Miners Alive: Geraldo Live On FNC (& CNN)

FNC was second with the breaking news. FNC’s Donna Fiducia was in shock as she anchored a Fox News Alert around 11:55pm. She looked overjoyed and called it an “amazing amazing story.” Steve Centanni immediately appeared on-camera in WV, but the coverage was hindered by a lack of video. “CNN has video of [the church] with lots of the people moving around but FNC apparently doesn’t have a good camera shot, they are only showing the general shot” of the mine, an e-mailer noted at 11:57pm.

Geraldo Rivera was live via phone from the Sago Baptist Church, talking to relatives of the miners. In a strange twist, CNN aired one of his interviews. “CNN just stuck a live camera on rival Geraldo Rivera on his cell phone interviewing a family member,” an e-mailer says. “The segment seemed to last a minute or two.” Geraldo gave the guy a big hug. “This is unbelievable. I’m so proud to be here, so proud to be here,” he exclaimed afterward.



Bill Hemmer was on camera from the live shot position around 12:35am. “We were not expecting news like this when we went to bed about an hour ago,” he said. He took over the live coverage around 1am.

> Fox News ceased live coverage at 2am and aired a repeat of Special Report.