Last night, ABC's World News with Diane Sawyer led the broadcast with a 3-minute "A Nuclear America: The President is Promoting Nuclear Energy as the Country's Future" describing yesterday's presidential announcement of a partial guarantee on loans that Southern Company and its partners will borrow to construct two new reactors in Georgia.Say what you will about the networks and broadcast news, Sawyer's program averages 7-8 million viewers. Compare this with the highest rated cable news programs: the Fox Report with Shepard Smith averages 1-2 million viewers.
A lot of people, then, watched ABC's top story, and it was a good one. In the lead-in at 6:30 p.m. Eastern, Sawyer said, "President Obama said today that nuclear power plants are good for the environment, the economy, and jobs."
Correspondent Jake Tapper noted that a lot has changed in America, in the Democratic Party, and in the nuclear power business, since 1979. Tapper cited the 550,000 homes the new reactors will warm and illuminate, the 30 million barrels of oil the new plant will offset – which President Obama said was equivalent to taking 3.5 million cars off the road.The piece also featured sequential interviews with Patrick Moore, formerly of Greenpeace, who supports today's announcement, and with Jim Riccio, currently of Greenpeace, who does not. Tapper said that besides Moore, many other Americans, some 52 percent, have come around in the past couple decades to supporting new nuclear construction.
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