Ft. Hood Editor Didn’t Mention Shooter Had Arabic-Sounding Name

“The day this happened, I was on the phone to Fox News. They didn’t have their people here yet. Our police reporter was on the scene of the shooting. He told us that the shooter had an Arabic-sounding last name. I had that info about an hour before it was picked up by MSNBC, Fox or anybody else and I didn’t use it. I had three different interviews with television news, I didn’t mention it. Why fan the flames? We had one source, and it doesn’t really add to the conversation. When you first come out with something and don’t have all the facts, to just throw it out there, that’s just incendiary, and no one needs that. That’s where we are with the terrorist thing.”

— Dave Miller, the deputy managing editor of the Killeen Daily Herald, the hometown paper for Fort Hood, providing a voice of reason during what had to be the most chaotic news event in the paper’s history. CJR has the full interview with Miller, and it’s worth a read if only to remind that not every media outlet in the country is solely interested in extreme headlines.

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