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Binghamton Tragedy Brings Crush of Media |
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Written by Lou Gulino
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Sunday, 05 April 2009 14:02 |
 Right around noon on Friday, the AP wire quoted reports on the web sites of CBS station WBNG and pressconnects.com, the internet site of the Binghamton Press & Sun Bulletin that people had been shot and others were being held hostage in the city just more than an hour south of Syracuse. In the next few hours, ABC, CBS, NBC & Fox broke into regular programming as anchors in New York reported on the tragedy.
CNN, MSNBC, Fox News began extended breaking news coverage complete with talking head experts. News 10 Now's Bill Carey filed live reports from the scene for CNN. WBNG, the CBS affiliate in Binghamton was feeding the frist video from the scene to CNN and all the other networks. By the end of the day all the national networks had made arrangements to transmit the 5pm news conference by Binghamton police, Governor David Paterson, and other elected officials. The networks offered 'live generics'; to their affiliates. Those are reports by network reporters that air a 1 minute past the hour, and end with a generic outcue of; 'so and so reporting, now back to you'. Those reports allow stations around the country have their anchors toss to a 'live' report from the scene of a major breaking news event. Perhaps the greates challenge in covering this event for the national news organizations is the limited possibilities for sending video from the city. WBNG has a fixed uplink at the station that can be used to uplink CNN. But it has no satellite truck, and could not even patch its microwave truck to the uplink, because the shooting scene was in an area where they could not get a signal. the networks shared the video WBNG fed CNN, and later, relied on affiliates from Syracuse, Rochester and Utica to uplink from their trucks. The networks also sent their own or rented uplinks to the scene. if you were in Binghamton, or working in an area newsroom and want to share your story about how that day went, please send us an e-mail. |
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Last Updated ( Sunday, 05 April 2009 23:13 )
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