As I flip between cable news stations, I’ve decided to start a list of Very Special Snippets From Today’s Michael Jackson Coverage. Please add your own high- (or low-lights), in the comments, if you see or hear anything of note. And now, following CNN’s contributions from my prior post:
FOX NEWS’s Greta Van Susteren: The Staples Center was not prepared for [today’s memorial]. The Ringling Bros. Circus is going to be here, tomorrow. There’ll be elephants arriving here tonight…
UPDATE, 11:45AM: On MSNBC, Entertainment Tonight‘s Billy Bush, talking about the challenges, for reporter-fans, of covering today’s events:
BUSH: You know what? It’s tough for the media. I’m a fan of Michael Jackson’s music. I grew up in the ’80s. This is big for me.
CNN anchor: What was the first album you loved?
BUSH: Thriller really turned me on… To me, as a reporter covering this, it’s very difficult because, you know, I loved Michael Jackson. At the same time, there’s lots of unanswered questions that, you know, we all wish we could have sat down with Michael Jackson in a private room, one-on-one, and found out everything, had him tell us the whole works so that we can, I don’t know, be set free to mourn 150%. Do you know what I mean?
UPDATE, 1:10PM:
FOX NEWS’s SHEP SMITH: I’m guessing the reporters are lined up [outside the Staples Center] like folks in a soup kitchen… It’s sort of been this way since we’ve been able to get satellite trucks out, maybe twenty years now. But it feels like we’ve reached a bit of a crescendo here, we might have jumped the shark quite a while ago but now it feels like, maybe we’re in there swimming with it, you know?
KTTV ANCHOR (outside Staples Center): Yes, it seems we’ve reached an apex…I’ve never seen so many reporters…
SMITH: The trouble with taking things to the highest level they can be taken is, there’s no other level. This is Michael Jackson. What happens when it’s bigger than that, though I can’t think of who that might be….
And, moments later, as Greta Van Susteren reported that there were big blocks of empty seats inside Staples Center:
SHEP SMITH: I wonder if the news media has not run away with this thing in a way the public has not…
VAN SUSTEREN: We’ll see, all the media organizations are here, they have all spent a bloody fortune on this…. we’ll see how much viewers are interested…
UPDATE, 1:34pm: On Fox News (emphasis mine):
GERALDO RIVERA: When I see La Toya, for instance, she was on my talk show in the ’90s and accused her brother of being a pervert. To see her at the funeral — Again, I am fighting my own instincts to be a newsman..I want to be a consumer of our own pop cultural history and the passing of an icon, but it is difficult when hypocrisy rears its ugly head….
UPDATE, 3:11pm: The AP Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.
