December 5th, 6:30 NBC Nightly News

The NBC Nightly News was much more enjoyable for me because I felt as though I got to learn much more from the program than I did from the CBS local news. However, I noticed that the NBC Nightly news continued the trend of having the important stories come first and the "fluffier" stories come towards the end of the program. The first story had to do, ofcourse, with the shootings in the mall in Omaha, Nebraska, which was without a doubt the biggest story of the day. The second story had to do with the mortgage crisis that many people are going to experience, and Bush's plan to help by freezing the interest rates of some people. However, the pointed out that they arent helping people who need help the most. They are helping more of the middle group of people, who can pay their current rate but who would not be able to afford their mortgage if the rate went up. The third story, which I found to be extremely interesting, had to do with the Supreme Court and the current case they are looking at. The case is whether or not detainee's at Guantanamo Bay have the same legal rights as average Americans and if they should be able to get a fair trial, instead of being detained without being charged with a crime. The fourth story had to do with the defense secretary visiting Iraq and the fact that December 5th, was a violent day in Iraq. The last really major political story that was discussed had to do with Iran's situation with nuclear weapons and Bush's response to the reports that had come out earlier in the week regarding Iran.

After the first 5 stories came more "fluffier" stories. The first had to do with the damage in the Pacific-Northwest due to the storms that had hit there. Then the childhood obesity problem was discussed. The eighth story was about thr rise in the stock market and the ninth was about the risk of collisions on airport runways, which freaked me out but really didnt have much to do with the current political situation in our country. The last two stories were complete fluff. The tenth story had to do with the Polar Bear Knut's first birthday at his zoo in Germany, since the world adopted him when he was born and his mother abandoned him. The final story was a touching one about a getaway for all the children who had lost mothers and fathers during the war against terrorism, since they are able to understand one another and have all gone through the same thing.

Although I thought this was much better than the local news program from the same day, the final stories were definitely full of fluff, so I was slightly disappointed that it was not just hard, informative news.