I’m watching CNN’s coverage of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis; they are incredibly fixated on the school bus that was on the bridge. Despite the visual evidence, despite the eyewitnesses, despite all the evidence that shows that the kids are off the bus… they still keep bringing it up, constantly, trying to find any angle to make the story just a little bit more horrifying. SCHOOL BUS! SCHOOL BUS! SCHOOL BUS!
As if it isn’t quite terrible enough that this disaster happened, they just want to ramp the volume up a bit more to tabloidize the whole thing.
And Wolf Blitzer is quite deliberately using — and emphasizing — the word PLUNGE over and over, with great dramatic flourish.
I’m struck by the anchors’ inability to see what is right in front of their eyes on the live footage, even to the extent that they contradict what is seen on-screen.
Anyone looking at the footage can see that the bridge was being resurfaced; several of the lanes are closed with barrels and have no asphalt… and yet, the CNN anchors keep asking if lanes were closed or if there was some kind of work happening on it.
PLUNGE! SCHOOL BUS!
At one point Paula Zahn was saying that the fire was still raging, “as you can see in these pictures”… but the pictures weren’t live, they were recaps of earlier footage.
PLUNGED! He just said it AGAIN.
Wolf asks someone on the phone if they can see boats on the river. This despite the fact that we can see boats on the river in the live pictures.
I can only assume that the CNN anchors either don’t believe their eyes or they don’t actually have monitors in the studio.
PLUNGING!
