We learn nothing from seeing murder in real time

Killed on duty: Parker (left) and Ward were fatally shot in Virginia. — AFP

I DON’T know at what exact point the Virginia murders began. Was it when the killer switched his camera on? Was it when he first pointed the gun at TV journalist Alison Parker, who continued her live broadcast, apparently oblivious to his presence? Or was it when he pointed the gun again, and pulled the trigger on Parker and her colleague Adam Ward?

For most people, these questions would become grotesquely irrelevant once the crime had been committed. In newsrooms, they were considered in painstaking detail.