Jun 20, 2016 4 min read

Late in the evening of June 12, victory was hanging in the balance.

In San Jose, the Penguins and Sharks were battling in game six of the Stanley Cup finals. In Pittsburgh, the three major television stations were struggling with how to balance coverage of a possible hockey championship with the worst mass shooting in modern American history.

In both San Jose and Pittsburgh, the Penguins won.

By 21st-century journalism standards, it was the right thing to do.

Before the pivotal hockey game even began, I had wondered aloud how area newspapers might cover both events, adding the snarky remark that sales of thousands of commemorative front pages were at stake. But both the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Observer-Reporter did a professional job of giving both major stories due respect. Those “man cave” commemorative editions could go to press at another time.

Television stations had a more pressing quandary. For once, “breaking news” was not a misnomer. Also, the Penguins’ late-night victory was undeniably local and of interest to a wide audience, as opposed to, say, the more typical “breaking news” of a traffic tie-up in McKeesport.

The devastating Orlando tragedy, though, was a major and significant national story, perhaps the biggest story of the year and certainly the most covered story of the day. That fact may well have factored into the final decision to give the Penguin victory virtually the entire newscast. The hockey victory celebration was immediate, while the Orlando shooting had occurred more than 18 hours beforehand.

Ultimately, the major difference was that the three Pittsburgh stations had staff in San Jose and/or Pittsburgh prepared to report in depth on a Stanley Cup championship that was of interest to much of its audience (as evidenced by the nearly 400,000 who attended the parade a few days later). They did not have reporters in Orlando, nor did they have knowledge at the time of a Western Pennsylvania connection. Given that local news broadcasts are primarily devoted to local news covered by local reporters, the pending decision became much more clear to programmers.

And, finally, there was this ultimate realization. The moment one of the Pittsburgh stations turned to the tragedy in Orlando, viewers would have switched en masse to coverage of the celebration in Pittsburgh.

My gut reaction was that the TV coverage was wrong – all wrong. But it was not. Television is in the business of serving a wide audience. And at that precise moment on Sunday night, the audience – for better or worse – was extremely interested in Sidney Crosby hoisting the Stanley Cup and thousands of Carson Street revelers hoisting their refreshments. It was duly noted that the ensuing Carson Street celebration was more muted than expected, but that had nothing to do with Orlando and everything to do with the playoff game occurring on a Sunday night.

As one who constantly clicked through the KDKA, WTAE and WPXI coverage through the early hours of Monday, I did not see nor hear every minute of news programming on the three stations that evening, although it certainly seemed at first to be limited to San Jose, Carson Street, Consol Energy Center and, a bit later, the weather desk.

In retrospect, the three stations might have more comfortably presented that night’s hockey-related coverage as an hourlong “Special Report” (preferably with sports anchors at the helm) followed by a typical newscast.

There are, of course, those who will argue that the horrific event in Orlando should have overshadowed everything else. Eventually, it did. But we are a people who live in the moment. In those late hours of June 12, the moment belonged to the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Perhaps, after a day of unbelievable tragedy, we needed that temporary diversion.