Late night coverage of the Texas plant explosion

[w00t]

Watching the coverage of the plant explosion in Texas, it appears the news channels are not really equipped for breaking news in the middle of the night. MSNBC has the better newsreader on air. Fox has a girl from the DC newsroom who seems to be right out of college. By no means is she bad, but I don't know that I'd rate her as national material.

CNN threw in the towel completely. They are airing a 4:3 standard def simulcast of what I assume is CNN International - two seasoned anchors with British accents. Lower third graphics are not ones I have seen before with a CNN/globe logo.

 

[nomadcowatbk]

Is any "news" channel really equipped to handle breaking news that happens outside of Washington or NYC after regular business hours? The Weather Channel had the best coverage of the Joplin tornado, it took over 12 hours for the other channels to arrive there

 

[Bluenoser]

CNN threw in the towel completely. They are airing a 4:3 standard def simulcast of what I assume is CNN International - two seasoned anchors with British accents. Lower third graphics are not ones I have seen before with a CNN/globe logo.

That's CNN International all right...that's the logo they use in their IDs. May be an Australian there as well- Rosemary Church, who worked at one time at Capital TV in Canberra as their weather presenter, is usually on overnights as well.

 

[mgsports]

Know the Erin Burnett show at 11pm was talking about but that could have been from earlier version of her show if it started at that time the Fire and the local News in KC talked about it.
The Weather Channel/NBC was in Joplin right at that moment because Tornado Hunt crew was near by.

 

[BD Sullivan]

You could go back to 1997 and Diana's fatal car accident. CBS's "coverage" was a total embarrassment, since they had a bare bones staff on a Saturday night of a holiday (Labor Day) weekend. I recall it mostly consisted of crawls at the bottom of the screen.

 

[Joseph_Gallant]

Having stayed up until almost 2 A.M. EDT this morning (April 18th), I believe that until then, the only broadcast-network coverage of the explosion was a segment on ABC's "Nightline" (12:35 A.M. EDT).

The cable news channels used a lot of coverage from Waco or (relatively) nearby Dallas/Fort Worth.

I believe a couple of Dallas/Fort Worth stations and stations in Waco itself were carrying live coverage all night, until their regular morning local news shows began between (depending on the station) 4 and 5:30 A.M. CDT.

 

[AKA]

I tuned into CNN at around 10:30 EDT to find that instead of a replay of the 8:00 show, Anderson Cooper was live, covering the explosion. The network continued its live coverage with Erin Burnett at 11 and Piers Morgan at midnight.

MSNBC and Fox, on the other hand, were late. Fox actually broke in briefly after midnight, but soon went back to its Hannity rerun. MSNBC began their live coverage at around 12:15 and Fox was last, starting their coverage sometime after 12:30.

CNN throwing it over to CNN International (which happened sometime after 1) was a lame move—especially considering the fact that their two competitors kept their coverage going well into the night, but for almost two hours they were the only national network covering the disaster.

 

[HoustonListener]

I watched between midnight at 2 am Texas time (here in Houston)

CNN throwing it over to CNN International was odd -- especially with the admonition that by the morning storms with winds of 70 kilometers per hour might affect the area...but then the weathercaster paused and noted that on the screen the winds were stated "In English" meaning mph, and he had to say that the screen showed that to not confuse Americans...

I felt that MSNBC did the best job, particular with their reporter at the scene, Charles Hadlock from NBC News, who had been covering the DA murder in Kaufman and then drove to West to cover this story. Since he lives in Texas (and used to work at Channel 11 in Houston) he knew more of what he was talking about than many others.

Fox News Channel did have someone who did look to be about 20 years old, but I couldn't hardly watch because of the ticker that kept pulsating BREAKING NEWS running next to a static graphic bar and on top of another ticker running a news crawl. There was too much going on visually there.

BBC World was devoting almost all of its coverage to the explosion as well, and it was interesting that they had phone interviews with the McLennan County sheriff and some other local officials, and also with newspaper reporters from the Waco Herald-Tribune and dallas Morning News. Interesting how the anchor was describing how the injured were moved to the "football pitch" and with a description that West is 20 miles from Waco and "about the same from Dallas" -- no quite. the atmosphere on BBC World was more calm and well, typically British.

TXCN (Texas Cable News) kept up their reruns of Belo station newscasts from 10 PM (from Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio) --if WFAA was running coverage that late at night, TXCN should have just re-transmitted, but I don't know what WFAA was doing.


