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There was a split decision about the day's top story. ABC led with the staggering sum of money that the widow of a major investor in Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme decided to repay to the bankruptcy trustee: $7.2bn. CBS led with the press availability that Julian Assange, the figurehead of WikiLeaks.org, granted upon his release from jail on bail: anchor Katie Couric pre-taped her interview. NBC chose the two-year extension of the tax cuts from the Bush Administration that would otherwise have expired at the end of the year. All three networks had their White House correspondents cover President Barack Obama's signing ceremony. The tax deal, which had been Story of the Day last Friday when former President Bill Clinton lobbied for it, was Story of the Day once more as it was enacted.

Jake Tapper on ABC went into more taxing detail than either Chip Reid on CBS or Savannah Guthrie on NBC. He contrasted the extra money that three different households will pocket now that the deal has passed. An unemployed woman in Sacramento will get $270 each week; a two-income family of three in Maryland will take home roughly $6,000 more for the entire year; the First Family of the United States will be $295,223 richer--and the National Debt will expand by $858bn.

CBS' Reid noted a lack of Democrats at the signing ceremony. Neither Speaker Nancy Pelosi nor Majority Leader Harry Reid attended. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, CBS' Nancy Cordes ticked off the next business for the lame duck Congress: the Pentagon's don't-ask-don't-tell policy on gays in the military may be repealed, and the $8bn in earmarks that her colleague Sharyl Attkisson has been lambasting (here and here) as porkbarrel spending will fail. NBC's Kelly O'Donnell covered the conflicting priorities in the Senate between DADT repeal and START ratification. ABC's Jonathan Karl took inspiration from Jon Stewart's non-comedic crusade on The Daily Show to push for passage of the $7bn plan to provide healthcare for workers poisoned by toxic rubble at the World Trade Center. Despite that publicity, Karl concluded that "time is running out."

Andrew Tyndall 12/19/10 6:03:23 pm

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