360 Discovers Nashville, Investigating The Minerals Management Service, The Terror Gap, & Bill Maher Interview

Hi everyone. Yep, bullet points again:

• So, 360 has finally decided to give some airtime to Nashville's catastrophic flooding. Earlier today, Anderson Cooper tweeted about the subject and admitted that they hadn't given the situation proper notice. He reiterated that point again on air. Several times. He is very sorry, people. Kinda makes it almost impossible to be mad at him, doesn't it? Like kicking a puppy.

• BUT! The presence of the big "breaking news" graphic for a story that they've pretty much been ignoring for days was irony overload. Um, yeah guys, maybe it's "breaking" to you, but not so much Nashville. It's like they're trying to make me mock them.

• In all sincerity, the admittance of errors and then an attempt to correct them is what I want from my media. They're just people too. They screw up. Kudos to 360 for trying to make it right.
  

• I know a little of how Nashville must be feeling in terms of being abandoned by the national media. In July 2006, two severe thunderstorms hit St. Louis back-to-back, causing a massive blackout. During a severe heat wave. At the time, the national media was mostly preoccupied with the Israel/Hezbollah war. Ultimately, the heat wave lifted and power was restored, but there were a couple of days where I remember thinking, "this could go pretty bad, and if it does, we are on our own." I hit my media breaking point when I heard that HLN had aired a car chase for an hour. When you're mad at the entire media, it's hard to know where to direct your ire, so I emailed a big power player in the biz: a college kid. Yep, I'm the "incensed" Missouri resident. A day or so after that post went up, NBC Nightly made the St. Louis storms their top story. Coincidence? Um, actually probably yes. But I still like to think I maybe made someone feel a little guilty about airing the car chase.
  

• Anderson will be reporting from Nashville Thursday night. When I criticized the lack of coverage, I actually never meant he needed to personally go there, but hey, even better. Can we talk about this tour he has planned with Faith Hill and Tim McGraw though? Perhaps I'm being all judgey too soon, but this show has become absolutely obsessed with celebrities. I guess I'll hold my fire until after the broadcast.

• Case in point regarding celebrities: a phoner with Kenny Chesney. I'm guessing the fact that he had video played into that. I'm wondering if someone from an affiliate could have offered better information.

• I should note that Anderson also interviewed Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, so that's nothing to sneeze at. I was relieved to hear Dean answer in the affirmative when our anchor asked him if he was getting everything he needed from the federal government.
  

• I have seen way too many animations of how they're going to fix the oil spill.

• A good piece from Ed Lavandera on the Minerals Management Service, though I wish we would have heard more about what has or hasn't changed since the Obama administration took over. Douglas Brinkley only touched on it briefly. We all know the Bush administration absolutely decimated all levels of the federal government. Is there a reason the OA was keeping the same people at MMS or was it a matter of it not being a high priority?
  

• I really like Douglas Brinkley. That is all.

• Wow, you could really see the contrast in studio lighting when they replayed the Michael Brown clip.

• Anderson: "You know, we really try on this show not to take sides, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, just trying to get facts out there." He's always saying stuff like this when I don't think he needs to. To me, it makes him sound defensive. The reporting should speak for itself.
  

• Regarding Drew Griffin's report on the terror gap, don't you love how when it comes to guns, suddenly people are concerned about constitutional rights?

• I generally like Bill Maher, but I don't think he knows what he's talking about with regard to terrorism. It was odd watching him basically riff on a topic that the show had just been seriously reporting on a minute before.

• That's it for me. This bullet point is made of chocolate sprinkles for your enjoyment.