COMMENTS: AIG Completes a Weeklong Clean Sweep
There was no new development in the scandal surrounding the $165m in bonuses paid to traders at American International Group. Yet the coverage has been so dominant that it was the Story of the Day anyway, as reporters took stock of the political, economic and legal fallout from the weeklong surge of populist outrage. Thus AIG completes a clean sweep, being the most heavily covered story on all five days this week. CBS, with substitute anchor Russ Mitchell, led with White House attempts at AIG damage control. The other two newscasts found other news to lead with. ABC also started at the White House but chose projections for a decade of ballooning federal deficit spending. NBC, with Natalie Morales as substitute anchor, kicked off from the State Department on Barack Obama's diplomatic outreach to Iran.
A political post mortem on the AIG affair was filed by Chip Reid (no link) on CBS. He concluded that Barack Obama "had difficulty finding his footing" as his administration switched from declaring that it had no control over the bonus payments to pledging action to have them rescinded. His "change of course threw fuel on a fire already raging on Capitol Hill." ABC's George Stephanopoulos concluded that the issue "overwhelmed the White House" as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner spent "all week long trying to explain his involvement." CBS' Reid reckoned that "explanations of what Geithner knew and when changed by the day."
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