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The crisis in retailing was covered by CNBC's Margaret Brennan for NBC's lead item. "Promotions and discounts are just not convincing consumers to spend right now," she told us. Instead they are saving money avidly, at the highest rate since last spring. CBS' Chip Reid added that banks are extending them fewer loans: 60% report to the Federal Reserve that they have raised their required credit rating. The upshot, CNBC's Brennan told us, is that retailers have been shedding jobs at the weekly rate of 10,000 workers since the New Year. The latest layoffs are at the Macy's chain of department stores, which is cutting back in Miami, Atlanta and San Francisco.
ABC's A Closer Look from David Muir started as a profile of a family coping with unemployment and an 80% haircut in its household income. It then veered into an examination of how people survive crises--not just economic shocks--but accidents and health scares and plane crashes as well. ABC's Muir did not tell us but the probable explanation for this incongruous shoehorning of the book The Survivors Club into his report was that its author, Ben Sherwood, was executive producer of Good Morning America during part of anchor Charles Gibson's tenure there. Presumably Charlie was extending to Ben the gift of free publicity.
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