Midway through the Sunday 11 p.m. news on CBS2 in the Los Angeles area, anchor Paul Magers tossed to reporter Serene Branson live for a Grammy's post-mortem just outside the Staples Center in Downtown Los Angeles.
Chaos ensued.
Branson, a fairly experienced reporter with big-time credentials in entertainment reporting, began her live report with a few normal words: "Well, a very, very, heavy," and then several abormal words, including several gibberish-esque sounds that resembled "burtation" and "darison."
As one might predict in today's immediate world, the video promptly blew up. By 1 a.m. Monday morning -- roughly 87 minutes after Branson had committed the flub of all flubs -- her name was a nationwide trending topic on Twitter. By 2, a CBS spokesperson released a statement saying she was not hospitalized and was in fact fine. By the next morning, rumors had started and spread that Branson had suffered a stroke live on television. By the afternoon, the video was all over YouTube, Vimeo and just about every video-content website on the internet.
CBS soon pulled most every video depicting the incident off YouTube -- some still remain, though, even now, and released an official statement Thursday saying that Branson had been suffering from a severe migraine at the time of the broadcast and attributing the on-air flub to said migraine.
She now reportedly expects to be back on air shortly, so everything will soon go back to normal, surely, and everyone will get on with their lives, surely.
Right?
Nope. Only one thing's sure in this case: Branson -- despite CBS' commendable best efforts to get all of the videos off the internet -- will never be able to escape this incident, as long as she lives. It'll appear on those best news bloopers lists for decades to come and will probably lead to the word 'burtation' making its way into the common vernacular.
The question is: Is there anything wrong with that?
Honestly, not really. The majority of YouTube commenters and members of the general public who kept up with the story treated it appropriately, without too much of a negative reaction toward Branson herself and with more of a positive approach to a truly funny incident than anything else. So, no, there's nothing wrong with Branson's epic mistake being dramatized and laughed about all over the world. That's essentially what you sign yourself up for when you agree to become a broadcast journalist, and you are compensated adequately for that public privilege.
It sounds weird to say, without a doubt. And there will always be those writers and bloggers and cousins who do their best to pontificate on how Branson's rights have been violated, but, in actuality, everybody has every right to have fun at Branson's expense -- as long as it's done in a somewhat respectful manner.
Now, let's see how she does on her first report back.
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