Andrea Mitchell Talks About Breaking Bieber Coverage
FTVLive showed you the clip of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell cutting off Congresswomen Jane Harmon mid sentence for coverage of Justin Bieber in court.
It was another low for the cable news network that doesn't like to cover news. But, it seems that Mitchell wasn't exactly elated to be covering the Bieber story at all.
She talked to CNN's Brian Stelter and according to Stelter, Mitchell sounded a bit uncomfortable with breaking away for Bieber.
"It was obviously awkward and unplanned," she said of the sudden toss to a Florida courtroom. "All I can say is, so be it. It's the luck of the draw." She called this "a virtue of cable news" — never knowing when one news story will suddenly interrupt another.
In this case, she said, she began her 1 p.m. newscast knowing that the Bieber arraignment would probably take place at some point in her hour.
"We had no idea what time the arraignment would actually hit," she said. "I was trying to get as much news on as I could, both about Syria and the report of the government's privacy panel."
"I got back to the interview with Harman as soon as we could," she said.
Mitchell also pointed out that CNN devoted more time to Bieber coverage than MSNBC — "it is CNN leading the saturation coverage," she said — while "we were on it for minutes."
As bad as CNN's over coverage was on Bieber, CNN boss Jeff Zucker says he was entirely comfortable with it.