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"I am so deeply sorry and ashamed," declared the disgraced financier Bernard Madoff as he entered a guilty plea to a $64bn fraud. "I am painfully aware that I have deeply hurt many, many people." Even before he was formally sentenced, his bail was revoked so the 70-year-old Madoff began what will surely be a lifelong incarceration. All three networks led from the judicial district of downtown Manhattan. The Story of the Day accounted for a full third of the three-network newshole (34%--19 min of 57) with CBS spending the most time (11 min v ABC 5, NBC 3) as anchor Katie Couric sat down for a post-trial q-&-a with nine of Madoff's defrauded investors. ABC had Charles Gibson anchor from Washington DC even though his newscast contained no special inside-the-Beltway reporting by him.

The courthouse correspondents clearly had plenty of time to polish their copy. "Madoff went from the penthouse to the jailhouse in one morning and tonight he lives in another highrise, this one run by the federal prison system," was how ABC's Jim Avila put it. From CBS' Armen Keteyian we heard a similar theme: "Madoff's final day of freedom began before dawn, a light flickering on in this $7m penthouse apartment; tonight it will end with lights out at 11pm at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center." On NBC, CNBC's Scott Cohn told us that tonight "Madoff is behind bars. The man who rigged the numbers for years is now inmate #61727054…his wife Ruth is back at the couple's luxury penthouse where now, tonight, she lives alone."

In his guilty plea, Madoff told the court that he never made any stock market investments on behalf of his clients. He simply deposited their money in the Chase Manhattan Bank and had done so since the early '90s. It was "a classic Ponzi scheme," CNBC's Cohn shrugged. ABC's Dan Harris caught up with some swindled investors at the courthouse steps. He called them "victims." He advised that they are eligible for up to $500,000 in investment insurance and may be able to write off losses against taxes.


Andrew Tyndall 3/13/09 8:02:24 pm

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