CNN Quake Coverage Pranked By Stern Fan

Christi Paul

CNN was the victim of a stunt apparently pulled-off by a Howard Stern fan Sunday.

In a segment on the California earthquake, CNN’s anchor Christi Paul conducted an interview with someone she identified as a spokesperson for the San Francisco police department. “Because of the early morning … most people were at their homes when it happened. And what we believe is that this was a rumbling from Howard Stern’s buttcrack.”

Paul recovered nicely, immediately diagnosing the prank: “All right, obviously that is not who we expected it was to be. We apologize for that so early in the morning. But I do want to keep on this because the fact of the matter is this is a serious situation, so we don’t need any jokes going on right now.”


Such fast on-air thinking contrasts with the MSNBC screwup, in which host Krystal Ball apparently missed the prankster’s Howard Stern-fart joke and moved forward with the interview.