Either Relevant or True » Breaking News: Obama Passport Breach

Tie: Navy.
Worst Person: None.
Segue: None.

Tonight’s show (and so far, the 10 PM rerun) is completely devoted to Breaking News. Specifically, the Breaking News that Sen. Obama’s passport information has apparently been accessed three times for no legal reason since January. I realize that this is, in fact, a Big Deal, but Keith has now spent ninety minutes (give or take commercials) discussing this one story. Given the facts, it’s this blogger’s humble opinion that this story probably doesn’t need to be stretched over so much time.

So far, people who have joined Keith to discuss the State Department debacle are David Shuster, Howard Fineman, Andrea Mitchell, Pete Williams (via phone), Obama co-chair Eric Holder, and many others.

Seriously, this story is all over the Internets. Like here. Or here, or here, or here.

10:31: Okay, it looks like we might get some other stories out of this, after all, including crazy John McCain and his Purim/Halloween mixup.

3. Keith starts to make up for the mind-numbingness of the first 90 minutes of the show by saying “playing grab-ass” on the air. What can I say? After hours of repetition, I’m even more puerile than usual. Anyway, Senators Clinton and McCain both threw in their opinions on Rev. Wright’s impact on Obama’s campaign. Eugene Robinson joins the show by phone to discuss this as well. A certain cable news host makes a passport pun and my brain subsequently shuts down for a few minutes to recover. But wait! There’s more! Geraldine Ferraro’s back (”from political Elba”), and apparently unhappy with…well, everything.

Aand, back to BREAKING NEWS. Apparently Mr. Shuster has made the first connection between the security breach and the Clinton campaign. At this point, Keith looks as disgruntled as I am for continuing to cover this. Hey, on the bright side, there’s no Tweety.

1. There is no Number Two. Which, given the whole Keeping Tabs/Worst Person thing…sure. Why not? But first, back to the crazy Purim/Halloween misstep. And…everything is somehow made better with the presence of Rachel Maddow. And Rachel Maddow faking a McCain laugh. And McCain’s Sunni/Shi’a mistake - repeated mistake. And repeated fake laughter. Seriously, what was the point of the first, I don’t know, hour? Especially when Ms. Maddow actually managed to make a point re: passport scandal that hadn’t been made yet.

At any rate, that was Countdown. And Countdown again. There may be another rerun, but I doubt it and it’s bedtime. Goodnight, everyone!

Ashley,

Nice blog….but…

I totally disagree that the Obama passport story wasn’t worth 90+ minutes or more coverage.

The story was breaking as Countdown (8pm ET feed) was going on air. Keith was basically breaking news updates every few minutes. The entire planned Countdown suddenly went out the window.

I hoped he would come back live at 10 ET and he did. First, he would have to update Countdown for this later feed as well as for the 2 a.m. ET feed to the Coast. And, new information still was coming in live at that time. I believe MSNBC and especially Countdown really broke this story broadcast version — they owned it — they had to continue to cover it.

The story has potential to be BIG!! Until reporters are able to connect the proverbial dots, nobody knows where it may lead. If you want to see some interesting loose threads that are raveling, check out the Daily KOS. They pointed out how some anti-Obama stories — such as his “African garb” photo came out right after one of those breaches. The fact that 3 different dates and 3 different contractors were involved also makes the story interesting. As a former Federal civil servant, I cannot believe that it took 3 different breaches (in the post-Sept. 11 environment) for something to be done. This is a major Security as well as a privacy breach after all that impacts ALL citizens.

It could end up just being a bunch of coincidences. However, it needs to be investigated, especially with the politics of kitchen sink garbage being thrown lately.

I think the Keith, the Countdown staff, and all MSNBC/NBC news folks can be proud of their coverage tonight. CNN had ZERO until Anderson Cooper at 10 pm ET (except for the crawl on Larry King). King interviewed Obama but it appeared to be pre-taped.

Kudos, Keith and Countdown! Double kudos for coming back live after Abrams!! As a former journalist, I was counting on you to do that!!!

Well done, Ashley, two hours for the price of one, but with humble respect I do disagree a bit as I loved it all. But, then, I do not follow news live online and want it on my tv where I can sit back with my feet up.

After an afternoon of pap, with the high or low point, depending on one’s point of view, being Chris Mathews showing Ellen’s slo mo replay of their dance/mauling of yesterday in which it is clear that he had his hand on her breast ala Justin Timberlake with Janet Jackson, Countdown was a stunning change of pace.

The first hour was literally BREAKING NEWS, coming to them just before the show began airing, and they covered it live as more information continued to come in, no ads, for the full hour.

So much tv news these days has a hint of prepackaging to it, and to see a team swing into action like this is quite exciting.

