ABC, NY Times reporters go full-on vulture tweeting friends, family of Connecticut massacre targets

Zitat

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An ABC News editorial producer earned the online equivalent of a hard slap to the face Friday, after she used Twitter to approach two people for interviews who were painfully close to the morning massacre of a Connecticut elementary school.

Nadine Shubailat tweeted interview requests to a man who said his “good friend” had a child in kindergarten at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and to a woman whose cousin was a first-grade teacher killed in the Friday morning gun rampage.

In the second case, Shubailat was not the only reporter to go after a victim’s relative. A second ABC producer, a New York Times reporter and a Los Angeles-based producer of a YouTube-only news program also approached the grieving woman for interviews just hours after her 22-year-old relative was shot to death.

Shubailat’s LinkedIn profile boasts that she books interview subjects for Diane Sawyer, George Stephanopoulos, Barbara Walters, Robin Roberts, Jake Tapper, Bob Woodruff and other ABC journalists. It also says she was previously a senior producer for “Larry King Live,” and the press secretary to Queen Noor of Jordan.

“[C]an we talk to your friend who lives in Sandy Hook and whose daughter goes to kindergarten?” Shubailat asked Twitter user @artayd2 at 1:52 p.m., according to archived Twitter records. “I’m w [with] ABC News.”

Her target had tweeted that his friend “lives < 10 minutes from Sandy Hook Elementary and has a daughter in kindergarten.”

@artayd2′s response was instantaneous and blunt, telling Shubailat to “eat a dick.”

A screen-capture of the exchange quickly made the rounds on the social media website Reddit before it was reported by Gawker.

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More and images of tweets at DC link.

Late Friday night, @artayd2 retweeted a message from a friend who asked, “Why do shooters get famous? Maybe because reporters are so desperate for ratings, they’ll interview freshly-traumatized children.”