I thought the early reports were saying multiple individuals were involved in Dallas attacks.

[DCBob]

I remember reading and hearing about muliple shooters.. triangulating.. organized, etc. How could they have gotten that wrong? I know it was chaotic but seems that all the shots had to be obviously coming from one direction. That gave the impression this was a coordinated attack by some group instead of a lone madman as we now know.

[uppityperson]

1. The news media exists to sell ad time. Rumors sell more than facts. Fast reporting is more highly

desired that truth.

It was chaotic, they didn't know, sounds echo.

[DCBob]

3. Was it just the media or did law enforcement also report this?

[uppityperson]

4. I don't know, am being cynical. Never believe early reports, especially as things are

happening. That one guy whose picture was tweeted, that was criminal to do so, imo.

[DCBob]

5. Yeah. They got alot wrong on this one early.

Unfortunately the impression is still out there that it was a coordinated attack.

[Salviati]

2. Early reports of everything should always be taken with salt...

It seems they're wrong in almost all cases.

[Duckhunter935]

6. Early reports are always wrong

Like when the plastered the face of an innocent man all over the news.

[X_Digger]

7. It's called echoes.

If a car backfires downtown, you hear it two or three times as it bounces around.

[MADem]

8. The guy was shooting, picking up, and moving to a new location.

Made it seem like there was more than one.

[DCBob]

12. I didnt know that. That explains it.

Thanks.

[MADem]

14. The mayor mentioned it...

Mayor Mike Rawlings said the gunman was a “mobile shooter” and had written manifestos on how to “shoot and move, shoot and move, and he did that,” causing confusion during the shooting. But police say he acted alone.

http://heavy.com/news/2016/07/micah-xavier-x-johnson-dallas-police-shooting-sniper-gunman-shooter-suspect-name-identified-photos-facebook-video/

[Matrosov]

9. I remember the same

They said at least two snipers, and later that police had arrested three people, two men and a woman.

[gratuitous]

10. Yes, early reports from a chaotic scene

It's pretty common for a lot of things to be mentioned in the early going, something that most folks understand instinctively. Which is why all the Republican obsession with the early reports out of Benghazi is just so much nonsense. In the early hours of the attacks, which happened thousands of miles away, it wasn't clear who was doing what or why. Initial information and conjecture became for Republicans evidence of a massive cover-up or something.

In Dallas, which is a lot more accessible than Benghazi and better understood by our national media, we still got incomplete information supplemented with conjecture and some guesswork based on the developing situation. The shooter was well-prepared and seemed to have a coherent plan rather than the standard go-into-a-crowded-place-and-start-blazing-away used by a lot of mass shooters. His technique made it seem to a lot of the people trapped in his fire zone that there had to be more than one shooter.

[SuperDutyTX]

11. Yes. Initially police thought multiple shooters

I was listening to the scanners live, and watching TV at the time. For a couple of hours, police chatter indicated they had multiple suspects.

[pnwmom]

13. Some open-carry guys were openly carrying. And the police, not surprisingly,

at first thought they might be involved.

That's a risk you take if you carry an AR-15 around and bullets start to fly.

[annavictorious]

15. I heard that ricocheting bullets

were mistakenly thought to have been coming from a second location. It made sense to me, given the urban setting.

[Skittles]

16. BECAUSE IT WAS COMPLETE CHAOS

jeez, not everything is a CONSPIRACY