HOUSTON — On Friday, July 24, KHOU ran a story about preparing for tropical weather during a pandemic.
While putting together the story, we used file video that was shot in early March of local leaders at a meeting. It showed meeting attendees crowded around a table without masks and not practicing social distancing. The video was shot before there were any confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Harris County before a global pandemic had been declared and before any local or state mask order had been issued.
We never should have used that file video in Friday's story.
While broadcasters from time to time use file video in a story, our use of it, in this case, was careless. It was wrong. We should have known visually how this would be perceived. Please know our intention was not to put anyone in a bad light or mislead in any way.
We are having internal discussions about how this happened in order to put systems in place to prevent it from happening again.
Again, we deeply regret that the file video was used in this story. We promise to do better.
