The car accident isn’t the strangest part of this, believe it or not.

It’s the reaction of the anchor, completely unperturbed after seemingly witnessing a colleague run down before his eyes.

Maybe when you’ve spent years reporting daily on death, accidents, and human misery various and sundry, you go numb to tragedy even when it’s happening in real time right in front of you. Think of it as the journalist’s equivalent of the thousand-yard stare.

But, no, actually there’s a simpler explanation:

On the contrary. I couldn’t see what happened. Only audio. Then, I wasn’t truly convinced she was ok.

— Tim Irr (@WSAZirr) January 20, 2022

Okay, but the director must have been watching the video. Why didn’t he cut the feed after she disappeared from view?

Wow, this reporter gets hit by a car, and rebounds to finish the live shot! 😂 pic.twitter.com/dbwKt5N1xc

— Lee K. Howard (@HowardWKYT) January 20, 2022

Are we sure we aren’t being pranked here? She’s remarkably chipper and on-topic after nearly ending up underneath the wheels of an SUV moments before.

The reporter is Tori Yorgey, coincidentally in her last week of work at WSAZ in West Virginia. She’s starting a job at a local affiliate in Pennsylvania, where she’s from, on February 1. Maybe she thought it’d be funny to go out with a bang from her current job and arranged the incident with a friend.

Although, uh, there are surely less risky ways to prank your network than being sideswiped on live television. Forget that theory.

Reporters are treating this as a teachable moment:

a journalist getting hit by a car live on air & continuing her job is not a story of resilience but of a sick industry & work culture that pressures ppl to put their job above their health/safety. Let’s work on making this a job where you don’t have to be resilient every day.

— Elizabeth Hernandez (@ehernandez) January 20, 2022

What was she supposed to do to better protect herself during a roadside shot in which she ended up being hit by a car? If she’d had a cameraman with her, would he have been able to react quickly enough to alert her? Or is the criticism here that reporters shouldn’t be doing roadside shots, especially in inclement conditions?

Next thing you know, they’ll want to stop reporting live from the scene during hurricanes. What fun would the news be then?

Yorgey’s apparently fine, by the way. She went to the hospital as a precaution but is A-OK.