Viewers Should Thank Cramer & Moody

Following up on this post about CNN’s abuse of the “breaking news” banner:

A tipster says CNNI’s Chris Cramer “actually instituted a policy resulting in the ‘developing story’ and ‘just in’ tags because he felt that ‘breaking news’ was being overused and losing its impact. Clearly CNN/U.S. has abandoned this policy now, much to the detriment of their coverage. This sort of thing is just going to get people to shorten their attention spans when they see ‘breaking news’ on the screen.”

Around 1:30pm ET, CNN reverted to the “developing story” tag. (Thank you.)

CNN isn’t the only offender, of course. MSNBC is too reliant on their breaking news graphic, as well. “On the replay of Hardball, ‘breaking news’ was still on the screen” last night, an e-mailer notes. “The show is on a tape, so how is it still breaking?”

Fox News isn’t shy about using the alert, either, although they seemed to have tempered it recently. After a “note from VP John Moody asking people to take it down a notch, it has started to calm down,” a tipster says. “But now CNN seems to be picking up the slack!”