Network anchors return from Haiti, but a sizable reporting corps remains

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All three network news anchors returned from Haiti this weekend and plan to anchor their evening newscasts from New York tonight, a sign that the intense coverage of the earthquake’s wreckage is abating.

But while NBC’s Brian Williams, ABC’s Diane Sawyer and CBS’ Katie Couric have left Port-au-Prince, the broadcast and cable news networks still have large contigents in Haiti reporting on the aftermath. ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC each have half a dozen correspondents and dozens of other producers in the field, a sizable commitment. CNN has 10 on-air reporters there, including anchor Anderson Cooper.

Correspondents who arrived in Haiti this weekend were overwhelmed by the level of destruction. “I’m barely 7 hours on the ground in Port-au-Prince and I’m running out of ways to say I’m sorry,” NBC’s Lester Holt wrote on The Daily Nightly blog Saturday. “I’ve already met so many people who have lost so much, including a mother who stood on the shaky rubble of her home, where four of her children are buried. We don’t speak each other’s language, but I hope to God she understood how my heart bleeds with hers.”

— Matea Gold