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Gallery: Obama Inauguration

"Starting today we must pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America," said President Barack Obama.

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President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, called on his countrymen to begin a new chapter in the US. “Starting today we must pick ourselves up dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America,” he said.

In a deeply religious ceremony, Obama indicated to the world that America is ready to lead with new resolve.

“And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”

He indicated that the country would need to dig deep to face economic and social challenges, and acknowledged the significance of being the first black American President.

“To the nation’s foes and terrorists,” he said, “We will not apologise for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defence, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

The ceremony included prayers, blessings, poetry, cannon salutes and Aretha Franklin.

Watching on were Vice President Biden, former Presidents Bush and Clinton, and Hillary Clinton, the Administration’s new Secretary of State.

In freezing temperatures between 1.5 – 2m people watched on from Washington Mall.

The event was covered live by four Free to Air Australian television networks.

34 Responses

  1. Agree with you alex. Nine did a brilliant job. Everything was great. They were in my opinion the best of the Networks here in Australia. It was smooth and to the point. To host for 12 hours is brilliant. Well done to Today, Nine News and Nine in general. A brilliant job.

  3. I flicked around – but recorded the speech from Ten’s feed as it was sharp, widescreen and uncluttered by graphics and garbage (only a small spinning CBS in the corners as far as I could make out)

  4. If I have one complaint it was that ABC Breakfast (on ABC2) was not broadcasting live to Queensland and non-eastern states. If the commercial networks could organise a live feed nationwide, why couldn’t ABC2?

  5. Channel Nine’s coverage was really quite good. And the speeh he gave was amazing – I didn’t even see him read off of anything, he memorised the whole thing. His daughters looked a bit bored though.

    There were so many stars there:
    Beyonce, MAry J. Blige, Queen Latifah, George Lopez, J. Lo, everyone was there.

    It is something I will never forget!

  6. Good work by the four networks for showing this all live, especially the long hard effort by the Today show team.

    I noticed there were big differences in the picture quality on each channel, ABC and Nine were particularly bad. Ten were the only ones to get an HD feed so that’s who I was watching 🙂

    Tris – STW was just taking the live feed from the eastern states. The Today coverage took over at about 1am (3am EDT).

  7. Ianblair23 ,cnn said that ‘according to the constitution’ at 12pm obama became president regardless of whether the oath had been taken. maybe fox news is right, maybe cnn is right, but is sounds as if fox news was talking light hearted. i didn’t watch foxs coverage so i cant comment on it but i was just going by foxs general news coverage. obviously different people like different networks and the good thing about foxtel is you have about seven different choices(12 included free to air.

  8. Mark, I didn’t spy him on my telecast (admittedly it was 4 in the morning and I was working and viewing sheesh).. which is also why I didn’t specify both Bush blokes. But the story is still correct, just sans Carter.

  9. mac, according to the constitution, you can’t become the president without taking the oath of office. So Obama became officially became the president when the oath was completed. He was due to take the oath at exactly 12pm but they were running few minutes late as you pointed out.

    I just knew as soon as mentioned that I watched the coverage on Fox News that comments would start appearing on the bias of Fox News bias and alike. Like I said above, I have genuinely found Fox News’ coverage of the conventions, campaign, election and now the inauguration to be outstanding. They are far more balanced then people make them out to be and I have seen many democrats appear and given a far go.

    As for whether Obama was officially the president yet or not due to how the oath was taken, it was brought up as merely as hypothetical and they were saying that if it went all the way to the supreme court there would be at least one vote for in favour that the oath was stated corrected, namely the Chief Justice!! It was all in jest I assure you.

  11. The news specials were excellent this morning but one nagging thing i wasn’t happy with, our networks badly covering up logos from the american networks, especially ten with cbs and 7 over msnbc’s but overall great coverage by our aussie media

  12. I flicked between the nine and seven coverage and i must say it was absolutely excellent! bringing the american prespective as well as Australians, well done to the presenters who sat in the cold for so many hours!
    Also well done to Rahni Sadler it was great to see real emotion that i hadn’t seen from a reporter for ages!

  13. I watched Nine’s Today Show coverage and must say I was really impressed – Karl and Robert hosted in that cold weather for twelve hours!! Absolute dedication! Good on them and Nine!

  15. ianblair23, fox news are incorrect as on cnn they said that obama became president at 4am (12pm US) even without saying the oath. the oath was made at about 4:10am. i guess cnn give you the facts while fox news just makes things up for drama.

  17. I was incredibly disappointed by ABC’s (as in the Australian ABC, not American) coverage. I’ve always watched ABC for this kind of thing – they usually have a couple of experts, give the whole picture kind of thing.

    Well they had one commentator. It was the most boring thing imaginable. Because the guy had no one else to talk to or bounce off of he was just droning on and on and on… Now compare that to even channel 9’s coverage and it looks woeful at best.

    I loved seven’s coverage when it came on. The US correspondent (so sorry I forgot her name!) was hilarious when Obama walked below her.

    ‘…and now president obama is walking near me. He’s right down below, flanked by security. I’m now waving to the president. Oh my God! He looked at me. He is waving at me.’

    I thought it was awesome. You get too many cardboard-cutout presenters, bring on the real people I say.

  20. Ianblair23: “on Fox News they said that there might be case that Obama is still not officially the president because he may not have said the oath correctly!!”

    It was the Chief Justice’s screwup, and Obama can quite easily do the oath again in front of the appropriate Justice; in fact he could do so after dinner if needed. Which it won’t be, as nobody in touch with reality is that dumb.

    I just knew the likes of Fox News would desperately go after this little detail. That’s how pathetically partisan they are. And that’s why it kind of concerns me that you say it’s “the channel that I always turn for my news and views on American politics”.

  23. I was up at 3:30 am this morning to watch this historical ceremony. It is interesting to note that apart the ABC, Seven, Nine and Ten, live coverage of the event was also being shown on Sky News, Sky Business, CNN, Fox News, BBC World, A-PAC, Bloomberg and CNBC. For the record I watch it on Fox News, the channel that I always turn for my news and views on American politics.

    I thought the ceremony went flawlessly apart from the administering of the oath. In fact, on Fox News they said that there might be case that Obama is still not officially the president because he may not have said the oath correctly!! But aside from that I that Obama give a good speech, certainly not the best he ever gave, but it still very good. It was also great to see Bush given a decent send off.

    To anybody else who watched it on another channel how would you rate their coverage and what were you thoughts on the ceremony?

  25. Minor nitpick – comes from having watched the broadcasts for the last 5 hours 🙂

    “…former Presidents Bush and Clinton, and…”
    I think that’s supposed to be:
    “…former Presidents Bush, Clinton and Carter, and…”

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