Journalists shot, killed in Virginia during live shot

Saw this on yahoo, "alleged shooter" and it bugged me.

If he tweets and Facebook's video of him shooting how is he still alleged?

 

Crap like this makes me irrationally angry. I wonder if the reporter even knows about the Privacy Protection Act. Should've been on the phone to the company lawyer before agreeing to delete anything. Or let 'em seize it and get it back in a few hours once the cops realize the shitstorm that they've created by being authoritarian idiots.

 

And who is doing the alleging?

Two of the many reasons journalists should train themselves not to use that oft-misused word.

 

"Access-based" journalism.

 

This is unacceptable.

 

It's Virginia.

 

Meh, don't give me that crap. I covered cops in semi-rural part of Virginia for a few years. Just cause the guy with the badge doesn't know the law is no excuse for the reporter not knowing his rights. Privacy Protection Act clearly makes this kind of attempt to seize a journalist's work product illegal and opens the cops up to civil liability. But that disappears when the reporter agrees to delete it.

 

Oh, I fully agree he shouldn't have deleted it. If he doesn't do much else with the phone today (like take more vids and pics) can he possibly undelete it later using a computer?

 

I don't know the answer to that. I know sometimes images can be recovered even after they've been "deleted" but I don't know enough about his phone to give an answer.

 

Change subject slightly. Were two separate videos posted by the shooter? I am aware of the live TV footage, and the shooter POV, but I read somewhere in all the flurry today that the shooter had two videos up before FB shut the account off.

 

That's infuriating. That's an illegal police order. Reporter should've flat out refused.

 

According to FBI stats, the number of firearm related murders in 1994 was 16,305. In 2013 (latest year data is available) it was 8,454.
We aren't more violent. We have always been violent. We are just more televised.