Calling it “traumatic to people at KUSA,” news director Patti Dennis has done her best to ensure that viewers don’t see the video of KUSA anchor Kyle Dyer being bitten by a dog during the station’s morning show Wednesday.
Dennis told TVSpy this week that, following the on-air incident, she contacted the news directors of every station in Denver, imploring them not to air footage of the bite.
While it appears most stations respected Dennis’s request, at least one, Fox-affiliate KDVR, aired footage of the bite.
In addition to trying to keep the video off the air, Dennis attempted to keep the video off the internet this week.
On Wednesday, Dennis contacted Denver alternative weekly Westword and requested that they take a YouTube embed of the bite off their website. They declined.
While Dennis was unable to get Westword to pull its YouTube clip, KUSA went straight to the YouTube uploaders, demanding that they delete their videos because of copyright infringement. The station was successful in having early uploaders delete their videos but there are still dozens of videos–and counting–available on YouTube.
According to Westword, KUSA also contacted local radio stations and asked them to keep the video off their websites and even refrain from discussing what happened on the air.
KUSA has thoroughly covered the incident this week, even though they have not re-aired the footage.
In explaining why KUSA is not re-airing the bite, Dennis cited the station’s policy of not airing footage of people getting “harmed or injured.”
“We don’t air people getting hit by cars or shot,” she said.
So why did Dennis and KUSA try to get other stations, radio outlets, and websites to also refrain from showing the footage?
Dennis explained that she asked people to be “sensitive to Kyle.”