CONTAINING LINKS TO 1280 STORIES FROM THE NETWORKS' NIGHTLY NEWSCASTS
     COMMENTS: Spitzer Departs, Leaves News Void

After hogging headlines for three straight days, Eliot Spitzer, the humiliated Governor of New York, left a news vacuum with his resignation. A very slow day saw the networks scratch around for something to cover as all three regular anchors took the day off. ABC's substitute was George Stephanopoulos; CBS had Harry Smith; Ann Curry was at NBC. They settled on the recession-bound economy as Story of the Day. CBS led with plans for tighter regulation of the home mortgage industry. ABC and NBC chose to string together a pot-pourri of depressing economic statistics--the falling value of the US dollar, the increasing cost of a barrel of crude oil and declining retail sales.

ABC's Betsy Stark saw a storm gathering over the economic outlook: "What is scary right now is that no one is sure how bad the storm will be." NBC had Carl Quintanilla from its sibling financial news cable channel CNBC recite the woeful litany. Gold futures rose to an all-time high, more than $1,000 on ounce, he pointed out, yet the value of the dollars to buy that gold "is sinking." From London CBS' Sheila MacVicar reported that "a lower dollar helps make oil a very attractive investment so in the commodity houses the talk is of the hot money flooding into the market--pension funds, hedge funds and speculators." Since October 2006, the dollar cost of a barrel of crude has almost doubled from $56 to $110.

CBS led off with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to tighten regulation of real estate finances. Nancy Cordes pointed out that this would be "a fix for the future" including oversight by state governments, licenses for mortgage brokers and scrutiny of credit rating agencies. ABC's George Stephanopoulos dramatized the difference between Republican and Democratic economists by interviewing Carly Fiorina, an advisor to John McCain, and Larry Summers, one of Paulson's predecessors at Treasury under Bill Clinton. Fiorina advocated patience as this spring's fiscal stimulus takes effect: "We need to pause just for a bit and see what the impact of that help has been." Summers saw "very serious financial problems and a major credit crunch." He understated that "Carly and I do not see quite eye to eye on this."

The economists Betsy Stark talked to for ABC seemed to side with Summers not Fiorina: "What we are seeing now is the unraveling of a long boom, an epic boom in housing and easy credit, now at risk of becoming an epic fall."


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