In an interview with Diane Sawyer airing tonight, President Obama laughed off Jan Brewer’s claims that he with aggressive with her, joking that he’s “usually accused of not being intense enough” and pointing out that it’s always good for a Republican to tell people they fought with him. However, there was one accusation that he didn’t seem ready to laugh down and that was Newt Gingrich’s “food stamp president” insult.

As the nation’s news networks focus on the extraordinary battle on Capitol Hill over the debt ceiling and the economy, ABC has dispatched David Muir to Africa, where he’s become the first network reporter inside Somalia, a country devastated by famine. “I can’t stop thinking about the mother who, after walking that journey from Somalia to Kenya, told me she and her children had not eaten in five days,” Muir told Mediaite from Mogadishu, where he’ll report for tonight’s ABC World News.

A report by chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross on tonight’s ABC World News suggests the Department of Homeland Security has become concerned of potential attacks by insiders at American utility plants–chemical facilities, oil refineries and even nuclear plants. The threat presents al Qaeda with what Ross describes as its best opportunity for a massive attack on U.S. to mark the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. “The only way you can actually kill the large scale number of Americans that [bin Laden] literally was calculating was through the use of this critical infrastructure,” former DHS chief of staff Chad Sweet tells ABC News.

On the heels of ABC’s huge audience–nearly 15 million viewers–for Diane Sawyer‘s exclusive interview with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard comes word the interview, which was previewed on Sawyer’s ABC World News, boosted ABC’s evening newscast into a first place finish ahead of NBC Nightly News. On Thursday night, World News beat Nightly by 106,000 total viewers (7.656 million vs. 7.550 million), and helped drive World News to its best weekly performance in six weeks.

In an investigation first aired tonight on ABC World News–and to be continued on Nightline–ABC News chief investigative correspondent Brian Ross talks to a former patient who sought help from a Christian counseling clinic owned by Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann and her husband, Marcus. The patient tells ABC News he was advised prayer could help free him of homosexual urges and that he could become “re-oriented.”

“[One counselor's] path for my therapy would be to read the Bible, pray to God that I would no longer be gay,” said Andrew Ramirez, who was 17-years-old at the time he sought help from Bachmann & Associates in suburban Minneapolis in 2004. “And God would forgive me if I were straight.”

Comedian Harry Shearer, who has a fetish of some kind for watching news anchors and reporters as they prepare to go on camera, has posted a clip of ABC World News anchor Diane Sawyer as she prepped to anchor World News from tornado-devastated Joplin, MO. The eight-minute video shows Sawyer standing amid the ruins of a neighborhood–it’s cold, with rain and lightning, Sawyer and her crew sheltered by a small tent as soaked and exhausted ABC News folk set shots, lights, and try to communicate with producers in New York as the network prepares to tell the country a massive, emotional story.

MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski appeared on ABC World News Tuesday in a story about women fighting for equal pay, telling ABC’s Claire Shipman “I got a sense of what all the guys where making on the set, and I looked around one morning and I realized I was the lowest paid on the set and in one case by far.”

It seems fairly certain that very soon, CBS News will come to the end of the Katie Couric era. For many, that means an entertaining round of media speculation about who will inherit the anchor chair at the CBS Evening News.

Much of the speculation has focused on Scott Pelley, the CBS lifer who’s a correspondent at 60 Minutes. Pelley’s a nice guy, a good reporter and would surely do a fine job as an evening news anchor.

Here’s a factoid you don’t want to see if you work at CBS News: your flagship newscast, the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric hit the lowest ratings in nearly two decades–actually, the lowest on record, since Nielsen figures for the program only go back to 1992. Hence the widespread belief in media circles that Couric, whose CBS contract expires in June, will not be continuing in her evening news role.

For the first quarter of 2011, in the key demo of adults 25-54, the CBS Evening News averaged 1.98 million viewers, compared to ABC World News‘ 2.43 million and NBC Nightly News‘ 2.94 million.

In the Japanese port city of Sendai, disaster survivors were sitting in a circle of chairs amid the rubble on Monday, when ABC’s Diane Sawyer walked up with her crew, a translator, and a friendly greeting of konnichi wa. The ABC World News anchor, who’d just flown over the devastated city in a helicopter and visited a school turned into a shelter, is somehow both bigger than life and down to Earth. As she spoke to the group, a man offered Sawyer something to eat. In a country where millions have no food or water, Sawyer refused. The man insisted. Later, on Good Morning America, Sawyer shared the moment and described to viewers the “incredible kindness, and incredible strength” of the people she’d met.

