NBC News canoe girl, Michelle Kosinski, is defending her staged-news stunt of last week. She blames her producers for last week’s drippy embarassment in which she intrepidly paddled through a few inches of New Jersey waters in an estimated $1,500 canoe while passers-by sloshed in front of the camera. Via the NY Observer:

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.

Read the whole hilarous thing.

Next time it rains in NJ, Kosinski and her crew can save the NBC execs a few bucks and simply invest in these instead:

Streamlight Wading Shoes from L.L. Bean. Only $45 a pair!

On a more serious note, my column today takes on whiny coverage of the Saddam trial, the unapologetic smearing of our troops, and the MSM’s masters of theater: All the news is a stage.

And at Human Events, Todd Manzi looks at the staging of the left-wing attack on Bill Bennett. (Hat tip: Scott Johnson at Power Line)

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NBC News: All wet
Lights! Camera! Projection!