I could not help but notice how well they did with it and how well they were working together instead of competing with each other. There also must be a fantastic back up technical crew for the show who each knows what needs to be done to supply the anchor on the air with the info and graphics he needs.

As the story was still breaking I left on VERDICT, appropriately named, it seems, and I was soon sound asleep, so I was a bit renewed when Keith came back on, but I wanted to check it as I was certain that they would not re show that first hour, and they did not.

There was a lot more of the story as it was continuing to break. I sat up fast for the new info (from David Shuster, I think) that the supervisor in the passport office, or wherever it was, had been a Clinton appointment in the past.

Of course the last segment with Rachel Maddow was the best. Again, she proved herself head and shoulders above by not getting hung up on the lower levels of the story and going for the top rung of what questions needed to be asked.

I loved their banter about being the Main Stream Media.

I just hope that there is not a third and different feed as I am not up to that tonight.

And why do I keep thinking of someone now having Obama’s Social Security number and going to Best Buy to try to purchase a bunch of neat electronics with his new fake identity. An act that would certainly earn anyone that dumb a future spot on “Best People”, stupid criminals category.

P.S.: The three individuals who violated Obama’s passport records are all employed by the government from a private contractor.

I had been holding out for Blackwater myself, but I could swear that I heard Keith say that if it was Halliburton, he would buy everyone in the country a beer.

Just in case, I prefer dark beer from Latin America.

I think Ashley’s comments have more to do with the nature of breaking news than the merits of the story. Not everyone (me included) appreciates the slow drip drip drip of information coming in over a long period of time. I imagine it’s especially grating when you’re committed to not only sitting in front of it for an hour, but take on a second hour, all the while making notes to spin into a blog post that’s even semi-entertaining. We have a little different perspective on this side of the recap :-)

Thanks Ashley for the live re-air recap. I went to sleep before then. Keith’s suit & tie combo is the best.

I was flipping around this morning and I check out FoxNews to see what the Republican talking points are going to be, and low and behold Chris Wallace is hammering the knuckleheads on Fox & Friends. It was something to see. I know Keith is not a fan of Chris Wallace or FoxNews (rightly so), but he should make Chris a “best person” for this scolding. Here is a link to TVnewser which has the entire exchange:

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/fnc/wallace_to_ff_hosts_two_hours_of_obama_bashing_is_enough_80447.asp#more

Apologies to Ashley if I did not seem properly appreciative of all the efforts that went into having a second show to blog on last night. I do appreciate all the work and can also understand how that would be viewed differently by the person suddenly confronting more than twice as much show as usual.

I did have the errant thought when the second airing was clearly a new show that if I were the one writing the recap, I would want to pull my hair out about then.

No apologies necessary, Rafismom! I think the Obama passport story is, in fact, huge, and totally merits coverage. However, when a five minute Google search will tell me what the news is stretching out into ninety minutes, there’s something wrong with the system. This isn’t a national disaster, like the Mississippi bridge collapse last year. It’s newsworthy, to be certain, and I hope KO follows up on it for the next few weeks, or as long as it takes to get to the bottom of it. But I think that it is patently ridiculous to spend that big a chunk of time talking about one story with so little information divulged. I mean, really.

ASHLEY wrote: But I think that it is patently ridiculous to spend that big a chunk of time talking about one story with so little information divulged. I mean, really.

Point taken. I was so enjoying what they were doing and how well, plus Countdown with Keith and the gang was the program I had tuned in to see and from my perspective, it was not preempting.

But, I certainly remember hating Tom Brokaw for interrupting my regular shows of old when there was limited stuff for him to report.

In one memorable instance (Must have interrupted Days of Our Lives, which was a different lifetime for me as I have not seen it in years) in which a US journalist who had been arrested by the Soviets as a spy was being released, and for almost an hour and a half every possible NBC reporter, from the Pentagon to the State Department to the White House to the Russian Embassy and on appeared to say a version of, “We don’t know what it means yet, Tom.”

I think that had this story broken earlier in the day they would have had an orderly leading segment on it and moved on, much as they did with the second hour.

I caught a few minutes of Anderson Cooper much later in the night, and he was sneering at the “Liberal” network making a big conspiracy deal out of this. Apparently it was many hours before CNN covered it at all other than the crawl under Obama during his prerecorded interview with Obama (Which I watched on its rerun and is how I happened to see some of Anderson Cooper which followed. I seem to have gotten away from CNN.)

I was glued the “breaking news” coverage, and very impressed at how well they did reproting all that on the fly. Then I was doubly pleased to get most of the regular show in the rebroadcast.

Since this is my first post here, I’ll admit to having a mild obsession with Keith, integrity is sexy! so I am not very objective about him personally, but very interested in real news. NPR is my other mainstay for facts, and Daily Kos for opinions.

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