Cleveland Stations Drop the Ball on Facebook Murder Coverage
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The Easter Sunday Facebook murder was a huge story from coast to coast, but no bigger than in Cleveland, where the shooting happened.
But, if you were looking for information on the incident, CNN was a better bet, than the local stations.
One Cleveland TV insider sent along this timeline that might have you shaking your head.
When it came to first reporting the shooting, CNN beat all 4 Cleveland stations.
CNN first reported the news at 4:17 P.M. WOIO broke in for several minutes around 4:30 P.M., before returning to PGA Golf. They went wall-to-wall around 5:45 P.M., before going to CBS Primetime and moving coverage to their sister station.
As for WKYC and WJW-they couldn’t even be bothered to put a crawl up or cut in, waiting until the start of their 6:00 newscasts.
And then, there was WEWS.
Despite the Cleveland Cavaliers having played on Saturday, Channel 5 had preempted its newscast for a “Post Game” to talk about basketball. Their first mention of the shooting was at 6:10 P.M.-prefaced by weekend anchor Mike Brookbank saying “Before we get to our post game show in just minutes,”. After a brief update, WEWS aired the post game show as normal, mainly rehashing Saturday’s game.
That’s right, while CNN was reporting the description of the suspect on the air, WKYC, WEWS, & WJW had not even run a crawl on the bottom of the screen.
Apparently, viewing the Wild-Blues NHL playoff game, the Warriors-Trail Blazers NBA playoff game, and E/I programming & Big Bang Theory distraction free was more important than public safety.
