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The Regime Media, with just weeks remaining in the Biden presidency, appear uncertain as to how to cover one of his big legacy items: the commutation of 37 out of 40 federal death row inmates. Evening news coverage ranged from treating it as an afterthought to making it all about Biden. 

ABC World News Tonight treated the story as if it were an afterthought, tacking it on to the back of the obligatory item on the Matt Gaetz report released by the House Ethics Committee. Below is that report in its entirety:

ABC WORLD NEWS TONIGHT 

12/23/24

6:42 PM

RACHEL SCOTT: Selina, we also want to get to another headline tonight out of The White House. President Biden commuting 37 sentences, and you’re learning tonight, that’s nearly all the prisoners on federal death row.

SELINA WANG: That’s exactly right. So those 37 inmates will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole. So, now there are only three men who remain on federal death row, including one of the Boston marathon bombers and the mass shooters in the attacks on the Tree of Life Synagogue and the Mother Emanuel AME Church. And tonight, Trump’s team and some of the family members of the victims are slamming President Biden’s decision. Rachel.

SCOTT: Selina reporting from Washington tonight. Selina, thank you.

37 seconds does not allow for much in the way of overt bias by commission. Rachel Scott and Selina Wang go over the terms of the commutation, and who remains on death row. But there is no further context as to what some of these other inmates may have done. Thus, viewers receive no predicate with which to underlie the assertion that Trump’s team and the victims’ families slammed the commutations. Without that predicate, they cannot assess the merits of Biden’s decision. This is omissive bias at play here.

CBS doesn’t delve too deeply into the crimes committed by recipients of Biden’s clemency, either. Senior White House Correspondent Ed O’Keefe focused instead on, to use an annoying and overused CNN term, the Joe Biden of it all:

JERICKA DUNCAN: With less than a month to go in his term, President Biden has granted executive clemency to nearly all federal death row inmates, 37 out of 40. The move reduces their sentences to life without the possibility of parole. It also makes them immune to President-Elect Donald Trump’s promise to resume federal executions. CBS’s Ed O’Keefe has more tonight, including the prisoners who did not get clemency.

ED O’KEEFE: He once wrote legislation expanding the federal death penalty.

JOE BIDEN: I am not Mr. Soft-on-Crime. I’m the guy that put these death penalties in this bill.

O’KEEFE: But four years ago, then-candidate Joe Biden campaigned to end it. And as president, he pauses federal executions.

BIDEN: One of the reasons I’m against capital punishment is, you know, we have confirmed there’s at least 195 cases since 1972 that the person who was convicted and about to be put to death was innocent.

First, take notice of anchor Jericka Duncan’s weird frame of the commutations as needed in order to stop Trump. Then, take note of O’Keefe’s focus on the historical contradictions inherent to Biden’s commutations. The focal points of this report were Biden’s history with the death penalty, the commutations, and the timing thereof ahead of a visit to The Vatican. There was no detailed mention of the crimes perpetrated by some of these individuals.

Finally, there was NBC’s report- the most complete of the network bunch. Sure, there was the historical context. Sure, there was the presentation of both sides of the advocacy surrounding this issue. But what made NBC’s the best report on these commutations was its reporting on actual crimes committed by the recipients of Biden’s clemency:

LESTER HOLT: Today’s move coming ahead of President-Elect Trump’s plan to resume federal executions, halted under the Biden administration. Trump’s transition team saying, “These are among the worst killers in the world,” calling it an “abhorrent decision by Joe Biden,” and “a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.” Among those whose sentence was commuted: Kaboni Savage, a drug dealer involved in organized crime, convicted of murdering 12 people, four of them children, during a firebombing incident at a house of a federal witness. 

The disastrous nature of the Biden presidency, a rolling dumpster fire to the bitter end, throws complications into how the Regime Media might cover (or, more accurately, attempt to frame) his legacy. If commutation coverage is any indication, uneven may well be the best we can reasonably expect.

Click “expand” to view the full transcripts of the aforementioned reports as aired on their respective network newscasts on Monday, December 24th, 2024: 

CBS EVENING NEWS

12/23/24

6:35 PM

JERICKA DUNCAN: With less than a month to go in his term, President Biden has granted executive clemency to nearly all federal death row inmates, 37 out of 40. The move reduces their sentences to life without the possibility of parole. It also makes them immune to President-Elect Donald Trump’s promise to resume federal executions. CBS’s Ed O’Keefe has more tonight, including the prisoners who did not get clemency.

