Shooting in Kansas City: Getting the facts
Terrible news — not long after after Kansas City police exchanged shots with a man in south Kansas City, a man fitting the same description walked into a nearby mall in south Kansas City and opened fire.
I was watching WDAF, Fox 4, the Fox-owned affiliate, at 4:42 p.m. when it broke into NASCAR race coverage to cut to its live reporter with the news that five people were shot and two people dead. In the background, a grisly image of the Starbucks' plate glass windows all shot out.
Anchor Tom Lawrence added a detail that revealed the kinds of choices news producers must make when news breaks: The station had waited until Jeff Gordon could safely be declared the win of that afternoon's NASCAR race before they broke in with the news. (In fairness to Fox 4, there was several minutes of mostly waiting around for the race to restart, during which one must assume they would've interrupted had the reporter been on the scene.)
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