MSNBC ruled the late night hours in my opinion (post midnight central time)

 

[easttxtv]

I believe a couple of Dallas/Fort Worth stations [...] were carrying live coverage all night, until their regular morning local news shows began between (depending on the station) 4 and 5:30 A.M. CDT.

KDFW/4 stayed up till 2:30a, coming back at 4:30a for their regular Good Day airing; WFAA/8 stayed up all night. I didn't get to look into what KXAS/5 or KTVT/11 did overnight while I was at work. The only time WFAA deviated from their continuing coverage was to ask the meteorologist (they got their morning guy in to work VERY early) every so often about current and changing weather conditions, as a front was moving through the DFW and West areas overnight which brought rain, changing stiff winds, and much cooler temps--all of which could have made things worse for the blast scene, the victims, and those down there trying to help/rescue/investigate.

 

[w00t]

I was watching KXAS/5 online. They ended at 12:30am. I've watched their coverage all along... they have done a good job IMO.

 

[searadiofreak]

If not for Boston, this would be the lead story tonight. However, four innocents in Boston is ALWAYS more important than 30+ deaths in Texas. And poor North Korea, they can't get any attention right now. Welcome to East Coast media dominance. Really kind of sick.

 

[crainbebo]

If not for Boston, this would be the lead story tonight. However, four innocents in Boston is ALWAYS more important than 30+ deaths in Texas. And poor North Korea, they can't get any attention right now. Welcome to East Coast media dominance. Really kind of sick.

Weather Channel - another example. When there's a wind storm or some big weather event in WA, CA, OR, heck even Colorado, it gets very little action, and every time I tune in, they are always showing that darn New York City tower cam!

-crainbebo

 

[JeeperOne]

Is any "news" channel really equipped to handle breaking news that happens outside of Washington or NYC after regular business hours?

The Aurora Theatre Shooting should've been a thundering testimonial of that. The news of it broke just as the late news on the West Coast had just begun

That said though, the Texas Fertilizer Plant Explosion occured during primetime (I know because I was watching Rachel Maddow on MSNBC at the time. She broke the story but nothing else was mentioned of it because very few details were known about it until the next day)

Cheers & 73 ;D

 

[w00t]

Lawrence O'Donell really did lead off with that one night. The same day that the gun legislation failed.

Clearly, he was wrong and we got both guys in no time at all. But I agree that neither of these tragedies should be politicized. One reason why I got all my Boston coverage from WBZ - no talking heads.

 

[BD Sullivan]

If not for Boston, this would be the lead story tonight. However, four innocents in Boston is ALWAYS more important than 30+ deaths in Texas. And poor North Korea, they can't get any attention right now. Welcome to East Coast media dominance. Really kind of sick.

Weather Channel - another example. When there's a wind storm or some big weather event in WA, CA, OR, heck even Colorado, it gets very little action, and every time I tune in, they are always showing that darn New York City tower cam!

-crainbebo

While the perception of East Coast bias is evident in both news and sports coverage, in this case it was legitimate. You had a fluid, all-day situation that essentially shut down one of America's largest cities in order to capture a terrorist who had already tried to kill dozens (if not hundreds of people)--and did kill four. The Texas situation had a greater loss of life, but except for the pending investigation, there really wasn't much else to report.

 

[TheBigA]

When you compare the drama of a terrorist bombing with the explosion at a fertilizer plant, it's an easy choice. Wednesday night, the news channels had no choice but to cover the Texas explosion, but what was the story? TV viewers saw that same wide shot of the nursing home, with occasional excerpts from amateur video of the explosion. But because it's a small town, all emergency officials were focused on dealing with the disaster. Some posters talked about the low overnight staffing at the news channels, but it was obvious that Texas disaster officials were pretty short handed too. The first responders were volunteer firemen, many of whom were killed instantly by the explosion. Meanwhile, you have a terrorist on the loose in one of the biggest cities in the country. Which story is more interesting? I think that's obvious.

 

[arnoldevns]

This has been an instructive week. The bottom line to me is that the networks should rely more on their local affiliates for coverage of events like this. The local stations in Dallas-Fort Worth did a great job covering West. MSNBC, CNN and Fox News could have taken their feeds and done far better than anything they could have offered from New York. It would at least give them time to get their own people in place.

On the Boston coverage, eventually the networks had some grasp of the events on the ground in the search for the suspect. But generally speaking the local Boston stations just OWNED the story! Fox wisely chose to use a significant amount of coverage from WFXT. When they didn't, they got into their usual bloviating and speculation without fact.