Expert: Nightly news more nimble than cable in covering financial crisis

Dirk Smillie of Forbes interviews primetime news tracker Andrew Tyndall, who believes that the nightly network news programs did a better job of covering the economic crisis than the cable channels.

Here is an excerpt:

What’s wrong with cable channels focusing more on politics and opinion?

Here’s an example: cable channels were obsessed with last year’s presidential campaign. Then Wall Street crashed, Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and the whole national conversation switched from politics to the economy. The election was over when financial capitalism began to collapse; no republican could have won. The nightly newscasts were nimbler in spotting this and shifted their focus to economics. But the cable networks missed it, carrying on with their central focus, the election.

The Big Three have been criticized for delivering coverage with a certain herd-like sameness. What difference has each network brought to the table in covering the economic meltdown?

NBC Nightly News has all the resources of CNBC to call on. Their coverage has been strengthened by CNBC’s automotive correspondent and by their in-house economist. CBS has leaned more toward poverty stories about the working poor. ABC is doing a series called “The New Normal,” looking at how ordinary citizens have been changed by the economy. Brian Ross and ABC’s investigative unit have reported on financial scandals with a vengeance.

Read more here.