BREAKING!! Two explosions, casualties at Boston Marathon

Yes seriously.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/live-video/

Workers kept across the street from the courthouse, media being asked to stay back as well, dogs sniffing around cars, dudes in SWAT gear.

Hopefully it's just a prankster. In the days after the OKC bombing there were hundreds, if not thousands of fake bomb threats. I must've covered a dozen of them here.

Yeah, hopefully just a really dumb prank. But it's understandable why they're taking the threat extremely seriously.

This. A thousand times this.

I'd like nothing better than to piss on Ted Turner's grave for him "inventing" 24-hour news.

It got so bad here in 1995 (a long way from OKC) that it started to impede on local fire and police responding to actual emergency calls.

Yep, it's now on Drudge.

What a miserable few days for journalism. If Walter Cronkite were alive, he would have lit himself on fire in protest.

Guess which city was shutdown this morning investigating a mysterious U Haul truck under an over pass......

Paris, France.

At least there were no firearms related incidents.

Given that Cronkite is burning in Hell, he probably has an aversion to fire these days.

He was responsible for the U.S. losing the Vietnam War. His extreme left-wing views are directly responsible for the mess our media is in today.

MSNBC reporting that the FBI and DHS are investigating one Inigo Montoya, who has allegedly issued a cryptic press release in which he identifies himself, alleges that an unspecified person or persons killed his father, and then issues a death threat against the person or persons unknown.

Really????

Howcome we didn't lose Iraq?
John Stewart was fucking trying a lot harder.

I seem to remember reading about him putting Johnson through the ringer over that mess.

What BD means is that Nam was the first time Americans saw the actual carnage of war on their TV screens, instead of just hearing/reading glowing second-hand reports of "VICTORY!!11!," and they began to question whether the Gulf of Tonkin incident was sufficient reason to slaughter millions of people who lived in grass huts and made shoes out of cut-down tires, not to mention 58,000 U.S. troops, in an itty-bitty country on the other side of the planet that was about as much of a threat to the United States as, say, Nauru.

(On a smaller scale, Tonkin was the Archduke Franz Ferdnand of its day.)

Peter Jennings is the favored target of the Armchair Generals, because he was actually in there with the troops. Cronkite's only a distant second.

Cronkite had actual talent.

John Stewart's influence is only a fraction of what Walter's was. Stewart's one voice among thousands of shows on hundreds of channels. Back then it was only the three major networks and Walter ruled the evening newscasts.

Also, the Vietnam War taught the U.S. military an immense lot about media relations and manipulation.

Witness the 2003 invasion of Iraq where they famously "embedded reporters" with combat units. Thus making the reporters part of the story themselves and the reporters having a direct, life or death interest in the success of U.S. forces.

Actually that was a reversion to what happened during Vietnam. Reporters spent lots of time in the field with the troops. It was during military operations during the intervening years (including Desert Storm) that the media was kept at arm's length.

The sad truth is that they probably already know who did it and the current administration is trying like hell to spin it and place the blame on their political opponents. I mean they already ruled out a Saudi national who was running from the bomb site because he didn't fit the bill.

Probably because they found no evidence connecting him to the bombing, along with the other dozens of spectators who were running from the bomb site. Only reason that guy got singled out was because some citizen saw a brown dude and tackled him, and then reported him to law enforcement.

FTFY.

I can't imagine any halfway intelligent bomber planting bombs, then running away from the site shortly after they explode. Either you're going to watch from a safe distance and enjoy the fruits of your labour or you're going to make sure you're long gone when they go off.

But it wouldn't have been covered until the next day sometime, if that soon.

It helps to remember that Cronkite in his later years seemed to go just about bat insane with his claims (IIRC) that there was really no difference between the U.S. and Soviet Union.

If he was alive to claim that now, he'd be a hero to the Tea Party.

First I've heard of that. Don't suppose you can substantiate it.

No. I just remember some statements of his back in the early 1990s IIRC. I think it was the Reader's Digest that commented on them.

Perhaps I'm wrong.

IIRC, specifically he was talking about the "corporate media" and comparing it to the government controlled media behind the Iron Curtain.