ED O’KEEFE: He once wrote legislation expanding the federal death penalty.

JOE BIDEN: I am not Mr. Soft-on-Crime. I’m the guy that put these death penalties in this bill.

O’KEEFE: But four years ago, then-candidate Joe Biden campaigned to end it. And as president, he pauses federal executions.

BIDEN: One of the reasons I’m against capital punishment is, you know, we have confirmed there’s at least 195 cases since 1972 that the person who was convicted and about to be put to death was innocent.

O’KEEFE: Tonight, three men remain on death row. Robert Bowers, sentenced last year for killing 11 at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Dylann Roof, who killed nine in the 2015 Charleston church massacre, and Dzhokar Tsarnaev, the Boston Marathon bomber who also killed a police officer. But 37 others will now serve life sentences with no chance of parole. Nine convicted of killing fellow prisoners, others killed prison guards, conducted mass killings, or deadly drug-related crimes. “In good conscience,” Biden said today, “I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.

DONALD TRUMP: I will ask Congress to send a bill to my desk ensuring that anyone who murders a police officer will receive immediately the death penalty.

O’KEEFE: President-Elect Trump campaigned this year promising to restore the death penalty. Today a Trump spokesman called Biden’s decision “abhorrent” and said Trump will restore the rule of law when he takes office next month. 53% of Americans support the death penalty for convicted murderers, down ten points in the last decade. But civil rights groups cheered Biden’s decision.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, III: Our society is better as a result of it. 

O’KEEFE: And Pope Francis, whose Catholic Church opposes the death penalty, openly prayed this month that Biden, who is also Catholic, would commute death sentences. 

Today is a good reminder of how long President Biden has been involved in criminal justice issues because nearly all the men who are on federal death row were there because of the 1994 crime bill he wrote as senator. Now 30 years later he’s sparing their lives. Jericka.

DUNCAN: Very interesting.

NBC NIGHTLY NEWS

12/23/24

6:40 PM

LESTER HOLT: There’s growing controversy after President Biden commuted the sentence of nearly every federal death row prisoner to life without parole. But the historic move is not sitting well with all. 

Praise and anger today as President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row to life without parole. Saying in a statement, “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts…But guided by conscience and my experience as a public defender, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level.” He declined to commute the sentences of three men: the mass shooter at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh where 11 people died, the killer of nine people at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, and the Boston Marathon bomber. 

Can you reflect on the historic nature of this commutation decision by the president?

BRIAN STEVENSON: It’s unprecedented. We’ve never had a U.S. president commute this many people who were awaiting execution.

HOLT: Brian Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, and a leading death penalty opponent.

STEVENSON: The question is not whether people deserve to die for the crimes they’ve committed. The question is whether we deserve to kill. If we have a flawed, biased, unreliable system, we cannot impose this perfect punishment with an imperfect system.

HOLT: Today’s move coming ahead of President-Elect Trump’s plan to resume federal executions, halted under the Biden administration. Trump’s transition team saying, “These are among the worst killers in the world,” calling it an “abhorrent decision by Joe Biden,” and “a slap in the face to the victims, their families, and their loved ones.” Among those whose sentence was commuted: Kaboni Savage, a drug dealer involved in organized crime, convicted of murdering 12 people, four of them children, during a firebombing incident at a house of a federal witness. Steve Mellon is a former Assistant U.S. Attorney who helped prosecute Savage:

STEVE MELLON: We are sacrificing the safety and security and concerns of the American public as well (VIDEO SWIPE) and the family members of those that were adversely affected directly by this, while the president is giving a Christmas present to these 37 out of 40 death row inmates.

HOLT: Also learning his sentence is being commuted today, Billy Allen, sentenced to death at 19 for the murder of an armed security guard in Missouri. He has always maintained his innocence. We spoke to Allen today by telephone from prison.

BILLY ALLEN: Honestly, it shocked me, you know. And I’m like, okay, let me make sure I’m reading this right. When it hit, I was excited and the people I thought about the most was my family, the relief it would give them. 

HOLT: Death penalty opponents hoping tonight some blue state governors may follow the president’s suit, and spare the lives of prisoners on their death rows.