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Sarah Palin may not be our next Vice President but defeat at the ballot box has not dimmed her knack for newsmaking. The annual Republican Governors Conference would normally not attract a glimmer of attention from the networks. Yet the appearance of the Governor of Alaska was enough for all three newscasts to assign a reporter to it, qualifying Palin as Story of the Day. Still, she is more political celebrity than substantial power player. Her truncated press conference--just four questions long--was not newsworthy enough to fill the lead spot. All three newscasts chose to start with the economy instead: ABC and NBC selected stock market action; CBS, with substitute anchor Harry Smith, started with Congressional hearings into the partial nationalization of the major banks.

The day's trading on Wall Street "had professionals scratching their heads," according to ABC's Betsy Stark (no link). In just three hours "for no obvious reason" the valuation of the 30 major corporations in the Dow Jones Industrial Average increased by 10%. The index closed at 8835, up 552 points on the day. "In truth there were more reasons to sell than to buy," Stark shrugged, listing a European recession and growing unemployment lines. "Walmart reported better than expected earnings--only because Americans cannot afford to shop anywhere else." CNBC's Trish Regan on NBC put the one-day increase in stock prices in the context of a yearlong 33% decline, including "icons of American business"--the pharmaceutical firm Merck down 51% year to date, the Internet search engine Google down 55%, and her own employer General Electric down 54%.


Andrew Tyndall 11/14/08 6:43:51 pm

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