Cincinnati ABC affiliate WCPO is apologizing and explaining after it says it sent a reporter to the home of a Cincinnati police officer who was killed in the line of duty.
Officer Sonny Kim was shot and killed Friday morning.
Angry viewers took to the station’s facebook to tell the station how upset they were the station sent a crew to Officer Kim’s home. One post that’s being shared called the station’s reporting “unprofessional” and added “It’s disgraceful and they should be ashamed to call themselves journalists. That is not news.”
Saturday, the station explained saying it did not intend harm. “It was one journalist with a notebook and a still camera,” WCPO wrote on its website.
It was not an easy task. Nor was it one any journalist relishes.
But we felt it was part of our job yesterday to reach out, to try to tell more about Officer Kim and the man his family knew so well.
After explaining why it sent a reporter, the station later apologized:
Our goal is always to be compassionate and respectful. Especially when a family – and community – is grieving.
If we caused the Kim family, the law enforcement community or any of Officer Kim’s friends or neighbors any extra stress, grief or worry on what must have been one of the worst days of each of their lives, I am sorry.
I speak for all of WCPO and its employees when I say that we would never want to add pain to the lives of any grieving family.