ABC News president Ben Sherwood has named David Muir the sole anchor of the weekend editions of ABC World News.

Muir had been anchoring the Saturday broadcasts, with Dan Harris serving as anchor of World News Sunday. Harris was named co-anchor for GMA Weekend last fall and continued to anchor the Sunday program until a permanent replacement was named.

The uprising in Egypt forced an airlift of American news anchors to Cairo, but NBC’s Brian Williams outperformed his counterparts in terms of ratings, hitting a six-year high for his NBC Nightly News for the week ending February 5. Nightly averaged more than 11.2 million viewers, the newscast’s best showing since January 2005.

NBC execs point out that the ratings for Nightly were bigger than the viewership of some primetime shows, including ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy (11.182 million viewers) and The Bachelor (9.660 million).

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is coming clean about his regrets, telling ABC World News‘ Diane Sawyerthat he should have stepped down in 2004 after photos of abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were released to the public.

A few things you need to know about ABC’s Diane Sawyer: if New York gets slammed by a sixth consecutive winter storm, she’s not reporting the story from her warm, toasty studio. That’s why she was reporting ABC’s World News tonight from snow covered Central Park. The second thing is this: nothing throws her. Not even a guy on cross country skis who cruises right into the middle of her broadcast.

As the new Congress settles in, ABC World News‘ Diane Sawyer spoke with eight new representatives and two senators-elect about what they have planned. Among the topics discussed: raising the national debt limit as The Continuing Resolution and the vote to raise the debt ceiling loom over Washington and creating a new image of Tea Partiers.

NBC’s Nightly News will finish 2010 as the top performer in the evening news race, according to 4Q Nielsen ratings released today.

The Brian Williams-led newscast dominated the key ratings metric of adults 25-54, beating ABC’s World News by 424,000 viewers and the CBS Evening News by 756,000.

It would seem that Rush Limbaugh’s been watching a lot of ABC recently and hasn’t liked what he’s been seeing. No, it’s not that he’s felt the second season of Modern Family’s been subpar. Rather he caught two interviews the ABC News team did with members of the Obama Administration and didn’t like what either had to say. After the jump, some of Limbaugh’s harsh words for Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano.

Brian Williams, fresh off his tour de force boneless arms routine on TODAY, now has something to be thankful for this week: his Nightly News has opened a big lead over second-placed ABC World News with Diane Sawyer:

When Katie Couric moved to CBS in 2006, the decision was subject to endless media fanfare and criticism. Diane Sawyer‘s move to ABC, replacing Charlie Gibson as anchor of World News, however, was much quieter. Washington Post columnist Howard Kurtz takes a look at Sawyer’s work since she left Good Morning America, and how she has changed World News.

ABC News had an exclusive interview with Pres. Barack Obama, ahead of his first State of the Union speech Wednesday.

It was a big interview for Diane Sawyer – but it was jarring and a little odd to see Pres. Obama greet her with a kiss.

Which reporter logged the most minutes of air time during from 2000-2009? The honor goes to Andrea Mitchell of NBC, according to the invaluable resource that is Andrew Tyndall‘s TyndallReport.com. Here’s a full breakdown.

Diane Sawyer has been the anchor of ABC’s World News for just over one week, and the first week ratings are in.

It’s obviously very early, but here’s a breakdown of the good, the bad and what the future may hold.

Millions of Americans tuned in as Diane Sawyer made her full-time debut behind the anchor desk Monday night for ABC World News, and shared an exclusive sit-down interview with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But that voice you heard in English calling Sawyer a “respectable lady?” That was Jewish-Iranian stand-up comedian, New York City’s Dan Ahdoot.

I’ve said this before, but Diane Sawyer is smooth. Her voice is smooth. Her hair is smooth. Her segues are smooth. She’s even smoother than a smoothie, because those often have seeds, and seeds would never dare sully the smoothness that is Diane Sawyer.

New York Times TV Critic Alessandra Stanley‘s takeaway from the move is that Diane Sawyer taking over for Charlie Gibson means she, Katie Couric and Brian Williams are now “evenly matched in looks and take-charge personality.” Also, from earlier in the column: “Ms. Sawyer appears to have the same high-octane drive and ambition as Brian Williams and Katie Couric.” But wait – looks?!