[More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.]
None of the Big Three networks' evening newscasts on 19 December 2016, nor ABC and NBC's morning shows the following day, covered how President Obama set a one-day record for pardons and commutations on Monday. The 20 December 2016 edition of ABC's Good Morning America apparently thought Merriam-Webster's 2016 'Word of the Year' more important, as it devoted 45 seconds of air time to that story. The same morning, NBC's Today also didn't cover the pardons record, but set aside a minute and 23 seconds to a help line for the board game Monopoly in the United Kingdom.
Anchor Norah O'Donnell gave the only Big Three coverage of President Obama's record on the 20 December 2016 edition of CBS This Morning. O'Donnell gave a 25-second news brief on the presidential pardons and commutations:
NORAH O'DONNELL: USA Today reports that President Obama set a presidential clemency record. The President pardoned 78 people yesterday, and commuted the sentences of another 153 federal inmates. That is the most ever granted by a president in one day. The President has ordered 1,176 commutations in all — mostly, for low-level drug offenders. More than half of those prisoners have been freed in the past year.