Bob CollinsYou get up in the morning, you go to work, you’re on the street doing your job , and then people are dead. Just like that.
Very sad moment in the newsroom as the WDBJ GM confirms that both the reporter and photographer are dead. Senseless pic.twitter.com/qWvWd55UZh
— K.C. Spiron (@KCSpiron) August 26, 2015
It happened in Virginia today when Alison Parker and photographer Adam Ward, of WDBJ, were shot to death as they did a live interview, the typical kind of morning TV news interview that could be easily done in a studio, but requires people to do it outside because that’s what TV demands — the “visuals”.
Trust me. This is awful video (if it gets taken down by YouTube, just Google it).
I know what many of you are going to say: Why should the shooting deaths of media people get any more coverage than the daily shootings of anyone else on the nation’s streets?
And the answer to that is the very nature of the medium: Because there’s video. And we’re forced to see what senseless murder actually looks like.
It looks like this:
Horrible look on anchor's face as WDBJ cuts away from live shooting. Ugh. pic.twitter.com/fvrSGuvs31
— Danya Henninger (@phillydesign) August 26, 2015
And this:
Find this man! pic.twitter.com/6vVxP0JoVq
— Brad Panovich (@wxbrad) August 26, 2015
The job of journalism is to hold a mirror up to us and let us see who we are — the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Today, this is who we are.
