Hearst’s Des Moines, Iowa CBS affiliate KCCI ran posted a story about a woman who is teaching moms how to safely handle both their babies and their handguns on its website. Its Omaha station, KETV aired the story.
Trouble is, the story was done by Nexstar’s ABC affiliate WOI. In fact, KCCI used WOI reporter Nikki Davidson‘s picture on its website version of the story (picture to the right). Davidson also shows up in the video.
>UPDATE: WOI news director April Samp told TVSpy the station aired the original story, reported by Davidson, on its Sunday 10:00 p.m. show. CNN saw it and wanted it. WOI shared it with CNN, embargoed to Des Moines. KETV then used it for an on-air story and a web producer at KCCI posted it online. After TVSpy emailed KCCI, the story was pulled from its website.
Here’s the full text of Samp’s statement:
“It’s frustrating to see your newsroom’s hard work and enterprise reporting on a competitor’s website for hours, especially during a high-traffic time of day for news websites. In this day and age of content sharing, I can understand how a mistake could be made. That’s what happened here. I called KCCI’s News Director about the mistake and asked what happened. As soon as he was aware that WOI content was front and center on their website, KCCI removed the WOI story. We appreciate their respect for WOI (Local 5 News.)”
Here’s WOI’s story:
And here’s the KETV version: UPDATE: It looks like the video has been pulled.