CNN Owns “al-Zawahiri Not Dead” News

CNN must really wish that Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead right now. The network was at the top of its game on Friday night as Wolf Blitzer broke the news that al Qaeda’s #2 man may have been killed in an airstrike.

“As CNN reports the biggest terror-related story since 9/11, Chris Matthews is talking about ‘spying on Americans’ and Fox is doing Around the World in 80 Seconds,” an e-mailer exclaimed.

CNN was first with the news, with correspondents lined up in DC and NY: David Ensor, Nic Robertson, Barbara Starr, and Peter Bergen were all in their chairs or on the phone immediately. It was rather impressive.

At 10pm, Anderson Cooper spent a long time discussing the news with a roundtable of reporters, although he kept stressing the unverified nature of the reports. FNC spent only a minute on the story before Greta Van Susteren started investigating the cruise ship mystery in Miami.

If al-Zawahiri had actually died, it would have been a major win for CNN. Maybe next time…

> Update: 9:54pm: “Your item on CNN “owning” the Zawahiri story is way off the mark,” an e-mailer says. “There is no shame in networks like Fox and MSNBC choosing not to jump all over a story that is based on second-hand, incorrect information. To say CNN would have looked great if he’d been dead, is like saying the newspapers back in 1948 would have looked terrific if Dewey really had defeated Truman.”