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Your bitter blind broke gap-toothed radio show host Chuck Mertz now offers a quick review of the US network TV news each weeknight.

Follow @thisishellradio to read the Twitter feed live every weeknight during the news!

Here’s Chuck’s re-cap of tonight’s US nightly TV news.

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‘Hidden America’ is staying that way on ABC World News Tonight. When ABC covers Chicago’s impoverished blacks caught in the crossfire of gang violence, ABC puts that news under the moniker, ‘Hidden America.’

Tonight, when ABC visits white New Yorkers without power or senior citizens who need help, that’s not under the same – or any – title.

Clearly, what’s ‘Hidden’ from ABC news are the problems that inner-city blacks face daily. If your skin is any other color, then it doesn’t need to be separated under its own title.

ABC shows irate white woman yelling abut how she needs her power back on. The report is framed as one of those, ‘where is the government?’ stories. But at no point does ABC tell us if the problem is with a public utility or one that has been privatized.

Who knows? We sure as hell don’t because that’s not the kind of question the nightly news asks. And why should they? We all ‘know’ it’s gotta be the big bad inefficient government, right? We all ‘know’ private business could do a better job, right?

NBC Nightly News reporter Ann Curry DOES ask a firefighter if more well-off areas are having their post-Sandy problems addressed faster than those in poor neighborhoods. The firefighter denies it, of course. Curry should have asked those in poor neighborhoods or their elected representatives, but at least she asked.

All three networks find long lines for gasoline much bigger news than how Sandy affected poor. Most of those suffering without power in New York City’s Red Hook Projects don’t have the kinda money that’s needed to own the SUVs you see waiting for fuel. Hell, they don’t have enough money for the gas let alone the car. It’s tough to drive out of ‘Hidden America’ — or get out at all.

ABC even tries to make themselves the heroes. Anchor Diane Sawyer goes with volunteers to check on seniors who don’t have power and need help. Instead of putting the vulnerable on camera to give them the opportunity to tell of their plight at length, ABC spends more time showing Sawyer giving assistance. I think we hear a total of half dozen words from voices in the dark.

I was wondering how long it would take for the media to inject itself into the role of hero. However, I was certain Sawyer would be the first to do so. She loves being a celebrity. A journalist? Not so much.

ABC’s Sawyer actually takes time to do a giggling story about Victoria’s Secret being re-opened. There’s time to joke about a lingerie store having their power on, but none for Red Hook Projects — or the heroes of Occupy Wall Street who are in the projects helping out.

Occupy will never be heroes on ABC. Sawyer’s crush on Chris Christie, her three-day coverage of the Tea party convention and reporters Dan Harris and Elizabeth Vega chiding Occupy Wall Street activists guarantees that won’t ever be a story on ABC. It’s simply not the narrative they’ve constructed of dumb stoners pointlessly sitting in public.

NBC goes to a Mitt Romney rally where hecklers shout out ‘what about climate change. This storm was about climate change!’ I’m not sure if the heckler was yelling at Mitt for his unwillingness to accept climate change science, or the networks for ignoring climate change in the presidential debates and all the Sandy coverage. Throughout the entire coverage of Sandy only CBS got close to mentioning climate change by asking a meteorologist about “new trends” in weather.

The media didn’t like the term ‘global warming’ and they apparently have abandoned ‘climate change’ for ‘new trends.’

NBC reporter Chuck Todd then goes to the presidential horse race coverage. Todd finds Obama ahead in New Hampshire by two points but “when you look deeper at the numbers,” Todd finds Romney winning the state.

That’s the first time I have ever heard or seen a reporter say that one candidate was leading a state but would lost it. I’ve asked Todd to put his money where his green screen is and bet him fifty bucks Obama will win.

If and when I get a response, I’ll tell you.

In case you don’t think these network reporters read my tweets, follow me @thisishellradio and see how ABC’s Jonathan Karl got a bit snippy at me last night.

CBS reports that Americans are feeling better about the economy this month. I don’t know if Todd took that into his calculation of Obama losing New Hampshire despite being up by two points in the polls.

NBC goes to a scientist who says floodgates would have made it so Sandy’s destructive and deadly storm surge would not have hit shore. This was a story in The New York Times two days ago and in The Nine Circles of Hell! yesterday.

To balance the coverage, NBC shows Mayor Michael Bloomberg denying that floodgates would have helped. Bloomberg says the area that would need to be covered is too large to stop such a storm surge.

The Times reported that scientists have been warning the Mayor and the city for the last decade. Scientists put the price of such floodgates at $6 billion.

Let’s see, who should I believe? Scientists who have nothing to gain by making these claims or a politician whose legacy could be destroyed by ignoring warnings?

ABC gets to another big story. Bigger than the Victoria’s Secret story. I know that’s hard to believe. ABC reports on a mystery lottery winner who is shown on store surveillance tape buying the winning ticket. Her family recognizes her and she cashes in.

Yesterday, I suggested that ABC World News Tonight dump ‘World’ from their title due to the lack of international coverage.

Today, after reporting on Victoria’s Secret and the ‘Mystery Winner,’ I’d advise they dump the word ‘News,’ too.

Go with ABC Tonight. It’s less misleading.

All of the networks have been praising the heroics of public workers. NBC even shows state workers who volunteer to do their jobs as they believe it is their duty to serve the public.

Taxpayer-paid, money-grubbing, unionized state workers are heroes? The networks spent the last 21 months — ever since Wisconsin — telling us how these greedy, overpaid bums are destroying our national and state economies.

In the media, when state workers are doing their jobs helping us desperate citizens, they’re heroes. When they’re not acting like heroes, they’re lazy socialist bastards who are ruining America.

CBS closes by returning to New York City’s suburbs to assess the physical and psychological toll on whitey.

NBC ends by plugging their upcoming telethon for Sandy survivors. That said, nobody’s doing a story on how there’s a shortage of flood insurance and how taxpayers are going to have to foot at least $10 billion for these folks who buy homes on the ocean in the midst of climate change.

ABC wraps up with the first part of a two-part series Diane Sawyer is doing where she very lightly — almost ethereally — interviews the two men vying to be president come inauguration day.

Tonight, it’s incumbent Obama’s turn.

We learn nothing other than Sawyer loves to be around celebrities, even if they are politicians. She giggles, she smiles, then she gets a poke in on Obama. She asks him ‘what would you say to a new president taking office?’

Like I said earlier, it’s obvious Sawyer has a huge crush on Chris Christie. She can’t wait for him to be president.

Who knew she was a chubby chaser?

Read today’s real news in The Nine Circles of Hell!

Follow @thisishellradio live Monday through Friday during the US national nightly network TV news every weeknight at 5:30PM central/6:30PM eastern.

Then, come back for the Nightly News Re-Cap within an hour after the end of that night’s news.

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