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CNN’s John King on Boston bombing news coverage: “We made a mistake”

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 16:54:00 +0000

Media reporters and comedy networks have been laughing at CNN's continuously sloppy news coverage of the Boston bombings, which began on Wednesday when the overeager network erroneously reported the arrest of a "dark-skinned male."

On Tuesday, CNN chief national correspondent John King -- a Boston native -- addressed the network's blunder, telling D.C. radio station WTOP, "The one thing you have to do is look straight in the camera and say, 'We were wrong.'"

"It's my city, too, so it's sort of a double kick in the head to me," King said. "But, the best way to deal with it is to say 'We made a mistake. Here's how we made a mistake.' And then move on."

He explained that he relied on two sources "who have been reputable in the past who simply had bad information."

Biggest myths from the Boston Marathon bombing

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:07:00 +0000

The still-emerging facts of the Boston Marathon bombing case are harrowing enough, but that didn't stop conspiracy theorists, detective-wannabes on the Internet and too-quick-to-the-draw cable news outlets from circulating paranoid, intentionally misleading and otherwise inaccurate reports to feed a frenzied news cycle hungry for information -- accuracy be damned.

From Glenn Beck to John King, a roundup of the very worst coverage on the tragedy in Boston:

Alex Jones and the "false flag" conspiracy

As Salon's Alex Seitz-Wald previously reported, Alex Jones and others on the conservative fringe wasted no time in launching paranoid theories pinning the Boston tragedy to an elaborate government plot:

Aaron Brown on CNN’s bad day: John King will “have the hardest time sleeping tonight”

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 22:31:00 +0000

After CNN was forced to walk back John King's reporting that an arrest had been made in connection to the Boston Marathon bombing, Aaron Brown (an anchor at CNN until 2005, including on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001) was sympathetic.

"No one who does this in a breaking news environment has not had this happen. You feel that you've let down the organization and the audience. It is a very difficult moment."

Brown, who is now a professor at Arizona State University, told Salon that his students had asked about the King reporting throughout the day. "I told them it never would have happened this badly on my watch," he joked, before turning serious. "The role of the anchor is to say: This is true. And these things are very chaotic. [CNN should have indicated] 'What we can say for sure is that the case moved significantly today." Brown suggested that King and NBC News' Pete Williams were using sources from entirely different spheres, with Williams operating with federal sources in Washington, while "my guess is that [King] was getting stuff from local or law enforcement or courthouse people; his sources were state people."

CNN’s Boston embarrassment: How a “scoop” turns sour

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:54:00 +0000

At 12:04 p.m., CNN's Breaking News Twitter broadcast that a "suspect" in the bombing of the Boston Marathon had been "ID'd."

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This scoop was credited to CNN reporter John King, who, as of this writing, is not on air. Less than an hour later, CNN declared there had been an arrest.

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Other news outlets chased CNN, with the Associated Press and Fox News reporting a similar story shortly after 1 p.m. in each case.

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But by 1:43, CNN had cited the Department of Justice and Boston Police Department in their claim that no arrest was made.

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CNN's tweets about the events in Boston today link to a liveblog whose URL ends "source-arrest-made-in-boston-bombing/." King's reporting for CNN, preserved in the liveblog, indicates that the police "identified a suspect based on an analysis of video from a Lord & Taylor department store near the site of the second blast, and that video from a Boston TV station also helped."

Hack List No. 6: CNN

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 10:00:00 +0000

This year, my annual list of the worst of political media highlights not just individuals, but the institutions that enable those individuals. The 2012 Hack List will be counting down the 10 media outlets that are hurting America over the next two days -- stay tuned! (Previous Hack List entries here, here and here.)

Maybe we beat up on poor CNN too often. I have previously bemoaned CNN's inability to get breaking news right, offered advice on how to save the network and offered constructive criticism of their decision to hire Jeff Zucker. CNN was also well represented in 2011's Hack List, with Wolf Blitzer, Piers Morgan, Erick Erickson and Erin Burnett all making appearances.

Election 2012: Can someone call it a night?

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The presidential election got called for Barack Obama at 11:15 P.M. EST, which is a whole lot earlier than many of us would have dared hope — and it turned into another endless election night in front of our televisions anyway. If you’ve been watching since the first polls closed way back at 6:30 P.M. it already felt like forever when Obama was declared the winner. Then you had to wait for a whole other forever — an hour and 45 minutes — until Romney finally conceded. That amounts to five hours of Chuck Todd and John King fondling their outsize touchscreens and “magic walls," plus another hour of Karl Rove fondling — or was it manhandling? — Fox News.

Last presidential election, CNN got mercilessly ribbed for projecting “holograms” of its staff into its studio. This year the network promised a “virtual Senate,” an effect that all but had its staffers walking around in one of those Taiwanese viral videos. But the “virtual Senate” barely appeared. CNN and the other networks went surprisingly low-tech, sticking mostly with the “Minority Report” walls required on election night. The nets even eschewed the standard social media bells and whistles: Where were the hastily assembled tweets scrolling chaotically underneath every screen? Turns out having to project actual data at the bottom of a set gets @Foxnewsdrools booted from MSNBC’s scroll.

John King marries Election Map

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 19:55:00 +0000

CNN national correspondent John King married Electoral Map, his longtime CNN colleague, in a star-studded ceremony on Martha’s Vineyard last weekend. The most anticipated wedding of the year was held at the home of former presidential advisor David Gergen and was attended by a host of political and media luminaries that included former President Bill Clinton, Tom Brokaw and CNN founder Ted Turner.

“I’m happier now than at any point in my life,” said Mr. King after the ceremony. “Except maybe the 1994 midterm election or the Florida recount or the day I discovered that white working-class, non-college-educated voters in Kent County, Michigan, were moving toward Reagan in 1984.” President Clinton gave the marriage his blessing. “I know Electoral Map better than anyone,” said the former president. “She and John will make a wonderful couple.”