MSNBC 1st By A Mile With JonBenet Arrest

MSNBC is owning the news of an arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case. The cable net broke the news at 3:46pm. Alison Stewart anchored till 4 when she tossed to Monica Crowley (in for Tucker Carlson). Dan Abrams and Susan Filan handled analysis. “It was a story that dominated cable news and has remained a mystery for years,” Stewart said.

CNN first reported the news at 4:17pm, half an hour after MSNBC. The cable net first credited NBC on the chyron, then changed it to KUSA, the NBC affiliate in Denver.

Fox News Channel finally ran an alert at 4:41pm, almost an hour after MSNBC had the news…

> Update: 5:09pm: “Milissa Rehberger is live on MSNBC with Dan Abrams at 5pm,” a tipster says. “Hardball has been pre-empted…”

> Update: 5:19pm: “Interesting call by MSNBC/Dan Abrams to pre-empt Hardball for Jon Benet Ramsey arrest,” an e-mailer says. “All other cable channels are mentioning the arrest… and the limited info available. But MSNBC is going to wall to wall, pre-empting their top show on a busy political day so that analysts can speculate about what motivated Jon Benet’s killer… even though there are no details available…”

> Update: 5:39pm: “Dan Abrams and MSNBC are the only place WITH any details,” an e-mailer responds, “such as the fact that Patsy Ramsey was told before her death that an arrest was imminent, the identity of the suspect, and interview with the Ramsey’s attorney who just broke down on the air. Like it or not, this is a huge American story over the last decade, and right now Dan Abrams and MSNBC are owning it completely.”