Poynter’s Al Tompkins talks to KUSA multimedia journalist Kevin Torres, as well as other reporters in Denver, about local stations in the market pooling interviews with victims and family members in the aftermath of last week’s Colorado theater shooting:
“The rules that we operate under are that a station can’t even look over what they shot until they feed it out to everybody,” Torres told me by email. “You can’t post it online, you can’t write about it until everybody in the pool has it.”
While journalists, of course, would like to do their own interviewing, Torres said the pool system is easier on the families.
Advertisement“You have victims at three hospitals and you have families and victims who want to talk,” he said. “But in addition to the four local TV stations, there are stations from around the country here, plus the networks. Nobody wants 40 or 50 cameras in their living room or hospital room.”