In a matter of minutes Thursday morning, while they were in Herald Square hosting NBC’s coverage of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a balloon crashed in Times Square, injuring an 11-year-old girl and her disabled older sister.
Lauer and Couric didn’t mention the mishap.
[…]
Couric and Lauer spent the last 10 minutes of the coverage reading from the sappy script, although they did note viewers at home were seeing last year’s footage of the M&M’s balloon, which depicts the candies in distress.
“Now, because of today’s windy conditions, these characters are on video, and if we told you they were not in a panic, we’d be full of hot air,” Couric joked.
Sure, you can make an argument why they shouldn’t have mentioned the crash. But the fact that someone was injured in a similar incident in 1997 was enough to make the crash worthy of mention on-air.
If it was possible for NBC’s cable network, MSNBC, to report the accident – before NBC’s own parade coverage ended – then someone should have gotten a word to Lauer and Couric. —Richard Huff —NBC leaves Matt & Katie to twist in wind (NY Daily News)
How does it taste when your credibility melts in your mouth, not in your hands?
No, not at all. Jon Stewart evaluates other news programs nightly on the Daily Show. He covered this one and it was hilarious.
Oops…by “really a crime” I meant “really so terrible”…sorry for the overexagerration.
Why is it always seen that the media not immediately jumping to any death, destruction, or mayhem story is a loss of credibility?
I don’t know what the news is like out on the east coast dennis, but I know around here it’s still impossible to watch. 2 kids killed in a car accident…Will this common household cleaner cause cancer in your children?…Fight fight fight in politics…old woman in rest home knits quilt…Back to the violence ken…
Despite all the violence and crime shows on tv, they’re often *still* less violent and depressing than the evening news. Is it really a crime that the news was broadcasting something fun, and for once didn’t stop to report every single bad thing that happened?
It was somebody in NBC’s entertainment office who made the decision not to tell the anchors about this breaking news event. And that’s because it was an entertainment show, not a news broadcast. But it was an entertainment show that used news personalities.
Since NBC was using its news anchors as talking heads for this entertainment broadcast, it’s not entirely unfair to evaluate it as if it were a news program.