Oh hey did you know that a coup is underway in Egypt right now?! You probably don’t know this if you’ve had your TV tuned to CNN this afternoon, which is going all in on the George Zimmerman trial with wall-to-wall coverage so you don’t have to bother looking up Court TV in your channel guide. However, if you have been tuned in to CNN, you would have seen a bunch of Skype trolls interrupting the Zimmerman trial, so I guess that’s not so bad.
Here’s what happened: attorneys tried to get testimony from one of George Zimmerman’s former college professors via Skype, but it was interrupted when a slew of Skype users — who were probably watching the coverage of the trial live on CNN — looked up prosecutor Rich Mantei’s username and attempted to call him in the middle of the testimony session. Eventually, defense attorney Mark O’Mara had to call the professor on his iPhone so that he could finish giving his testimony via speaker phone before the judge’s head exploded right there in the courtroom.
Stick with this till the end as it just gets better and better. And FYI, if you’re going to Skype with a witness during a trial that’s being broadcast live on national television, you might want to change the settings to block incoming calls from people not on your contact list. Just a thought.
Meanwhile, Columbia Journalism School Dean of Academic Affairs Bill Grueskin had this to say about CNN choosing to cover the trial over the revolution in Egypt: “CNN just hit its nadir, worse than when it blew the ACA ruling. As Cairo erupts, they’re focused on a bad Skype call in [the Zimmerman trial].”
Bring back Bernard Shaw and Peter Arnett!
