Wow, I can see why people would be outraged. Those questions weren't the slightest bit fair (Is that what you want to do, shoot to kill? Are you a trigger happy kind of person?)
I mean, the guy shot someone breaking into his house/business. You don't have to be 'trigger happy' to want to protect yourself. Maybe the reporter thought that using a shotgun was a little excessive, but I'll tell you something; if you are going to shoot someone, shoot to kill. If you are unwilling to shoot to kill, then don't own a gun and don't try to protect yourself (I mean physically. Call the police and run away, but don't try to stop the robber).
If you wound a robber, and he gets the gun away from you, or has a gun himself (or herself), then you are going to get shot and I’m pretty sure that the criminal isn’t going to show you the same mercy that you showed them.

This is a 70 year old man, who presumably lives by himself/with his 70 year old wife. He’s probably emotionally distraught and scared about his safety. Leave the poor guy alone.

I hope that reporter is fired. Preying on people like that is just inexcusable.

I'm not exactly a gun advocate, but this was simply trashy journalism!

When you are 70 years old, and people are breaking into your house/business in the middle of the night, you can't expect him to do much else. Especially since I heard he had called the police as many as 42 times to no avail.

I ask you, if you were this age, would you risk your life and your loved ones for a criminal robbing you? Do you really think it would be far fetched to believe the criminal had a gun and would use it?

Will, as a journalist I'm curious. Do you ever come across people like this in your job? (not necessarily at msnbc)

If so, do they act like this when they aren't trying to get "the scoop"?

If this reporter worked for me, severe disciplinary action would be taken but not for the reason many would think. I would question the judgement of a reporter who would approach this particular subect on this particular story. The man is distraught, aged, has just killed two people, is armed and obviously doesn't appreciate the reporters questions.

Next, the questions the reporter posed might be appropriate at a different time and in a different place. I admire her willingness to ask pointed questions but think here, again, her judgement is lacking.

Last, but not necessarily all, this reporter did not report the story, at least in the clip shown. What she did was expose herself and others to danger, create mischief upon a grieving person (lack of empathy or sympathy) and wind up with no explanation of the experience the man had with the presumed dead criminals.

his next purchase might be a fully automatic AR-15 - that would surprise a home invader. I'm in the South - break into my home - you might be lucky the identified by more than your dental records. I don't know anyone who doesn;t own at least 5 guns ...

AHHH the teaser in today's entry is "the rest of today's entry."
Im starting to panic that the rest of today's entry might not come until tomorrow...*bites nails*

Jerry, I don't think she was in any danger.  The elderly gentleman was only "armed" to the extent that he had just purchased a broken down shotgun that was still in the box.  If he had elected to open the box and assemble the gun, load it and bring it to bear, I think she'd have had plenty of time to escape. :-)

Jerry,

You really don't understand how the news business works. That reporter didn't just ambush that guy on her own, and then air a report of it on the 10 o'clock news, all by herself.

If she worked for you, then you would have SENT her to get that story ... watched the raw footage by 3:00pm, maybe helped write the script ... certainly reviewed it ... watched the final edit well before 10 o'clock, and then OK'd its airing on the newscast.

You see, lots of people at the station are involved in the creation of a hit piece. It starts with the assignment editor, continues down to a producer who actually is charged with finding the victim they're going to ambush. Then, the cameraman gets into position to make the victim look as bad as possible ... by refusing his request to turn the camera off or else he wouldn't talk.

Once the 72-year-old victim has been sufficiently badgered that he's left in a puddle of his own tears in a public parking lot ... it's off to the station with the raw edit.

Then, the producer, the reporter and the management sit down and figure out how best to present the story so that it looks like the victim of the crimes is in actuality the perpetrator. They caught him buying ANOTHER GUN!

Then, finally, once the hit piece is fully edited, it's off to the managing editor, who probably had a good laugh before signing off on the report.

So, you see ... this hit piece was planned and executed with the complete cooperation and cheerleading of the entire management team at Fox News in Dallas.

They should all be fired before the station is put out of business. Short that ... bloggers should begin calling advertisers to inquire about interviewing them about why they support scummy douchebag reporters doing yellow journalism.

It's gone!

Chris, I haven't actually gone to bed yet, so as far as I'm concerned it's still Thursday and therefore "today." But yeah, in essence, I'm guilty as charged. You just never know what's going to come up in the course of the day.

Justin, First I should make clear I don't know the reporter in this story or anyone who works with her so I'm interpreting your question in the abstract, not specific to this lady.

I've encountered a lot of strong and odd (and strongly odd) personalities in the news business. News people in my experience are generally impatient and distracted but not rude once you learn not to take it personally.

You may know people who are prone to overdramatizing. I've known a few reporters like that. On camera they had that annoying sensationalist quality that might prompt them to do parking lot confrontations. Off camera they were annoying, center-of-attention types.

On a totally other hand, I was once interviewed by NBC's Rahema Ellis for a Nightly News piece on online credit card scams and that lady has the most powerful voice I've ever heard, even just speaking naturally. She'd definitely make you cry in the parking lot, though I don't believe she does that kind of thing.

TV bookers are notoriously aggressive.  Bookers are the people who get the guests to come on TV. I've even heard stories of bookers from different shows on the same network undercutting each other to get the scoop on a guest. Some of that aggression can stay with them in general discourse -particularly because they've learned not to respect a "no." A pair of bookers recently cornered me in an elevator and tried to persuade me to participate in a TV segment. I wasn't interested but they still managed to walk away with my name, cell number and a "maybe." I hope they don't call me.

Long ago I was a booker for Court TV, getting guests for shows anchored by Gregg Jarrett (on Fox last I looked) and Nancy Grace (now Headline News). When pitching stories or guests at a show meeting Jarrett could badger you to the point of making you want to cry in a parking lot, but that was technically in the service of being professionally thorough. Now that I think about it, both of them are lawyers anyway so they don't really suit your question.

You Tube took it down! As to the content, I think I read enough of the comments to see what happened. I think Glen Frey said it best when he wrote the song "Dirty Laundry"!

That was Don Henley that wrote Dirty Laundry..."the bubble headed bleach blonde that comes on at five, she can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye...it's interesting when people die, give us dirty laundry."

Good morning, Will.  I really like your embedded videos but I've found on several occasions that on going back to old links the video no longer exists.

In all the confusion about fair use and copyright issues I wouldn't want you to put yourself at risk, but there are some free tools available your readers might find useful.  I guess I'm just very much 'old-school' but I like having local copies better than a collection of links, and as much as I dislike Flash, I guess it's probably here to stay, at least for a while.

I recently found a free tool called ultraget that allows you to copy YouTube videos to a local .flv file. http://www.ultraget.com/

As my default video viewer I'm using flvplayer4free, available here: http://www.flvplayer4free.com/free-flv-player-download.htm

I haven't run either of these apps through a complete evaluation, but at 1st, 2nd, and 3rd glance, they appear to be intuitive, well-written, and relatively bug free.  Feedback is welcomed.

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