet Nam, although bad weather prevented her arrival there.
WEDNESDAY: Don Lemon was in for Kyra Phillips; John Roberts was in for Campbell Brown.
THURSDAY: Ed Henry was in Copenhagen, Denmark; Matthew Chance was in Geneva, Switzerland; Ted Rowlands was in Leone, American Samoa; Dan was in Padang, Indonesia; Candy Crowley was in Atlanta; Ali Velshi was in Chicago.
FRIDAY: Bureau Chief Kevin Flower reported from Jerusalem; Arwa was in Padang; Dr. Sanjay Gupta was in Tromso, Norway, north of the Arctic Circle (above); John King was in Washington. Christine Romans was in for John Roberts; Jim Moret was in for Larry King.
(Only posting Mon-Fri right now because WITW will be moving back to Saturdays later this week and will cover the prior Saturday-Friday.)
7 comments:
The Amanpour program should be on CNN
domestic daily. Maybe noon.
I could not agree more. Americans need
information about what is happening in
Asia, Africa, Europe and emerging markets
like Brazil and South Africa. It is clearly a
global village.I think Christiane, Michael
Ware, Zakaria and Peter Bergen are people
who get Americans to pay attention to news
from around the world. Like it or not the
Middle East is also a player.
CNN needs to cover stories largely ignored by
the main stream media and do more original
reporting, like the one from Somalia. Yes cover
the big stories but quit politicizing everything.
I think they need to reduce the hours for some
of their shows and add more programs. State
of the Union needs to only be a couple of hours.
The same with TSR. I could not agree more about
international news, which is essential. There is
too much made up stuff to turn into stories.
A case in point : last night;s 360 segment ,
has Obama lost his mojo. C'mon. I turned the
the channel.
Anon 12:12 you must be right about last
night's 360 the ratings are awful. Monday
was a really bad day for CNN overall. The
ratings are plummeting.
Oh my goodness I just saw those numbers.
I thought it was a mistake for CNN to move
the political chatter to AC360. People are so
over the talk and pundits.I am not sure CNN
gets the message. Have you seen the promo
for Larry King? Is Obama keeping his promises ?
It serves CNN right for the way the covered
health care and the tea party. The surprising
thing is all of this is based on a skit on SNL.
CNN had better get it;s act together soon.
Enough with Letterman as well. It is not the
same as Clinton.
CNN is in trouble because they forgot their
audience. They need to quit trying and be
like FNC.
CNN is becoming too much like talk radio.
It as if the Republicans are writing the scripts
for CNN.At some point someone at the network
will get it : we want news not silliness.
At one time, CNN did have CNN international at noon, covering the globe for one hour and then when Jon Klein came on board, it stopped. At noon, CNN should drop domestic programming entirely and go international and feature Amanpour, Zakaria, and Michael Ware. What is wrong with them??? They have lost their identity and are floundering....badly.
@6:03 PM: You are right. AC360 used the SNL skit to define their take on Obama's lack of leadership and performance! That's their only point of reference? Duh??
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