Anderson Cooper reported on the incident on CNN, and showed video of Duke spray-painting a red “V” with a circle around it (think the movie V For Vendetta) before telling several people in the room to leave. At one point, a woman tries to knock the gun out of Duke’s hand, but is unsuccessful. Superintendent Bill Husfelt pleads with Duke to let it go, and then Duke fires several shots. Duke is then shot by Mike Jones, a security officer for the school district (Jones was off-camera). An absolutely surreal scene.

Also disturbing, arguably, is CNN’s exploitative handling of the video. They take pains to repeatedly warn viewers how graphic and upsetting the images will be, but wait until after they’ve played the video (twice, once in slow motion) to telll viewers that all of the assailant’s shots missed. This seems to confirm the rather obvious fact that “Graphic footage!” warnings are about gluing eyeballs, not shielding them.

Video of the event from CNN below (warning: graphic).

Kurtz and guest Margaret Carlson of Bloomberg were skeptical.

According to Carlson, Dobbs “takes extreme views” on immigration and other hot-button political issues “in part for ratings.” Carlson went so far as to equate Dobbs with Glenn Beck, and said that both men represented the media type who “come[s] to believe when you’re saying because it is so satisfying to you in terms of ratings and income” rather than out of any deeper personal conviction.

She also took issue with the truth of his shooting claims. Think Progress (not mentioned in the Reliable Sources segment) reports that the New Jersey State Police have not ruled out the possibility that the shooting was a “hunting-related incident,” which a spokesman said was not uncommon in the “very rural” area where Dobbs lives.

Howard Kurtz didn’t dive too deep in the mounting debate between Carlson and The American Spectator‘s John Fund, but he did implicitly question Dobbs’s shooting claim. Crucially, Kurtz framed the question of a shooting by a “nut” as an “if” rather than a certainty. Carlson said that there was “absolutely no evidence that somebody was shooting at him or his wife,” and while Kurtz didn’t wholeheartedly agree, he did mention that New Jersey police have tried to downplay the incident in the press. Given that both Kurtz and Dobbs operate under the CNN flag (and Kurtz has been singled out by Media Matters in the past for not criticizing Dobbs enough), his display of skepticism was significant.