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Like one of those badly-told jokes that fall flat, the appropriate response to the unanimous choice for lead story on all three networks was Well, I suppose you had to be there. It turned out that the closing prices on Wall Street were no big deal, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down a mere 15 points. But at mid-afternoon, the time when the evening newscasts map out their rundowns, it looked like the sell-off of stocks had amounted to an actual correction, the technical term when financial assets lose a full 10% of their value. The die was cast then and none of the three switched its lead to the story that turned out to be the Story of the Day--the Richter 8.0 earthquake in southern Peru.

So the day's financial trading turned out to be newsworthy only because of its minute-by-minute gyrations not because of its end result. NBC anchor Brian Williams used an avian metaphor: "The wings fell off Wall Street earlier today…right before it swooped up." At CBS anchor Katie Couric resorted to medicine, observing that the "day of palpitations" produced a chart that "looked like the EKG of a patient in distress." ABC's Betsy Stark (subscription required) went to the theme park for anchor Charles Gibson: "Today was a rollercoaster with a capital R." Then she added: "You would never know from the closing numbers what a heartstopping day it was." Precisely.

The underlying problem that sparked the initial selloff was that the system of turning mortgages into tradable financial assets means that "bad loans can get spread throughout the entire financial system," CBS' Anthony Mason explained. So the bounce back of prices at the end of the day was interesting, CNBC's Maria Bartiromo told NBC's Williams: "It was the beaten down financials--the banks and the brokers--who came rallying back."

Turbulent times may not be confined to the real estate and financial markets, CBS' Mason warned. Because most households have their wealth invested in one category or the other, "with both now heading south, consumers--who power two thirds of the economy by shopping--may feel poorer and spend less." ABC's Stark saw a second threat, that the bad loans will deter banks from making any at all "and for an economy that runs on credit, that is a recipe for sending it into a standstill." So Stark changed her alphabet and warned about an altogether different "R word"--recession.

Andrew Tyndall 8/17/07 7:44:04 pm

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