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Lovely Canoe-Gate Girl Tells All!
New York Observer ^ | 10/19/2005 | Rebecca Dana

Posted on 10/19/2005 9:16:33 AM PDT by Quaker

On Oct. 14, Michelle Kosinski, an intrepid new NBC News correspondent who made her name this summer chasing Natalee Holloway’s ghost through Aruba, found herself up a creek without a paddle in the middle of the Today show.

Only, she had a paddle. What she didn’t have was a creek.

In what would have been a beautifully choreographed segment, Ms. Kosinski was reporting live about flooding in Wayne, N.J., in a canoe that was floating down a submerged suburban thoroughfare.

“Eight days of rain, and some neighborhoods don’t even look like neighborhoods anymore,” she told Today viewers at the top of the 7 o’clock hour. “Little rivers with their own strong currents have taken over the streets, and people are getting out, any way they can.”

And it would have worked, too—the artful image of a correspondent Huck Finn–ing her way through a Jersey subdivision—had two guys in hip-waders not walked through the shot moments later, at 7:02 a.m., as if on cue. Water sloshed around their ankles. Ms. Kosinski looked like a grown woman in a nice outfit paddling her way around the kiddie pool.

“When it happened, it was funny and embarrassing, and I just thought, ‘O.K., this probably looks a little bad, or it looks unusual at least, to the people who are watching,’” Ms. Kosinski told The Observer four days after the segment aired.

By then, the clip had made the rounds in e-mail forwards and on cable news shows.

That afternoon, Don Imus went wild over the gaffe. Tucker Carlson picked it up later, and on Saturday the hosts of Fox and Friends discussed what they were calling the “Flood Faux Pas.”

(Excerpt) Read more at observer.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Miscellaneous; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: canoe; canoegate; kosinski; michellekosinski; paddle; projournalism; staged; todayshow
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1 posted on 10/19/2005 9:16:34 AM PDT by Quaker
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To: Quaker

It was fake but accurate!


2 posted on 10/19/2005 9:22:14 AM PDT by Semper Paratus
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To: Quaker

3 posted on 10/19/2005 9:23:11 AM PDT by Constitution Day (When life hands you lemons, just shut up and eat your damn lemons.)
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To: Quaker
Her one lingering concern: “That it might have looked to some people like we were trying to put something over on viewers,” she said. “That would just be idiotic.”

Indeed.

4 posted on 10/19/2005 9:23:49 AM PDT by rhombus
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To: Quaker

MSM crap...again.


5 posted on 10/19/2005 9:26:13 AM PDT by brivette
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Comment #6 Removed by Moderator

To: Quaker

where's the vid?


7 posted on 10/19/2005 9:27:58 AM PDT by camle (keep your mind open and somebody will fill it full of something for you.)
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To: Quaker
Her one lingering concern: “That it might have looked to some people like we were trying to put something over on viewers,” she said.

“That would just be idiotic.”

Yes it was idiotic! Bwahaaa!

8 posted on 10/19/2005 9:28:38 AM PDT by PajamaTruthMafia
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To: Quaker
Her one lingering concern: “That it might have looked to some people like we were trying to put something over on viewers,” she said.

“That would just be idiotic.”

Yes it was idiotic! Bwahaaa!

9 posted on 10/19/2005 9:28:49 AM PDT by PajamaTruthMafia
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To: Quaker
On Days 1 and 2, the buttery-voiced 31-year-old from Cinnaminson, N.J....

A cinnamon girl?

10 posted on 10/19/2005 9:29:16 AM PDT by NonValueAdded ("Is there anything that I can do that wouldn't inconvenience me?" Adrian Monk)
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To: Semper Paratus

You stole that line from Dan Rather!!

Busted!

DA740


11 posted on 10/19/2005 9:29:38 AM PDT by DA740
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To: Quaker
Her one lingering concern: “That it might have looked to some people like we were trying to put something over on viewers,” she said.

“That would just be idiotic.”

<sarcasm level="maximum" volume="maximum" eye_effect="roll">Yeah, network news would never do anything like that.</sarcasm>
12 posted on 10/19/2005 9:30:47 AM PDT by ArcadeQuarters
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To: All
Stuck On Stupid


How High Is The Water, Captain?

....Six inches high and rising.

More on the Kosinski Canoe Caper on the NBC Today Show.  Via Michelle Malkin (again). We have this article from the NY Observer:

We’ve witnessed outrage, compassion, pageantry, hyperbole, hunger, nausea, violence and the inimitable resilience of the human spirit. What could possibly be left?

A canoe!

We have not seen a correspondent paddle through a few inches of standing water in what is rumored to be a $1,500 canoe.

This, in more innocent form, is the idea that flashed through a Today show producer’s mind on Thursday night. Streets were flooded. Residents and rescue workers were riding around in boats. It made perfect sense.

They bought a boat and had it delivered the following morning. Ms. Kosinski arrived early to practice paddling around. She had been in a canoe before, she said, but never by herself, and never in waters any rougher than a slow-moving stream. They tried to set up the shot at an intersection where the water was waist-high and the current was strong, but “they couldn’t light it,” Ms. Kosinski said. “The microphone was wireless and it wasn’t working, and with all the equipment, they couldn’t wade out into the deep water.”

So producers asked Ms. Kosinski to paddle to where the water was shallower. She did. She wasn’t happy about it. But she did.

“Even though I wanted to show deeper water, in the end I said O.K. I didn’t really think it was inappropriate,” she said. ...

Previous Post: Hip Deep in ....a puddle.

Michelle recommends LLBean wading shoes for Michelle's next canoe trip.

We suggest these:

Wading_shoe





The Hodgman Lakestream Wading Shoe.

13 posted on 10/19/2005 9:34:39 AM PDT by Quaker
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To: Quaker

If you cannot be honest in the little things you are given to be honest in...

How can you be trusted to be honest in the big things...?


14 posted on 10/19/2005 9:39:23 AM PDT by joesnuffy
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To: Quaker; All

Actually, watch the video closely...

Those two guys are giants...Japanese monster-sized giants, wading through 25-foot deep water...

The camera angle just makes them appear to be the same size as her...


15 posted on 10/19/2005 9:43:54 AM PDT by baltodog (R.I.P. Balto: 2001(?) - 2005)
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To: Quaker
Her "explanation" is the least believable bit of hooey we've heard since Mary Mapes found a publisher.

The media really thinks we're stupid.

She should apologize for being a fraudulent liar.

16 posted on 10/19/2005 9:44:48 AM PDT by wideawake (God bless our brave troops and their Commander-in-Chief)
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To: DA740
You stole that line from Dan Rather!! Busted!

So did I!(See tagline)

(Actually, it's become a cultural cliche.)

17 posted on 10/19/2005 9:48:22 AM PDT by Maceman (Fake But Accurate)
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To: Yossarian
Yeah, you'd have to be a real idiot to think that the MSM is trying to put something over on the viewers.

Nice touch... I RATHER think you got to the essence of the issue.

18 posted on 10/19/2005 9:48:25 AM PDT by StevieB
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To: camle
where's the vid?

I found it here

Priceless!

19 posted on 10/19/2005 9:48:43 AM PDT by GreenAccord (Is the WAR ON POVERTY a quagmire?)
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To: All

Brainless Blonde Boating moment.....


20 posted on 10/19/2005 9:49:51 AM PDT by michaelbfree
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