The Smartest, Best, Brightest, Wisest, Bla-bla-bla...

...is the trope eurocentric critics have of their domestic press in a search for promotional comparitives of most anything outside of Europe. But you would think that this should include the basic communication of news.

15h =/-: France24 mentions the earthquake in Chile in a one line subtitle. Not even showing a crawler 8 hours after Fox News, BBC, and the wires; they go back to yacking on, over and over, about the National Agriculture show. A pilgrimage in the cult of terroirisme, we're supposed to be surprised after the 30th year of such reportage, that politicians like to show up and look folksy.

15h39 France24 finally come in with a report, managing to talk with an American scientist at USGS, where it is not yet 8 in the morning. I guess European scientists don't pick up their phones on the Ouikend.

They came in at least 4 hours after the US press.

Euronews has yet to mention anything 7 hours after the fact, as does the glossed-over propaganda outfit, Russia Today. It's largely made up of foreign hires reading wire stories bracketted by fawning interviews with Lavrov that are well beneath his dignity, and strange opinion pieces constructed on snarky smear fit for an anonymous internet chat room.