CNN Brings New Meaning to the Phrase, 'Drive-By Media'

“Nancy Grace and Ashleigh Banfield Hold Split-Screen Interview in Same Parking Lot,” as spotted by the Atlantic:

In a bizarre television and spatial anomaly on CNN this morning, the blanket coverage of two true-crime stories led two news anchors to conduct an odd “satellite” interview from the very same parking lot, background traffic and all.

The two suspects are Ashleigh Banfield of CNN and Nancy Grace of [CNN subsidiary channel] Headline News, who were updating viewers on the latest from the ongoing and increasingly ugly Cleveland kidnapping story. (Grace being TV’s leading expert on deviant crime.) At first it seems like a normal TV “remote,” as Banfield interviews Grace from another location. Then the channel’s graphics alert viewers: both anchors are in Phoenix. That’s odd. Also: They’re both outdoors, sitting in what looks to be a parking lot. And is that same building behind them?

Then things truly get bizarre. Watch the cars moving in the background of both shots:

Do not miss the hilarious animated GIFs the Atlantic made of the same car passing through the split-screen shots of Grace and Banfield, and their artist’s illustration of where the two employees of Time-Warner-CNN-HBO were seated in the same parking lot. And then, “if you’re still not seeing it, look for the moment when the same bus is in both shots.”

Rush Limbaugh adds, “It was like when Cokie Roberts put on a trench coat in the studio because it was really cold out there and made to look like she was outside on Capitol Hill doing a report. She was in the studio bundled up to make it look like it was cold front of a backdrop.”

It also reminds me of this infamous moment on the Today Show in 2007, when after Katie Couric accusing GWB of staging news was followed by reports of flooding in New Jersey, a Today Show reporter in the field was caught rowboating through rather shallow water:

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At some point spooked by the success of Fox News, or perhaps because of Karmic blowback from Ted Turner’s Godwinizations, CNN went from being The Most Powerful News Network on cable to a low-rent public access cable channel. Their current series of on-air disasters are a sort of Zen Koan. (Or Zen Cohen for you Brothers Judd readers):  Are they increasing because no one is watching, or because no one is watching, no one at CNN cares, and that’s why they’re happening?