When Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign said he would be announcing his vice presidential pick via text message, it assured those who signed up that their phones would be the first to know — not CNN, not The New York Times and certainly not those pesky bloggers.

Of course, it wasn’t just Obama supporters who signed up for the text message, but also journalists who wanted to get a jump on the competition. CNN anchors — already criticized for their purported obsession with Obama — didn’t do themselves or their viewers any favors on Friday.

The comedic news blog 23/6 (tagline: “Some of the news, most of the time”) compiled a priceless montage of CNN’s most pathetic moments from that day. Unfortunately, the clips aren’t in chronological order, but by watching CNN’s clock in the lower right screen, it’s depressing to see just how early on Friday the text message watch began.

CNN’s clock read 6 a.m. EDT Friday (that’s 3 a.m. in Moscow), and John Roberts and the other anchors were “still waiting” for the announcement. When the clock read 7:23 a.m. CDT (5:23 a.m. here), Roberts declared, as if it were news, “We still haven’t gotten the announcement yet.”

That non-news was CNN’s top story of the day, reiterated over and over as if nothing else was happening in the world. In CNN’s view, just that — nothing — was worth discussing.

As the day wore on, CNN’s “still waiting” catch-phrase turned into something way more amusing and totally blown out of proportion. Repeated almost as much as a Bush Administration talking point, CNN’s “Obama VP drama” filled the airwaves.

For those who already signed up for Obama’s text message, it became obvious that CNN didn’t have a better source. Anchors kept saying things like, “I’m watching my BlackBerry,” as if they were paid to do product placement for the soon-to-be-upstaged-by-Google-and-Apple smart-phone manufacturer. At one point, Roberts even told a female co-anchor to “show me your BlackBerry,” later holding his own phone up to the camera to announce that he’d been watching it all morning.

Shouldn’t he have been watching for other news? It shouldn’t be the anchor’s responsibility to check his phone for a text message that everyone in the CNN office would have received. Don’t they have interns for that sort of thing?

At 3:02 a.m. PDT — just after midnight at CNN HQ in Atlanta — Roberts interrupted his guest with breaking news coming from his phone, which he again held up for the world to see.

“I just got a note from them,” he said, getting everyone’s hopes up. “Eh, it’s just a public schedule.” His guest got the same message and was similarly disappointed, as was whatever handful of viewers happened to be awake and paying attention at that time.

I was sitting in a restaurant with a group on Friday night, telling them about Obama’s pledge to text message his choice and how I still hadn’t received anything despite signing up two weeks ago.

About five minutes later my phone (not a BlackBerry) buzzed. It was CNN with the breaking news that Obama chose Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate. This was about 1 a.m. EDT Saturday.

CNN had wasted more than 24 hours discussing the absence of news at a time when there wasn’t any absence whatsoever — CNN just didn’t want to report on anything else.

There was nothing to be said until Obama made the announcement, but CNN still baited its viewers with the promise of “any minute now” throughout the day.

I still haven’t received Obama’s official text message. So many people signed up to get the message that the sending service was overloaded.
Insistent that its followers didn’t need to follow the mainstream media to get campaign news, the campaign’s experiment in reliance on under-developed technology (wireless networks) was a failure. Those who wanted the news when it broke had no choice but to turn to CNN, despite CNN’s own failure to adequately report other news happening throughout the world that day.

Journalists should do their jobs and do their own reporting instead of waiting for the news to come to them.

When Sen. John McCain announces his vice presidential pick, it should be less of a technological fiasco. No one is expecting any kind of innovation from that campaign.

I never thought I would say it, but I’m thankful for that.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.