Did CNN Hype The Senate Evacuation?

> Update: 12:10pm: “I’m sorry, but if a Senate office building being evacuated, with 200 staffers and six senators locked in its underground parking garage isn’t news, then it’s certainly more newsy than whatever alarmist pap Fox was trying to sell at the time,” an e-mailer says.
CNN “owned” the Senate office building false alarm story on Tuesday. “First to report, first to have video of the garage being opened, and Ed Henry was the best of the field correspondents, getting and remaining on camera quickly. Seems everyone else was flat-footed or dismissive,” an e-mailer said.

But did the network go too far?

CNN definitely deserves credit for breaking the news. Ed Henry first reported on it from the D.C. bureau at 7:42pm, ahead of the AP.

FNC followed at 7:49pm and MSNBC was last at 8:01pm. While the other cablers returned to scheduled programming (and The O’Reilly Factor started on tape at 8pm), CNN continued with nonstop coverage.

They were apparently operating under the theory that it was wise to blanket the story in case it turned out to be news. An e-mailer described it this way:

“Between this week’s Growing Pains reunion on Larry King, Anderson Cooper’s frenzied coverage of the Entwistle murder mystery out of Boston (he led with the story 3 nights last week and one night this week all with little news to report), and now last night’s wall to wall hyping of a false alarm over cleaning solution in Washington DC, where are the high priests of journalism at CNN? The latest stunt involved no less than 12 CNN anchors and reporters throwing everything they had at a story in hopes that it would become news.”

CNN’s coverage apparently affected the global stock market, as well. The dollar fell against the euro and yen “after CNN said a U.S. Senate office building was evacuated after a detector picked up a possible biological nerve agent,” according to Bloomberg. If CNN had taken a more conservative approach to the coverage, would investors have become nervous?

The senators seemed to take the scare in stride. Sen. Michael Enzi joked on CNN’s air: “It was a nice chance to visit with everybody and those of us who are Senators, were able to tell which of our staff worked late. And some people turned on car radios down there and were dancing.”

Just after the bottom of the 8pm hour, Shep Smith seemed to take a shot at CNN when he said “we consider this not to be breaking news.”

MSNBC was restrained, as well. At 8:18pm, correspondent Pete Williams quoted a federal official as saying “this appears to be a false alarm.” At 8:30pm, Williams followed up by citing three federal officials who confirmed “this is over.”

On Thursday’s Countdown, Keith Olbermann chastised CNN for “milking” the story…