MSNBC Cuts Away from Zimmermam Attorney Resignation

Unbelievably, MSNBC cut away from George Zimmerman's attorneys, as they were explaining to a press conference why they were resigning from the case.  Back to Dylan Ratigan and his planned concluding segment.  Fortunately, CNN provided continuing coverage (I didn't check about Fox).

MSNBC is thus continuing its amateuristic approach to news programming.   When news of the Mumbai massacre broke on the Thanksgiving weekend several years ago, MSNBC offered canned documentaries about prison life.  They still switch to prison coverage at 10pm every Friday - as if no real news happens after that time.

Two bright spots are the four new hours of sharp, intelligent commentary by Chris Hayes and Melissa Harris Perry every Saturday and Sunday.  But as today's poor performance in covering a live press conference about one of the most important stories of the year shows, MSNBC still has a ways a to go.

MSNBC Runs Canned "Doc Bloc" As Mumbai Burns

I was just looking for a few minutes at MSNBC. You know what they were reporting? Nothing, really. From 6-8PM, and who knows how much longer today, MSNBC had on its canned "Caught on Camera," with footage of events that happened years ago.

Over on CNN, Wolf Blizter in the Situation Room was doing a superb job of reporting on the Mumbai Massacre, with interviews of survivors, discussion of what this means for world security with former Secretary of Defense William Cohen and other terrorism experts, and detailed information on the heart-rending story of Brooklyn Rabbi Gabriel Holzberg and his wife, murdered along with three other Jewish people at the Chabad Lubavitch. His two-year old had escaped with their brave housekeeper. Canadian Jonathan Ehrlich, who managed to escape from another one of the terrorist targets, one of the attacked hotels, also gave a poignant interview on CNN.

Fox News did an ok job of reporting, as well, on the still ongoing September 11th for India - though I did spot a rerun of O'Reilly on Fox tonight.

But what can MSNBC have been thinking? They have wasted our time, and driven away viewers interested in real news, for years with their "doc-blocs". They had the good sense in the recently concluded coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign to greatly expand their political coverage. But who at programming was asleep at the switch at MSNBC today?

MSNBC will never maintain a leading position as a cable news source, or even be taken seriously, if they put "Caught on Camera" or any doc-bloc programming ahead of covering ongoing world catastrophes.

Added December 1, 2008: Check out and join, if you like, the Facebook group I just created: Stop the Doc Bloc on MSNBC. Wield the power of new new media to change television!

See also similar sentiments by Lionel on Air America and David Zurawik at the Baltimore Sun.

Added December 29, 2009: See also Media Coverage and Government Response to Terrorism in the Christmas Skies and MSNBC criticized on coverage

Twitter Provides a Valuable Window onto Mumbai Massacre

Amidst all the shock and horror on this Thanksgiving, about the massacre and ongoing crisis in Mumbai, there was this, from John Ribeiro, and something similar on many news services -

Micro-blogging site Twitter is also being used to pass on information, or to just express feelings about the terrorist attack, and sometimes about the inadequate coverage of the crises by some Indian TV channels...

Just as students sent email from the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, letting the world and the mass media know what was happening, so Twitter and Facebook are providing some windows into what has been happening in Mumbai the past two days.

The new social media can't stop these atrocities, but they can stand as unique witness to the individual, human dimensions of what we see on television. These are some of the Tweets I noticed, just seconds apart, when I went back to Twitter a few hours after I first wrote this blog: "Indian officials are big on bulllshit, weak on results" ... "What guns are our commandos using???" ... "100 trapped at Trident" ... "this whole thing stinks, our govt have left us as sitting ducks, throw UPA out" ... "Japan had terrorist strike in past, China is blessed to have neighbors like us, we are not that fortunate". Twitter advised that 216 new Tweets on this subject had come in the 30 seconds it took me to capture the above Tweets. Of course, there is no guarantee that those microblogs all came from Mumbai – though, Twitter would have a record of the IP addresses.

But, no system is perfect. As Stephanie Busari pointed out on CNN.com/asia, "Someone tweets a news headline, their friends see it and retweet, prompting an endless circle of recycled information" on Twitter. And social media such as Twitter could have been used by the terrorists in planning and coordination of their attacks (a US Army Report in October expressed concern about this possible use of Twitter).

But in a world in which we struggle to make sense of escalating atrocities, even an imperfect additional window is helpful.