This afternoon, the police chief of Sanford, Florida temporarily stepped aside in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting. All three general cable news channels covered the brief statement live.
Meanwhile, CNN’s “AC360” has been all over the Martin story, and has been taking advantage of Time Warner’s resources to great effect. First, the program highlighted excerpts from an interview with Martin’s parents, an interview that took place on anchor Anderson Cooper’s syndicated daytime program, “Anderson.”
Then, Cooper’s team enlisted one of CNN’s audio engineers to isolate words in a 911 call and determine whether the accused killer used a racial slur to refer to Martin:
For CNN, it is a textbook example of taking advantage of the network’s resources. Cooper’s interview on his daytime show made news, so it made sense to use it on CNN. Likewise, as long as the channel employs experienced audio engineers, it makes sense to takt advantage of their expertise to try and advance a story.