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After a two-day detour into a life of crime--Wednesday's shooting spree in Alabama and Thursday's guilty plea to fraud by Bernard Madoff--the three nightly newscasts returned to the year's dominant story line: the recessionbound economy and Barack Obama's efforts to revive its growth. All three White House correspondents covered the attempts of the President and his team to inspire confidence in an eventual recovery, which was the Story of the Day. CBS and NBC led with Obama's use of his bully pulpit. ABC led from Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished its most bullish week since last November. NBC, by the way, used Ann Curry from Today as its substitute anchor.

"Optimist in Chief," was what NBC's Savannah Guthrie called the President when he advised that we keep focused on "all the fundamentally sound aspects of our economy" as opposed to all that other stuff. ABC's Jake Tapper called it "economic cheerleading" backed by members of his administration "putting on economic smiley faces." Citing a slowdown in the rate at which consumer spending is collapsing, CBS' Chip Reid found "some glimmers of good economic news" while NBC's Guthrie added the tidbits of "housing inventories starting to decline, an unexpected rise in retail sales and signs of less nervousness in the bond market." ABC's George Stephanopoulos put it this way: "Some good news in the economy, some good news from banks, some good news in the stock market."


Andrew Tyndall 3/16/09 11:15:58 pm

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