TV Squad’s Bob Sassone is not happy with what happened on cable last night with the mine tragedy in West Virginia and how the cable networks all got the story totally wrong…

Shouldn’t they have gotten confirmation from another official source (and why did the officials take so long to correct what the news stations were reporting when they knew it wasn’t true?)

UPDATE: Here is the transcript of how Anderson Cooper found out that twelve miners were dead…
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Page Six follows up on yesterday’s news of Imus’ Vanity Fair article with Imus reaction to the news yesterday…

DON Imus was predictably displeased with Vanity Fair writer Buzz Bissinger after PAGE SIX reported on Bissinger’s profile of the irascible morning man yesterday. Bissinger relates in next month’s issue how Imus trashed his colleagues at MSNBC, was rude to Bissinger on the air, and appeared “pale and frail and sucked dry” in person. After reading our story on-air yesterday, Imus said Bissinger had “zero sense of humor,” but claimed he “actually liked” the VF story. “It does make me sound like a lunatic,” Imus said. “It is what it is.”

Marketwatch’s Jon Friedman has a list for 2006 and it contains some surprises…

Who’s in: MSNBC

Who’s out: CNN and Fox

The egregious Rita Cosby and her sensationalist nonsense to the contrary, MSNBC, a unit of General Electric, has been quietly showing serious improvement in its reporting and programming. The perennial laughingstock of TV news may soon begin to gain on CNN (which is merely an occasional laughingstock). If President Bush’s approval rating continues to drag, Fox could feel a pinch, too As Bush goes, so goes Fox.
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