\n<\/p>\n
On a recent visit to Uvalde,\u00a0Shimon Prokupecz<\/strong>\u00a0could feel the Texas community before he\u2019d even fully arrived. \u201cAs we\u2019re driving in, I could tell, you know. You\u2019re on that long road into Uvalde and\u2026I could start to feel it. I could start to feel the sadness,\u201d the CNN correspondent said. \u201cIt\u2019s normal life,\u201d he says. A new normal, where \u201cyou can\u2019t go a block without seeing a kid\u2019s face\u201d or \u201ca cross\u201d or \u201csomething that reminds you of what happened.\u201d The school is now closed but remains standing, as do the memorials erected for the victims. \u201cThe murals of all of the kids, different kids [who] died that day, are just everywhere.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a year since a shooter killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. The tragedy is not only in the lives lost but those that could have been saved had police acted sooner. We now know that members of law enforcement\u2014376 total<\/a>, from multiple agencies, arrived at the scene of the shooting\u2014could have potentially stopped the shooter within three minutes and were\u00a0equipped<\/a> to do so; instead, amid a breakdown in communications and leadership, and despite 911 calls from children inside of the classroom, they waited 77 minutes to act.\u00a0<\/p>\n We know this, and many other things about what went wrong in Uvalde, thanks to the unrelenting work of journalists like Prokupecz. Texas officials tried from the start\u00a0to contain<\/a> the disastrous revelations, seemingly releasing what little information they did when conflicting timelines or leaks left them no other choice. Given the lack of transparency, media outlets took on an outsized role, trying to get answers for the community and holding law enforcement accountable over their botched response. \u201cThroughout this last year doing this story, it just has seemed that it was me and my team and CNN going to these families and saying: Here\u2019s the information we\u2019ve uncovered. We want to share it with you. We\u2019re about to do these stories, but we want to tell you first,\u201d Prokupecz said.\u00a0<\/p>\n At times that has meant CNN, rather than the authorities, being the first ones to show families footage they didn\u2019t even know existed, like of their children on a bus to the hospital, covered in their classmates\u2019 blood; or of body camera footage from the moment they were rescued from a classroom full of bodies. It\u2019s a \u201crare and unique position that we are in, that we can give these families some of the answers that they were seeking,\u201d he said. It\u2019s also a \u201cpainful\u201d one, he added, in which he\u2019s had to ask himself, \u201cIs this right? Is it appropriate?\u201d (The Uvalde shooting also kicked off\u00a0a debate<\/a> in the journalism community about what the public should see in the aftermath of a mass shooting, and whether coverage needs to be more graphic to better reflect the horrors of gun violence.)<\/p>\n Throughout the past year, local news outlets, such as the Texas Tribune,\u00a0San Antonio Express-News,<\/em> and\u00a0Austin American-Statesman<\/em>\u00a0have<\/a> stayed on the story, as well as major networks like CNN and ABC, the latter of which kept a team in Uvalde\u00a0for a year<\/a>. But given the spate of mass shootings in America, the national media tends to swoop in for a few days before turning to the next tragedy, with grim milestones, like a one-year anniversary, providing an opportunity for news outlets to take stock. CNN is spotlighting Prokupecz\u2019s work in a special Uvalde-themed episode of\u00a0The Whole Story With Anderson Cooper,<\/em> airing Sunday; ABC is airing its own\u00a0two-hour documentary<\/a> two days earlier,\u00a0It Happened Here: A Year in Uvalde.<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m one of these people at CNN who parachutes in,\u201d Prokupecz told me. \u201cI cover the law enforcement response\u2014here\u2019s what happened\u2014and I do live shots, and I kind of leave once the story\u2019s over.\u201d Days before the shooting in Texas, he\u2019d been in Buffalo, New York, covering the supermarket shooting that left 10 dead. But in Uvalde, \u201cbecause the authorities here just played games from the beginning and didn\u2019t want to release all the information,\u201d he decided to stay, and to start covering the victims. As he told his bosses at CNN at the time, \u201cThis is the only way we\u2019re going to be able to figure out exactly what happened here.\u201d<\/p>\n