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The loss of $12.7bn in twelve months was enough of a corporate catastrophe for all three networks to lead with the plight of Ford Motors. ABC's Charles Gibson announced that next week he will anchor from Detroit in order to probe the automobile industry's problems. Yet even though Ford overshadowed the rest of the day's news it was not, strictly speaking, the Story of the Day. A trio of features about the War in Iraq logged marginally more time.

NBC's Chip Reid followed up on the Democrat-led resolution in the Senate against President George Bush's troop build-up in Iraq. As was suggested yesterday by ABC's Jake Tapper, the likely final resolution is the one drafted by Republican John Warner instead. Reid filed a profile of the Virginia Senator, "widely respected on all things military." The long-time stalwart supporter of the war became disillusioned after his latest visit to Iraq in October and on Capitol Hill that shift was taken as a "tipping point."

The other two Iraq features both concerned the toll exacted by the war on the National Guard. For CBS' American Heroes series, Cynthia Bowers traveled to rural Illinois where Paris, population 9,000, has suffered five local guardsman killed, aged 26, 23, 23, 21 and 44. On NBC, Martin Savidge looked at last weekend's downing of a Blackhawk helicopter that killed all twelve on board: all were guardsmen and Savidge offered thumbnail biographies of each, "a cross section of the army and America…older citizen soldiers with families, mortgages, car payments and dreams." Together they were parents of 34 children.

ABC did not contribute an Iraq feature.

Andrew Tyndall 1/26/07 6:39:21 pm

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