The Situation Room
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The Situation Room is an afternoon/early evening newscast on CNN hosted by Wolf Blitzer that first aired on August 8, 2005. At first, the newscast aired live from 3-6 p.m. ET and was subdivided into an hour devoted to politics, an hour devoted to security, and an hour devoted to international news. However, on November 2nd, 2005, CNN announced that The Situation Room would be chopped up: block 1 would air live from 4-6 p.m. ET, and block 2 would air live from 7-8 p.m. ET (taking over the timeslot held by Anderson Cooper 360).
A number of CNN journalists and pundits often join Blitzer, including Jack Cafferty, Ali Velshi, Zain Verjee, Jacki Schechner, Abbi Tatton, Paul Begala, Bay Buchanan, James Carville, and J.C. Watts. The show replaces Inside Politics and Wolf Blitzer Reports. In the beginning of every show Wolf Blitzer starts by saying "Welcome to the Situation Room, where news and information from around the world arrive at one place simultaneously!" or "Welcome to the Situation Room, where news and information from around the world is arriving all the time!"
The show has garnered much criticism for covering human interest stories; notably devoting almost an hour of commercial free coverage to a story about a virus affecting their Windows 2000 computers. Much of this criticism comes from satirist Jon Stewart who has mocked the reporting of the show on multiple occasions, creating his own "hypothetical situation room." However, the show also earned critical praise for its multiple-screen coverage of Hurricane Katrina.
Controversy
On the September 1, 2005 edition of the show, host Wolf Blitzer said the following about the numerous Hurricane Katrina victims, who were seen wading through the flooded streets of New Orleans: "... so many of these people, almost all of them that we see, are so poor and they are so black ..." [link][link]Trivia
- Because of the show's usage of multiple video walls to convey events as they occur, two control rooms are used. One is exclusively used for the show itself, while the second is used to maintain content in the large eight-panel video wall.
- The show also makes use of live RSS feeds that scroll in the background at various times during the show. Live video feeds are also commonly present in the show's format.
External links
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