TV News Targets Twitter In Early Reports On Attack At American University Of Afghanistan
News operations bounced from presidential campaigning and rescue efforts after a deadly earthquake in central Italy to word of people trapped inside American University of Afghanistan after reports of gunfire and explosions.
Some of TV news’ first reports of the drama in Kabul came via Twitter; #Kabul quickly began trending.
CBS News’ Ahmad Mukhtar reported thaty several American professors are inside, along with possibly hundreds of students. Many appear to have escaped through emergency doors.
#AUAF under attack. I along with my friends escaped and several other of of my friends and professors trapped inside.
— Ahmad Mukhtar (@AhMukhtar) August 24, 2016
CNN’s early on-air reporting came via media reporter Brian Stelter who, in turn, leaned on two tweets from Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Massoud Hossaini, including the “harrowing”:
Help we are stuck inside AUAF and shooting flollowed by Explo this maybe my last tweets
— Massoud Hossaini (@Massoud151) August 24, 2016
“He has not posted anything since then,” Stelter noted ominously. (Stelter later reported AP had confirmed the photog was injured when he slipped on broken glass after the blast and had escaped from the building with others.)
CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield noted the attack follows the kidnapping earlier this month of American professor Kevin King and Australian professor Timothy Weeks by five armed men wearing Afghan military uniforms as they commuted from the campus to their home in Kabul. The professors’ whereabouts remain unclear, according to news reports.
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