Winners and Losers of Boston Bombing Coverage
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Just about everyone would agree that the Boston Marathon Bombing and the coverage that followed was not exactly TV News's finest moment.
A number of bad reports, wrong information and just plain not very good reporting, gave TV news a bit of a shiner.
But there was some good to be had out of Boston.
FTVLive breaks down the winners and losers for last week's coverage:
Winner- Pete Williams from NBC , comes out as a big winner even though he did his reporting from Washington, DC. Williams was the one who most often had the correct information and never seemed to hype the story that needed no hyping.
Loser- John King from CNN. King was first to break the news that an arrest was made in the bombing. The problem was it wasn't true. It was an embarrassing moment from which may take CNN years to recover from .
Winner - Anderson Cooper, CNN. CNN's coverage was awful on the bombing. But, you have to give Anderson Cooper credit, he tried. Cooper who normally tries to put himself in the middle of the story, was calm and cool and tried to reign the Correspondents. Cooper did his best to try and save CNN, unfortunately he wasn't able to.
Loser- MSNBC. The network that has no Journalist working in Prime Time was stuck with people like Chris Matthews and Al Sharpton trying to cover a story that neither were even closely experienced to handle. It showed in their awful ratings.
Winner- WHDH NBC Boston. It's normal for WHDH to hype stories way beyond what is necessary, but again, this was a story that needed no hype. WHDH was solid in their reporting throughout the week. They had a few stumbles, but all in all they did well.
Loser- Terrell Brown CBS. He didn't have a lot to do during the bombing story, but when he got his chance, he froze up like a popsicle.
Winner - Social Media. Time and time again Social Media was the place to break the news first and with residents posting pictures and video it seemed like someone on Twitter was always closer to the scene than any reporter.
Loser- Jeff Zucker CNN. With has bad as everyone did, you would have thought that new CNN boss Jeff Zucker would have used this moment to step up and make some much needed talent changes at CNN. After CNN's screw ups with bad information, you would have liked to seen Zucker man up and apologize for all the mistakes. Instead he praised the staff for their work.
Winner- Ann Curry NBC. She only filed one report and it really wasn't that interesting. But it was her first time live on NBC's air in 9 months.
Loser - NECN. The boston area cable channel had a chance for their moment in the sun, when Brian Williams decided that NBC was going to "dip in" on their coverage. The S-Bomb was thrown down and NBC never went back to them again.
