Why Did It Take More Than 18 Hours For The World To Find Out About The Cheney Shooting?
I imagine you were as surprised as I was yesterday to discover that Dick Cheney has joined a very exclusive club: Sitting Vice Presidents Who Have Shot Someone. (The only other member, as far as I know: Aaron Burr, who famously killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel – and then served out his term.)
There are a lot of questions surrounding the shooting of 78-year-old millionaire lawyer Harry Whittington, who is now in the hospital recovering from a blast of birdshot to his face, neck and chest, but we're concerned with the media angle – namely, if this happened around 5:30 PM Saturday, why didn't news of it come out until Sunday afternoon? It seens to have fallen to the owner of the ranch where the incident took place, Katherine Armstrong, to inform the media what happened. As the Washington Post points out, "Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account."
Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell reports that the reporter from the Caller-Times, Jaime Powell, got the tip thanks to a "strong source relationship" with Armstrong. "…it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter…had not received word from the ranch owner," writes Mitchell.
In case you're having trouble reading between the lines: It looks like the White House thought it best not to let anyone know that the Veep had shot someone in the face.
As Mitchell points out, the Chicago Tribune's Frank James articulated the problem with that on the Tribune's Washington Bureau blog: "When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance, that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public?"
There are a lot of questions surrounding the shooting of 78-year-old millionaire lawyer Harry Whittington, who is now in the hospital recovering from a blast of birdshot to his face, neck and chest, but we're concerned with the media angle – namely, if this happened around 5:30 PM Saturday, why didn't news of it come out until Sunday afternoon? It seens to have fallen to the owner of the ranch where the incident took place, Katherine Armstrong, to inform the media what happened. As the Washington Post points out, "Cheney's office made no public announcement, deciding to defer to Armstrong because the incident had taken place on her property. Armstrong called the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, and when a reporter from the paper called the White House, the vice president's office confirmed the account."
Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell reports that the reporter from the Caller-Times, Jaime Powell, got the tip thanks to a "strong source relationship" with Armstrong. "…it is not known for certain that Cheney's office, the White House, or anyone else intended to announce the shooting if the reporter…had not received word from the ranch owner," writes Mitchell.
In case you're having trouble reading between the lines: It looks like the White House thought it best not to let anyone know that the Veep had shot someone in the face.
As Mitchell points out, the Chicago Tribune's Frank James articulated the problem with that on the Tribune's Washington Bureau blog: "When a vice president of the U.S. shoots a man under any circumstance, that is extremely relevant information. What might be the excuse to justify not immediately making the incident public?"
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