Jon Stewart gleefully skewered CNN's play-by-play coverage of the Boston bomber manhunt, comparing it to "sandlot football."
On Monday's edition of The Daily Show, Stewart mocked the cable news network for dispatching multiple reporters on the scene in the Boston-area Friday and showed clips of breathless correspondents stumbling over their words, admitting they had no information and yelling into the camera at unseen producers back at the studio to focus on footage of ... nothing happening.
"At least they were trying something a little different," said Stewart. "While all the other networks chose to have a -- what do you call it there? -- anchor, in the studio that kept the chaotic coverage from going adrift, CNN went with more of your sandlot football, 'EVERYONE GO LONG!,' forcing the reporters to let the control room know when they were open for an on-camera pass."
Stewart joked that this was at least better strategy than "say it first and have Anderson Cooper correct it later."
The segment ended with a clip of CNN reporter saying: "Being in Watertown right now, the streets are empty. It's eerie. It's as though a bomb had dropped somewhere."
To which Stewart, laughing, declared: "It's not so much a metaphor as what actually happened!"
