WASHINGTON (WHDH) – Aidan Ryan, a reporter for The Boston Globe, attended his first White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday. He said he finished his first course when he heard a loud noise and saw people dropping to the floor.
“It was quite the first byline from our nation’s capitol,” Ryan said. “From my standpoint as someone who covers the media, it was a really fascinating and surreal moment to see a room full of reporters largely in the dark of what happened.”
That loud noise turned out to be gunfire. But the hundreds of reporters inside the ballroom didn’t know that at the time.
Ryan said those first few moments were chaotic and confusing.
“We didn’t know a lot about what happened,” Ryan said. “We could only share what was in the room and of course my colleagues and I started trying to text other folks and get a sense of what was happening outside, and what they were seeing on the news and in some cases, we heard a lot more about what was happening from our family and friends and other colleagues outside of the room but we were just trying to do our best to relay what happened.”
Once Ryan realized he was okay and contacted his parents, the work began.
“I think in those first moments it’s really just instinctively react and protect yourself and then that’s when the questions started to kick in,” Ryan said.
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