Editors Want to Know Why Cheney Shooting Reported Late

By: Joe Strupp From Texas to Washington, D.C., news outlets are asking why word of Vice President Dick Cheney's shooting of a fellow hunter on Saturday did not get out until nearly a day later, eventually coming only from unofficial sources.

"That is the question our Washington bureau is asking, that it took that long to get notification out about it," said Debbie Hiott, assistant managing editor for national, state, and local news at the Austin American-Statesman. "We are still not clear on what investigative agencies were involved."

Newspapers and other news agencies were caught by surprise Sunday when the Corpus Christi (Texas) Caller-Times first reported that Cheney on Saturday had shot fellow hunter Harry Whittington, a prominent Austin attorney. The two were part of a group hunting at a Texas ranch owned by Anne Armstrong, whose family has long-running ties to several Republican leaders.

The story first broke on the Caller-Times Web site Sunday, with Associated Press first reporting it after 3 p.m. Sunday. But no official word came from the vice-president's office until reporters began asking about the incident late Sunday.

"We are concerned when an official of the United States is involved in a shooting and 24 hours passes without official word coming out," said Kathleen Carroll, Associated Press executive editor. "The vice president's office did not choose to announce it, go public with it. We are talking to everyone this morning about what happened, who is responsible, and the issues related to who should say something and why."

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said today that he had been told about the shooting Saturday--but not Cheney's role in it until Sunday.

Michael Tackett, Washington bureau chief of the Chicago Tribune, offered a demand for answers. "When you are the vice president of the United States, you live in perhaps the world's second biggest fishbowl," said Tackett. "Part of the price of admission is that there are very few things that can be considered private events. When what happened also prompts the generation of public records, police reports and hospital records, that certainly is not a private event."

Tribune Washington reporters also took the issue to the bureau's recently launched blog, "The Swamp." "How is it that Vice President Cheney can shoot a man, albeit accidentally, on Saturday during a hunting trip and the American public not be informed of it until today?" reporter Frank James blogged on Sunday evening. As of Monday morning, that entry had prompted 143 comments to the site.

Editors contend it is news and remain critical of the lack of information. "I've been asking the same questions," Editor Jeff Cohen of the Houston Chronicle said when told of other editors' concerns. "We are trying to run down exactly what happened. We are still trying to piece it all together."

Leonard Downie, Jr., executive editor of The Washington Post, declined to comment on the issue. But Post political blogger Dan Froomkin opined on his Web page Monday, stating, "The vice president of the United States shoots someone in a hunting accident and rather than immediately come clean to the public, his office keeps it a secret for almost a whole day."

One of the few journalists involved in the story who was not surprised at the delay in reporting is Caller-Times reporter Jaime Powell, who with her colleague Katahryn Garcia broke the story after the ranch owner Armstrong, one of her longtime sources, called her Sunday morning. Powell, who also hunts, said she has been sprayed with the type of pellets that injured Whittington, although not at such close range.

Because such accidents "happen frequently," according to Powell, she was not surprised that it would not be reported sooner. "It just happens," she said.

But Doug Pike, an outdoors reporter at the Houston Chronicle who, like many such writers has been drafted to work the story, reports that the accident is rare. He said his reporting since Sunday found that Texas had only 2.7 hunting accidents per 100,000 hunting licenses sold in 2005. "That is the lowest since 1966 when they started keeping records," he said. "It is uncommon."