Griper News: Explosion at US Embassy Called 'Terrorism'; Cable News Fails to Cover It

When news breaks in prime time, do you cut into your scheduled programming or do you just ignore it? Cable news networks faced that question last night and chose the latter, for the most part. First, the story:

Associated Press:

A rocket struck the U.S. Embassy early Friday, exploding inside the modern, glass-fronted building and shattering hopes that Greece's leftist anti-American militant networks had been dismantled.

Greek authorities said the attack, which caused no injuries, was probably carried out by a domestic terrorist group.

The small anti-tank missile, fired from across a six-lane boulevard, narrowly missed the large blue-and-white U.S. seal on the embassy's facade and the ambassador's office, and pierced the building above the front entrance shortly before 6 a.m. It damaged a third-floor bathroom and shattered windows in nearby buildings.

"There were no injuries and very minimal damage," U.S. Ambassador Charles Ries said outside the embassy.

Pretty bad, right? An attack on a US embassy is an act of war, by definition. But cable went with their scheduled programming, for the most part.

TVNewser:

"I was amazed at the way in which the cablers didn't cover the breaking news of the explosion in the Athens embassy," an e-mailer says. "It broke about 11:30 Eastern. CNN covered it live with a phoner from a Time Mag stringer until Anderson Cooper passed it off to the rerun of Larry King" at 12:05am ET. FNC and MSNBC didn't break in.