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Covering breaking news, especially a story as shocking as Charlie Kirk’s assassination, is what journalists both live for and dread. It’s the moment that calls for a clear head and staying cool under intense deadline pressure. That’s particularly true in broadcast news, where deadlines are nonnegotiable. The newscast starts when it starts and deadlines are counted down not in hours but in minutes and seconds.

Here’s how Kirk’s assassination coverage unfolded in a CBS newsroom on 57^th Street.   

The first report of a shooting at a Utah campus came at 2:30 p.m. on Sept. 10.

And then this:

Based on those three sentences and video clips starting to circulate on social media, our job was to produce a news story to be aired on CBS stations and affiliates around the country. That’s an audience of millions.

As our investigative unit worked to verify the story, the first challenge was that graphic video. Before the digital age, television producers had the unenviable responsibility for screening raw footage, some of it too gruesome to share with the public, and then deciding how to edit it for broadcast. The idea was not to sanitize the images, but to present them in a way that told the story without traumatizing the audience. In today’s world, news and content spread lightning fast over social media platforms. We knew that long before our story hit the air on linear newscasts, much of the audience would have already seen the video of Kirk taking a bullet to the neck in horrifying detail. Nevertheless, with guidance from CBS News Standards, we froze the video just before the gunshot. No blood, no death on our air.

A producer’s job will often involve not only writing the script for a reporter to narrate but also gathering the video elements and interviews. In a breaking news environment, that means writing while simultaneously looking for any information that advances the story.  At 2:49, video appeared on X of a man being detained and almost immediately reports began circulating: a suspect was in custody. But was he really the shooter? Just because he was in handcuffs, was he the guy? Should that be included in our story? The answer was no and no. Without verification, that key part of the journalistic process, we would not put a man’s face on TV and call him the suspected gunman. As it turned out, he was questioned and released and never officially a suspect. It was a good example of one of the challenges of the digital age: speed versus accuracy.

An even thornier question arose later in the afternoon as we were preparing an updated version of the story to include new information and interviews from eyewitnesses. What we were really waiting for, in the swirl of bits and pieces of information, was any kind of official report on the investigation. So, when Utah law enforcement scheduled a 6:30 p.m. press conference, everyone tuned in. But then, moments before officials entered the briefing room, FBI Director Kash Patel posted this shocker on X:

Wow! A suspect in custody – everyone scrambled to report the news. And then, whiplash. As the press conference started, the first thing the Utah Public Safety Commissioner said was that his officers were currently working with the FBI to find the killer. Hmmmm, what to do with this conflicting information? Is the FBI Director in Washington a more reliable source than investigators on the ground in Utah? Patel was incorrect and later posted a follow-up:

That misstep has been at the center of a continued debate about Patel’s behavior and how much or how little journalists can rely on high level appointed government officials.

As The New York Times pointed out, the FBI is historically buttoned-down and cautious, with a “longstanding reluctance to compromise investigations by freely sharing information with the public.” Patel was immediately accused of grandstanding, more concerned with his public profile than the actual investigation.

As Kovach and Rosenstiel tell us in The Elements of Journalism, “Reporting on investigations requires enormous due diligence.” Even a source as high-ranking as the FBI director must be carefully evaluated and corroborated through additional sources.  

Patel’s handling of the Kirk investigation has not helped his image. Four former FBI officials told NBC News his social media posts “undermined public confidence in the bureau.” The broader public seems to agree. Two weeks after Kirk’s death, a Quinnipiac poll found 49% of registered voters disapprove of the way Patel is handling his job.

At CBS, as information about Kirk’s death continued to trickle into the newsroom and a more complete picture emerged, this was the story that aired on the evening news: