The discussion of the Thursday car incident with West Virginia reporter Tori Yorgey, who was hit by a vehicle as she was reporting from Kanahwa County, has not stopped, even though the reporter underlined she was okay.
The now viral video caused many questions among the netizens. Particularly, people wondered why would the anchor be so calm as he witnessed the reporter being hit by a car, and demanded a change in media policy regarding the solo live shots for multimedia journalists.
Yorgey has already taken to Twitter to assure the concerned public that she feels "fine, just a little sore". She also made an attempt to defend Irr, who has already faced a wave of condemnation for his reaction.
"For the record: [Tim Irr] couldn’t see what was happening in that moment. He is one of the kindest people I know, and was first to call to check on me," she tweeted.
The next day, Irr and Yorgey appeared together on live TV once again, this time to discuss the incident. Irr said that the reporter "gave us all a scare", while Yorgey described the wave of support she received from her colleagues.
According to the anchor, he had troubles seeing that Yorgey got hit by a car due to a size of his monitor. Irr said he could only "hear" the incident from the reporter's perspective. She echoed his statement, noting that one cannot properly see what's going on when at the anchor's desk.
Still, Irr, along with the WSAZ network, received a lot of criticism online over their response to the situation.
One user even shared a photo that allegedly showed what Irr described as a "small monitor".
WSNC reporter Shamarria Morrison launched a campaign to end solo live shots for multimedia journalists, calling it "a practice that's proven multiple times to be unsafe."