Preparing for an early legal ethics program for Virginia CLE, I made the mistake of tuning in to Headline News’ morning show hosted by chirpy eye-candy Robin Meade. Breathlessly, she announced that an amazing baseball game had occurred last night in Seattle that ended at 4 AM! What followed was a three-minute routine with Robin’s sports guy, who pattered on about how long the game was, how the Beatles sang the National Anthem, how FDR threw out the first ball, showing his high school yearbook photo to show what he looked like when the game started, on and on. None of this was funny, of course, because it made no sense: the fact that the game lasted a long time didn’t send the beginning of the game back in time. The CNN editors somehow thought this was so hilarious that it justified taking up the time that Headline News could have devoted to actual news of substance, which was once the point of the channel, a compressed summary of breaking stories. That was the least of the problems with the segment, however:

• The 18-inning game was about 5 hours long, which is noteworthy but hardly remarkable. It ended at 1 AM, however, not 4 AM. The time is measured in the time zone in which a game takes place, not whatever time zone the copywriters think will make it sound longer.

• The sports guy announced the final score as 2-1. It was not. The score was 4-2. After an extended routine about how amazing and long the not-very-amazing and not especially long game was, the CNN team was obligated to at least get the key fact right: the score.

• That’s not all. Perhaps in homage to the late George Carlin, who in his pre-hippie days used to do a sportscaster routine in which he said, “And now last night’s baseball scores: 4-3, 8-1, and in a real squeaker, 2-1!” , neither Robin nor her colleague ever revealed who won the game. (The Baltimore Orioles won.)

So, in summary, Headline News took almost three minutes to highlight a baseball game in order to make lame jokes, then failed to accurately inform the audience of the game’s score or winning team. The game, by the way, was an important one, as it allowed the Orioles to tie the New York Yankees for first place in the American League East.

This is, in a nutshell, the state of broadcast news today: sloppy, self-indulgent, unprofessional, incompetent, and untrustworthy. If they can’t give the results of a baseball game accurately, why in the world would we trust their coverage of anything?

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