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The world's bourses sold stocks from Indonesia to Russia, from France to Brazil. The ripple effect culminated on Wall Street where the Dow Jones Industrial Average reentered four-digit territory--closing down 369 at 9955--for the first time in four years. The continuing bear market was the lead item on all three newscasts and the Story of the Day. ABC, which covered high finance most heavily (97 min v CBS 64, NBC 88) during the month of September and spent least time on Campaign '08 (123 min v CBS 199, NBC 139), set out to redress its shortfall. Anchor Charles Gibson kicked off his Battleground Bus Tour from Dayton, where he gauged the mood in the swing state of Ohio.

"Stomach churning is the operative word," declared CNBC's Carl Quintanilla as he surveyed the market action for NBC. He used his cable channel's resources to guide us round the globe. Ian Williams filed from India on the selloff in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Korea. The Indonesian market had "its worst one day drop ever." Next we heard from Yonatan Pomerenze in Moscow, where the Russian market suffered its "biggest one day drop ever." On to Anna Martin in England. She told us about London and Frankfurt, but unlike CBS' Richard Roth, omitted the detail that the fall in Paris "was the worst ever."

"The headline is: It Could Have Been a Lot Worse," was the gallows humor from ABC's Betsy Stark, who pointed out that the DJIA swooned by more than 800 points before rebounding. "It may amaze you to hear that it was just a year ago, almost to the day that the DJIA hit its all time high, closing above 14000. Now 4200 points, almost 30% of its value has disappeared." On NBC, Quintanilla used a clip of former anchor Tom Brokaw's Nightly News from 1999 to make his point. Brokaw was announcing the DJIA breaking through the 10,000 barrier. "A decade's worth of gains are now officially erased," Quintanilla calculated.

In the face of the statistic that there have been zero gains so far this century from invested capital on Wall Street, ABC's David Muir was quite the intrepid reporter when he repeated the buying advice from Kiplinger's Personal Finance that "now just might be the time to start eyeing those strong companies." CNBC's Quintanilla chose the opposite option, quoting his colleague Jim Cramer, host of Mad Money, who was "clearly rattled" on NBC's Today: "Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week."

Both CNBC's Quintanilla and CBS' Anthony Mason found the "silver lining" that the global economy is slowing down so precipitously that crude oil prices are plummeting. A barrel now costs less than $88. Mason added that the Federal Reserve Board is expected "to step in with an emergency rate cut some time soon."


Andrew Tyndall 10/13/08 2:37:03 pm

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