Inquiring scribes want to know: Early this morning, at 1 AM, we flipped over to CNN. We wondered what topic Anderson Cooper was going to deal with first.
Normally, Cooper’s program re-airs at 1 AM. But this morning, good lord! There was Erin Burnett! And the chyron said she was on the air LIVE, dealing with BREAKING NEWS.
Had war broken out in some distant port? Was A-Rod back on the human growth hormone again? Actually no, it was worse than that!
We’ll let Erin and her sidekick, Martin Savidge, explain what news was BREAKING:
BURNETT (1/15/13): I'm Erin Burnett, and for the 3,100 passengers and more than 1,000 crew members who've been leaving the crippled cruise ship just behind me, there were two songs of the night: Sweet Home Alabama and the sweet music of a ship's whistle.Exciting! That disabled Carnival Triumph cruise ship had finally limped into port! Tugboats had towed the disabled ship back to Mobile, Alabama. Burnett and Savidge would spend the next hour gathering all the BREAKING NEWS about top issues like this:
SAVIDGE: Well—
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Listen to that horn, Martin! Look how happy they are to hear that! Port-of-call horn, means that they're about to dock!
SAVIDGE: You know, that's a sound that many family members are waiting for.
BURNETT: Very joyful noise tonight as the Carnival Triumph came into port.
BURNETT: You know, we have asked this question of a lot of people. Because people said, you know, with all of a sudden not having a cell phone, not only did you appreciate people more, you were forced to interact with people more.Basically, Burnett and Savidge spent the hour asking people what it’s like on a big cruise ship when the toilets don’t work. Occasionally, Burnett would reassure us like this:
BETHANY FASNACHT, TRIUMPH PASSENGER: Right.
BURNETT: How did you spend your time?
BURNETT: Still to come, our “Breaking News” coverage of the Carnival cruise crisis continues. When we return, we're going to talk to some more of the thousands of passengers disembarking the crippled ship, many of whom are still on that ship behind us.That was her way of reminding us that this was indeed BREAKING NEWS.
This morning, Joe Scarborough mocked the way CNN ran with this topic all day yesterday. But Scarborough only had half the story.
They also flew Burnett and Savidge down to Mobile! That’s where the NEWS was BREAKING, LIVE, in the wee hours last night.
Pitiful isn't it. I don't know how anybody can watch those awful programs.
ReplyDeleteThis kind of information is rare in the internet. Very helpful post. I have been looking for it about a week.
ReplyDeleteCNNNNNNNNNNNNNNo.
ReplyDeleteA good question would have been: Why did the taxpayer foot the bill to drag it all the way across the GOM when it was only 150 miles from Veracruz? They don't ask those kind of questions anymore do they?
ReplyDeleteWho told you taxpayers footed the bill?
DeleteThe ship is privately owned and registered officially in the Bahamas, and the owners get to decide what port can accommodate it and unload its passengers. I assume they went to Mobile as the nearest port that could take such a big boat and also be convenient for buses and planes to take passengers home.
The Coasties went after it. They always pick up the bill for stranded mariners. It's an international treaty or something.
DeleteI turned that on last night, too, stared at it open-mouthed for a while before turning it off again. The problem isn't the subject matter, which is modestly interesting (and in fact apparently got big ratings for CNN), but the utter incompetent inanity of the insufferable Erin Burnett. Savidge can be OK when he's working with a better partner, but can't obviously carry the day against the flood of idiocy out of Burnett's mouth.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about what she says, but how she looks when she says it.
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ReplyDelete