Honduras Coverage, Another "CNN Fail"

Yesterday Honduras' deposed President Manuel Zelaya made a dramatic (perhaps overly dramatic, but we'll get to that in a minute) bid to re-enter his country. In case you missed it, last month the Honduran army scooped up President Zelaya and dropped him off in neighboring Costa Rica for allegedly violating the Honduras' constitution. (The US, UN and OAS have all accused the Honduran military of pulling off a coup, but I think there's a fair case to be made that they were acting to uphold the country's constitution and that Zelaya is in the wrong here).

Zelaya already tried once to fly back into Honduras, but the military closed the airport at Tegucigalpa blocking his return. This time Zelaya planned to walk across the border from Nicaragua amid a throng of supporters and against a squad of Honduran soldiers - CNN was the only cable network to cover it live. Rick Sanchez temporarily put his Twitter/Facebook/Myspace infatuation on hold to speak with a real live CNN correspondent at the Honduras/Nicaragua border and even translated some of the Spanish-language newsfeed for the benefit of the viewers.

It made for some pretty compelling television, the kind of international coverage CNN once had a great reputation for, that is until 4pm rolled around and with it the start of CNN's next show, Wolf Blitzer's "Situation Room". Wolf dumped out of the live video from Honduras to give we the viewers yet another hour of 'experts' blathering about the stalled health care bill and the Obama/Cambridge/Henry Louis Gates 'scandal'. Really? Honestly, if I was the news director over at CNN I'd think that an ongoing political standoff in a nation basically on America's doorstep would trump another hour of talking about two situations we've been talking about for days and will continue to talk about for days to come (without, remarkably, ever saying very much). But I'm not the news director at CNN.

It's another example of how CNN has fallen from its once lofty heights, when it was the go-to source for breaking international news. Of course if they did their job better, maybe I'd feel less need to run this site.

If you're interested, the standoff at the border ended without incident. Zelaya ducked his head under the rusty chain that marks the border between the two countries, and shook hands with a Honduran army officer, before returning to Nicaragua for a press conference. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slammed Zelaya for grandstanding rather than trying to seek a peaceful solution to return himself to his country and bring an end to the current political crisis.