Day 3 of Mumbai Held Hostage, and MSNBC is a no-show

On Thanksgiving Day, the fine TV critic of the Baltimore Sun, David Zurawik, and I quarreled politely over whether MSNBC was adequately covering the Mumbai terror situation on Wednesday.

Well, that was before a violent attack turned into a three-day ordeal. Unfortunately, by the time the killing in Mumbai was over, one network had decided to save some money and send everybody home for the Thanksgiving weekend, and I was feeling like an idiot for defending MSNBC. Take a look:

UPDATE: Air America's Lionel saw the same nonsense on Thursday.

Comments

[Eric]

The issue is not whether you felt like watching the India coverage. Nor is the issue the repetition of coverage. The issue is that everyone at MSNBC took a long Thanksgiving holiday. Even small-town newspapers have someone on call. It was completely amateurish.

[patricia from Germany]

The international broadcast of CNN had constant coverage of the attacks with additional local stream from Mumbai. Sure, it was repetative, but I could turn on my TV at any time and get an update. I only catch MSNBC on my computer, but did notice that they had very little video coverage. I agree, get rid of the 'Lockdown' series.

[Raj]

I used to be an avid viewer of MSNBC and its evening lineup. But everything changed last week, after watching the lathargic and irresponsible coverage from MSNBC in the aftermath of Mumbai blasts. I am from India and was offended to see MSNBC completely ignore the ongoing events on wednesday right after David Shuster's anchorage. Keith and Maddow were simply ignorant of the world events. And guess what, I watched Indian news channels live in the internet (NDTV) and CNN came pretty close to staying on the events as they were unfolded. Truly, MSNBC let down many of us south asian viewers last week.

[Will]

CNN's coverage has been outstanding, particularly via their website, whereby they provided a live link to CNN-IBN's coverage. CNN continues to take the lead internationally as the CNN-IBN webpage provides a live streaming broadcast. http://ibnlive.in.com/videos/video_streaming.php

[sasha]

I wish you all would get a grip and understand that America does not have or place any value in 'real reporting'.
At least MSNBC used IBN news network to bring us the less tainted so-called news that is pushed down our throats by the FCC!
Americans do not know how to handle REAL NEWS!
They want sensationalism , whether it is true or not!
We need a REAL NEWS CHANNEL!
CNN did not have legitimate coverage until Wolf came on!