After receiving grand jury subpoenas requesting that they share video footage connected to the disappearance of 10-month-old Lisa Irwin, Kansas City stations plan to cooperate with investigators but are making an important distinction: they will submit footage that has aired but will not hand over raw footage, as the Clay County prosecutor’s office has requested.
Jim Roberts, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office, told the Associated Press this week that the subpoenas were intended to prevent KMBC, KCTV, KSHB, and WDAF from discarding footage of the girl’s family and neighbors.
KCTV and KSHB were both ordered to bring their raw footage to the Clay County courthouse next Tuesday. Both stations are now being represented by attorney Bernard J. Rhodes, who told the Kansas City Star that he referred authorities to a video clipping service that the stations use and a list of stories that have been aired.
While KCTV and KSHB, as well as KMBC, have so far declined to comment publicly on the matter, WDAF news director Bryan McGruder has been pointed in his response to the subpoenas.
“We comply with all subpoenas,” McGruder said, “but we do not release raw material.”