They used a lot of wide shots. Tighter shots from the helicopter and other sensitive material were taped for later use when the live coverage was coming from the ground or the studio.
"When we were not live, I had our reporter/photographer in the helicopter shoot tight on the activity. We recorded it for use when the situation was over. There were a lot of tactical, strategic pictures of the SWAT team and police officers that I was uncomfortable showing on television," Dennis said.

TV tried avoid showing police tactics

Not showing police movements was discussed extensively in the KMGH newsroom, too.
"That was something we talked about a lot during the day. We made a conscious decision to be very careful showing police movements," said News Director Diane Mulligan.
They had had their helicopter and FLIR camera for nearly a year. They had the capacity to fill the screen with steady, tight shots.
"We have had many ethical discussions about what to use the camera for and how to make sure the camera is never invasive or intrusive. So far, we have not had one issue with it, and that's because we have talked about it in advance. If you are talking about these issues the day something like this happens, you're in trouble," she said.

Graphic images were screened as much as possible

There were many places where they had to be careful which pictures they aired. It wasn't just at the high school itself.
"When we were at the triage center, we tried to get as much of that video in house, and not take it directly to air, so that we would be able to decide what the shots were that really needed to be seen," Mulligan explained.
"Another key was how tight the photographer was shooting. How close do they really need to get? Obviously, the carnage was everywhere," she said.

With the removal of the victims' bodies and the medical treatment of wounded survivors, there was a lot to monitor.

At KUSA, Dennis made it clear they would be cautious.
"We had pictures coming in from hospitals that I told them absolutely, positively, I did not want to see on our air," she stressed.

"I went back to editing and told them I did not want to see a body. If I could see an arm or a leg, they were way too tight. "I did not want to see faces until it was over. There were a lot of parents out there, and I did not want someone to see their child on TV."
	Patti Dennis News Director KUSA-TV April, 1999

They tried to avoid inadvertently notifying a parent over the air that their child had been hurt.
"We weren't going to show faces of injured children. We showed the faces of surviving children when they bused them out of the area. When the parents and children reunited, I didn't have a problem with showing that. But I had a problem with anyone who was injured being recognizable. I was not going to show anyone coming in on a stretcher out of an ambulance --- no tight shots," Dennis stressed.

Do you show live someone fall to a possible injury
or death?

Some scenes were deemed too intense to show live.
When it came to the helicopter shot of a young man throwing himself from the second floor library while SWAT team members waited below, KMGH's photographer was fairly tight on the window when the young man came out.
"As the drama was unfolding, and the SWAT team was reaching up to pull him out, it was obvious he was going to fall. At that point, we cut away," Mulligan said.
"I have had phone calls from some affiliate news directors saying, 'Why did you do that? That is the difference between the viewership here and in other cities. I don't think our viewers wanted to see that student smash into the top of the truck. He was already limp, and obviously bleeding profusely," she said.

Her decision was to cut away from the live image, but to keep rolling on tape.
"We could put the video in context, and treat it however we needed to treat it later. But I didn't know what was going to happen when he hit that truck," she said.
"I am very, very comfortable with my decision to cut away, and so is our newsroom. Since then, we have used the video, but we have not run it in its entirety. Every time it is used, it has to be approved by me, so I can see exactly how it is being used and the context it is being used in," she said.
"The impact of him hitting the top of the truck is the most gruesome part, but at the same time, it is the picture, and we knew it would be the picture that told the story of the tremendous horror that was there," said Mulligan.
The anchors were ready to be punched up on camera at any point.

"If it makes me cringe, given the video I have seen throughout my career, I know it is going to make my viewers cringe."
	Diane Mulligan News Director KMGH-TV April, 1999

KUSA also recorded the shot of the boy hanging from a second floor window, and finally being rescued by the SWAT team. But Dennis chose not to show it right away.
"I wasn't comfortable showing that. It gave away a definite location in the building where someone was getting out. I don't know how much --- if at all --- these guys were watching television," she said.

This was an event that played out over a long time.
A cafeteria worker phoned 911 at 11:25 a.m. An hour later, students and teachers were still hiding scattered inside the building. Law enforcement had to move deliberately, unsure if their movements would set off more killings, unsure about bombs in the building.

Some of the video gave the newspeople the first confirmation that people had died.
At KMGH, news staffers realized there were students dead by around 2 p.m. when helicopter video showed a SWAT team member picking up a body and then dropping it back to the ground when he realized the girl was dead.
"He picked up the body by the shoulders. You see a wave of disgust cross his face, and he drops the body. It limply falls back to the ground, and he walks away. That's when we knew there were dead kids. We also knew the situation was still unfolding. There could have been negotiations taking place, so we did not report that at that time, nor was the video shown," said Mulligan.
In fact, she wanted the video never aired.
"It was probably one of the worst shots I saw as far as conveying the horror of the whole thing," she said.

However, video that seems inappropriate at one point in the day may be used later in a different context.
"One shot showed kids running out to a fire truck. As they were running, they were jumping over a dead body. We didn't put that on until that evening's newscast. It wasn't tight on the body, but we wanted to show as few bodies as possible," Mulligan said.

Identifying the suspects --- you better be right

KCNC reported first on the two suspects.
News Director Angie Kucharski had confidence in her reporter, Brian Maass. He had developed the information from his sources.
"We had confirmed the information through several sources. It was an example of good reporting," she said

KUSA had been given three names early on, but did not go with them.
"It is information that is important, but it is certainly not urgent. I wanted to make sure we were right. Getting it wrong would have been a disaster," said Dennis.

It was 2:30 p.m. the following day --- more than 24 hours after it began --- when the authorities officially confirmed students Klebold and Harris were the suspects.
At that point, two of the dead had been removed from the school. Twelve bodies remained in the library.

A lot of the images seen after the crisis was over were taped, but not broadcast live.

"Part of the key early on may have been that we took a step back, and we were able to agree on the tone of our overall coverage, said Kucharski.
"It wasn't anything extremely formal. But as we were producing the coverage in the newsroom, we developed a sense of what profile we wanted to have," she said.
"If you can get the people in your station to agree on the vision and your profile, some of the other decisions fall into line a little easier," she said.

Dennis said that in overseeing live coverage of these unexpected and terribly tragic events, she fell back on all the things she had learned the past 20 years of live TV.
"Don't use the 'Could we?' formula. You must use the 'Should we?' formula. If you approach it from 'Could we?', with technology today, you can just about do anything. You must use the 'Should we?" she said.

The lesson she took away from the tragedy was that you must have someone in place whose job it is to stand and watch your coverage like a viewer does.
"As a producer and a director, you can get lost in that dark control room with all the pictures coming at you. You are not thinking like a human. Technology is making your decisions. You can't let that happen," she stressed.

Your team must know what your standards are.
"Make decisions now on what the limits are. Make sure the editors know that if there is a question, they can come and get you, and they should get you. Make sure the live truck operators know if they are feeding something back, and they see something questionable, they should alert you," Mulligan urged.

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