Fox & CNN Covering Flt. 253 Terror Scare — MSNBC Stays With Doc

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by Rachel Sklar | 7:41 pm, December 25th, 2009

» 15 comments

Delta Plane Detroit Terror Tonight, the White House is calling an attempt to detonate a bomb aboard Northwest Flight 253 an attempted terror attack, by a man who himself claims to have been sent by al Qaeda — and MSNBC is showing “Disappearance at the Dairy Queen.” Fox and CNN are on the story with updated information and ongoing.

On CNN, Ed Henry is reporting from Hawaii, where President Obama’s vacation was just seriously interrupted; Fox has a counterterrorist expert on the phone talking about the incident and the potential ramifications. On MSNBC, Christina Brown broke in for about a minute with a quick report, before taking the audience back to their program.

There are so many questions here — did the suspect, 23 year old Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab work alone, or does he have teammates? And were they on his flight, or on other flights? Or are there flights scheduled to go out tomorrow that may yet have terrorists on board? How did Abdulmutallab get the bomb on board — or was it all there?

Now, Fox is interviewing a passenger, who was sitting in front of Abdulmutallab, who says that the security was pretty tight. MSNBC has some sort of jailhouse interview with bad sound. On CNN, Ali Velshi is talking to Rep. Peter King (NY), the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee and just switched to Peter Bergen, their terrorism expert. According Bergen, Abdulmutallab told authorities that he procured the materials used for the potential explosive device in Yemen. Yesterday, an airstrike by Yemeni forces targeting an al Qaeda hub killed 30; reports that radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi, linked to Ft. Hood shooter, army psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, was not among them. According to Bergen, Yemen is becoming a major hotbed for terrorist activity. He also reminded Velshi that so-called “shoe bomber” Richard Reed attempted his mid-air bomb attack around this time of year.

Yeah, it’s Christmas. THAT’S THE POINT. If you’re going to call yourself a news network, then cover the news.

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apparently

Unless a news event happens when MSNBC happens to be live, they don’t bother getting people
into the studio. This isn’t the first time they blow right by serious news and leave on their dreadful
documentaries.
http://whatmattsaid.blogspot.com Matt Cherette

MSNBC consistently has the worst live coverage of breaking news, especially if said news breaks at night, on a weekend or on a holiday. It’ ridiculous.
personwhomakescomments

Shame on MSNBC – they’ve missed some of the BIGGEST stories of the past decade, including the Tsunami, Mumbai Terror attacks, North Korean missle launch…and now this.
ImNotBlue

I was equally disappointed while watching this morning (aside from Morning Joe), MSNBC seemed completely on tape. FNC, on the other hand, was reporting about the US soldier taken hostage by the Taliban. I’m not sure if CNN reported on it (the room I was in only had FNC, MSNBC, CNBC -business docs-, and FBN -Imus, call in programs… not sure if they were live or on tape-)… but they did report it on their website:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/12/25/taliban.us.soldier/
ImNotBlue

UPDATE: Sorry, I was copying that from ICN… same comment, similar thread.

Anyway, Spud confirmed that CNN was covering the story this morning as well.
wiseguy

MSNBC is such a cheerleader for the Obama government that it is influencing their real news coverage. They are not reporting this incident thoroughly because it the more they air it it would show the current government weak on terrorism and vulnerable with a close call like this. This is exactly what the right has been telling people and any news coverage would benefit the right which is definitely something MSNBC does not want to do.
Fidoohki

It is very rare to see something inexcusable happen. You can usually at least gleam another person’s thought processes that took them to the decision that you disagree with. What MSNBC did was inexcusable. People
need to be fired over this.
Ted

wiseguy – your post is absurd.

MSNBC blew it and Rachel is correct, a news network needs to cover the news, period. Just unbelievable.
felixw

MSNBC ignoring terrorism? This is nothing new. Check out the Olbermann Watch website at http://www.olbermannwatch.com where monthly tabulations are published, counting how many times Keith Olbermann mentions certain topics. He routinely talks more about Dick Cheney or Carrie Prejean than about terrorism.

MSNBC ignores it because the network perceives terrorism as a “Republican issue.” Maybe they’re right about something finally.
ImNotBlue

Ted says:
December 26, 2009 at 9:14 am

I gotta side with Ted on this one (and then go take a shower). MSNBC didn’t like talking about terrorist plots that were foiled prior to execution under the Bush Admin, because it made them look competent. The foiled NJ terrorist plot is a good example of this… KO went on the air on mocked the whole arrest as virtually meaningless.

However, a big story like this is different. First, it shows that the Obama Administration is “doing something right,” because the attack was foiled… but more importantly, because it’s a big story. Remember, MSNBC (just like all the other networks) wants eyeballs… content is secondary. So a big story like this, which guarantees a larger than normal audience is something MSNBC, as well as everyone else, would want no matter the issue at hand.

As Ted said, MSNBC blew it… they don’t have good weekend coverage, and virtually no holiday coverage. They should have been on this story… at least for a little while. The fact that they didn’t even go to a local affiliate for programming shows that when the leave for the holiday, they take all the decision makers and producers along with them. There should have been someone who could have made that decision, and change sources… but there wasn’t. Shame on MSNBC.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Paul-Levinson/10907069 Paul Levinson

I agree completely. Indeed, I’ve been urging since MSNBC’s non-coverage of the Mumbai massacre last year that it should stop the Doc Bloc. I even formed a Facebook group to bring this abdication of MSNBC’s responsibility to more public attention – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=49254779160

I’ve also written about this problem in my New New Media book – http://newnewmediabook.com
wiseguy

First, it shows that the Obama Administration is “doing something right,” because the attack was foiled…
————————-

Sorry Blue I have to disagree here. The attack was not foiled. The terrorist just messed up and a quick acting passenger possibly saved a bunch of lives in the air and on the ground. It would have been foiled if the guy had not gotten on the plane. The fact he did shows there are problems. and security had to be lax or worse if there was inside people helping this guy out.

If you remember there was a plot that was foiled several years ago and that involved mulitiple airliners and liquid explosives. None of these people got on planes and that qualifies as being foiled.
Fidoohki

Either way MSNBC is a New channel. Unless they changed their format to ‘liberal pundit’ and didn’t
tell anyone, they should have covered this.

On another note, the fact that Ted and ImNotBlue are agreeing on something is.. well it’s either great
or a sign of the Apocylipse. :)
ImNotBlue

wiseguy says:
December 27, 2009 at 3:46 am

Sorry Blue I have to disagree here. The attack was not foiled.

Oh, I agree with that… but you’re not disagreeing with me, you’re disagreeing with them. That’s how THEY’LL present it (and now that time has passed, we see that is how they’re presenting it)… they must have done it right because it didn’t work. Why or how it didn’t work is irrelevant (to them).

The plot wasn’t foiled… the passegners got lucky and did the right thing when they needed to. But don’t expect MSNBC to portray this as anything other than a success for Obama.

Fidoohki says:
December 27, 2009 at 4:12 pm

On another note, the fact that Ted and ImNotBlue are agreeing on something is.. well it’s either great
or a sign of the Apocalypse. :)

Let me tell you… they don’t make water hot enough to scrub off the dirtiness associated with having had agreed with Ted.

Let’s never speak of this again.
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