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What to do about Detroit? For the fourth weekday out of the last five the financial plight of the automobile industry was the Story of the Day. On each of those four days, Detroit's shrinking Big Three have been the unanimous choice for lead story on all three network newscasts. This time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made news with her counterproposal to the industry's request for $34bn in federal loans. Her idea was to lend the automakers $15bn through the end of March 2009, by which time they would have to come up with a plan to stay in business. The Speaker suggested that a federal Car Czar be named to make sure the $15bn is spent wisely.

"Super seniority," was what CBS' Sharyl Attkisson called the proposed federal loan, "taxpayers get paid back before anybody else." She watched legislators negotiating on Capitol Hill and concluded that they were trying to do something unusual, namely "move at lightning speed to negotiate the fine points of a complex plan." On NBC, CNBC's auto expert Phil LeBeau reported that the $15bn would not be new money but a diversion of funds already approved "for developing more fuel efficient cars."

ABC's Jonathan Karl (no link) used his report on the Car Czar to cross-promote his colleague Cynthia McFadden's interview with President George Bush for Nightline. The Presidential soundbite Karl used was lame, however: "viability," Bush explained tautologically, "means that all aspects of the companies need to be reexamined to make sure they can survive in the long term." NBC also tried crosspromotion. LeBeau aired an anodyne soundbite from the President-elect this weekend on Meet the Press. Barack Obama does not want to invest billions in the auto industry only to see it months later "come back hat in hand and say Give Me Some More."

NBC anchor-cum-publicist Brian Williams then piled on. He advertised LeBeau's CNBC documentary Inside GM and fulsomely congratulated David Gregory for his appointment as next host of NBC's Sunday morning stalwart Meet the Press.


Andrew Tyndall 12/9/08 10:05:38 pm

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