CNN Takes Its Time In Breaking Supreme Court News

As news outlets raced to break the news of the Supreme Court's big decisions this week, one network has been notably slower than its counterparts: CNN.

The court issued four major rulings between Monday and Wednesday. While CNN's competitors went quickly to air—MSNBC, for instance, had news of the Court's gay marriage rulings about a minute after they came down—the network waited. At one point on Wednesday, every other network had already blasted the news about the overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act, but CNN's chyron read, "Outcome of key decision soon."

Presumably, CNN was living by that time-honored maxim, "better to be right than to be first." The network famously botched the Court's decision about Obamacare in 2012; more recently, it got crucial details about the Boston Marathon bombing wrong.

On Wednesday, CNN lagged behind its counterparts so much that, when ABC News turned to California's lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom, for reaction from San Francisco's City Hall, Newsom had nothing to report to them, because TVs in the building were tuned to CNN.

“They are all watching a network not to be named, George, and for whatever reason there is a delay, and so when they hear it they are going to, trust me, erupt and you and I won’t be able to hear each other," Newsom said.