How Omaha Media Fared When Put To The Test

Suddenly, that "snow event" forecast for Thursday, seemed insignificant. Even President George W. Bush's trip to Omaha earlier Wednesday - only the ninth time Bush has visited the city and eight more times than President Bill Clinton - was nearly forgotten. (Bush left town about a half-hour before the shootings.)

You didn't have to be at the Westroads Mall Wednesday afternoon to know something big was going down. Omaha Police cruisers, with lights flashing and sirens blaring, barreled down streets from every corner of the city to converge on what would turn out to be the largest one-day shooting massacre in the city's history.

Omaha media have covered mass-scale tragedy before - but not of this magnitude and on such a national stage. Only three people died in the Tornado of 1975, but the widespread, sweeping damage made it a mammoth undertaking for reporters in a time when news didn't travel nearly as fast.

More recently, the crash of a Seward school bus in West Omaha - one that took the lives of four people in October of 2001 - sparked massive, immediate media coverage. But on that Saturday afternoon, college football games took precedence over breaking news coverage.

Perhaps the closest thing to this tragedy was the bank robbery shooting deaths of five people in Norfolk, Neb., in September of 2002. But while that event attracted as much national attention, it did not get wall-to-wall coverage from Omaha media outlets.

The Early Going

The first dispatch by The Associated Press out of its Omaha bureau was headlined, "Man reportedly shot at Omaha mall; stores locked down" and it only hinted at the horror that was to come:

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - Police have locked down a busy Omaha mall after at least one person was shot this afternoon.

That report, though, came nearly a half-hour after Omaha TV stations first interrupted regular programming with early reports of the shooting. What followed would be more than eight hours of uninterrupted TV coverage by the city's ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates.

WOWT was clearly the leader in breaking new (and accurate) information. The station recorded many "firsts" including: that the gunman had died of a self-inflicted gunshot (courtesy of investigative reporter Mike McKnight), that he was 19-year-old Sarpy County resident Robert Hawkins and that he had left behind several suicide notes. WOWT was also first on the scene of a Bellevue home with Maniko Barthelemy's interview with the woman who said she was letting him live there after he had been kicked out of his own home.

WOWT also took a rather somber approach in its coverage. Anchor Tracy Madden was overly subdued, then suddenly reverted to her standard delivery during the station's late-evening newscast. Reporter Brian Mastre took a contemplative approach to his delivery - which, combined with his across-the-street location for live shots - made it seem as if he was more distant from the event than he actually was.

KETV broke out its playbook that has consistently made it a must-watch station for breaking news. The ABC affiliate pulled out all the stops with multiple live shots and live streaming coverage on KETV.com early on. When no new information was coming in hours later, the station trotted out reporter after reporter on set to share their own stories of what they saw and heard.

Of course there's no substitute for experience and KMTV's anchor team of Carol Wang and Carlo Cecchetto - who will have been on the job one year next month - came off as the outsiders they are when compared to their competitive anchor counterparts at WOWT and KETV. Their saving grace was veteran anchor Mary Williams, a Bellevue native who has worked at the station for more than 20 years.

KMTV's Cecchetto, though, offered one of the most compelling first-hand accounts by any media type, though, when he told viewers that he had been in the Von Maur store - at the customer service desk to pay a bill - just five minutes before the shootings.

"(It was) kind of eerie," Cecchetto said during a segment. "Just moments later he (Hawkins) was roughly at the same spot, shooting down at people on the second floor. Watching the video, I saw a lady wearing a turquoise sweater and blouse who was working at the counter who I paid my bill to and who was lovely and wonderful and cheerful and had that holiday spirit. A couple hours later, I see her outside in the cold, comforting herself, shaking and crying. It's a reminder of how violence can shake everything you know and throw it upside down."

Noticeably absent from KMTV's coverage was veteran reporter Joe Jordan, who broke the story earlier Wednesday of an expected showdown between US Senate candidate Mike Johanns and longtime Republican-now-registered Democrat Tony Raimondo, a Columbus, Neb., businessman. Jordan extensively covered the President's visit to Omaha, only to see most of his prepared report shelved in favor of shooting coverage.

World-Herald Left To Play Catch Up

Has the state's largest newspaper ever been so out of touch with a breaking news story? In a day when a website can keep a print outlet even with its electronic competitors, the Omaha World-Herald's web portal, Omaha.com, folded like a Kevin Cosgrove-coached Nebraska defense, buckling under the pressure of thousands of visitors. And it came as no surprise. The same thing has happened twice before in the past month: First, when Tom Osborne was hired and Steve Pederson fired as Nebraska's athletic director; And Sunday, when Bo Pelini was announced as the Huskers' new head coach. The newspaper also had the unfortunate timing of having gone to press with its afternoon edition at about the same time as the shooting was taking place.

There were lows on TV and radio, too. KETV's Todd Andrews practically gushed that he "grew up in Westroads Mall." KPTM's Amanda Mueller asked one of the station's reporter whether Hawkins - other than his depression, the loss of his job and the break-up of his girlfriend - had showed any signs that he might snap.

One station (KMTV) initially reported that police were looking for two suspects. More than one station initially reported that the suspect was "a black male." Both of these erroneous reports came as a result of reporting police scanner traffic - something the Poynter Institute decries.

The dreaded "shots rang out" cliche reared its ugly head several times, though not a single witness to the shooting described the gunfire they heard in that manner. Rather, many said they mistook the sound of the shots as balloons popping or the sound of construction.

Radio station KFAB, which had earlier pulled out all the stops in putting "all hands on deck" at the scene and on the air, interrupted coverage of the Nebraska men's basketball game later Wednesday night for a "report of a bomb at the Westroads Mall." Thankfully, afternoon talk show host Tom Becka quickly interceded to clarify that police were simply checking out a vehicle thought to belong to the shooter. Unfortunately, listeners were left to wonder what was going on thereafter, as the station decided to take audio from KETV's broadcast.

What Lies Ahead

So what's to come over the next few days and weeks and months? Already there is criticism that the media has given Hawkins the very attention he sought by going on his killing spree. A debate rages over gun control in the comments on one website and a 9:30 a.m. press conference is already set to release more details.

There will be the makeshift memorials, the identification of the victims and their stories, many more stories of heroics and tragedy. Questions are sure to come about the six minutes it took for police to respond. Or what involvement mall security had (or did not have). The release of calls to 911. Possibly even surveillance tape will be leaked, particularly since the shooter didn't live to stand trial. Even the Omaha World-Herald is expected to face questions about its front page story in Sunday's editions marking the 50th anniversary of Charles Starkweather's killings (He, too, was 19 at the time.) and whether it glorified a tragedy and served as a blueprint for Hawkins' massacre.

"Good Morning America," "The Today Show" and countless other network and cable news programs are sure to have interviews with those who were in the store when the tragedy unfolded. Someone will undoubtedly court an interview with the Von Maur pianist, who reportedly played on (unwittingly) after the first sound of gunshot. And what became of the mall Santa Claus during the shooting? Where and how did he take shelter?

And you can expect World-Herald columnist Mike Kelly to write something along the lines of "Omaha will no longer just be known as the home of the College World Series."