Vieira said to Goldberg that the guns seemed real to her. If they were not real, I would freak out. He was going to charge the elephant. You can yell, “Bang bang!”
Some supporters of that Owenses accused ABC News of sensationalizing, or perhaps even Staging, events as opposed to accurately reflecting Mark’s actions regarding poachers in Zambia. Andrew Tkach—”Deadly Game’s” field producer, who spent a month at the park in 1994 and returned in 1995—told Goldberg in 2010 that the finished product was an accurate portrayal.
Tomlin, no longer with ABC by then but still working as a producer, told the writer, “I can categorically tell you that any project I’ve ever been involved with, any program—60 minutes, any program—that there has been no staging of any event.”
Chris Everson, the Africa-based cameraman who filmed the shooting, broke his years-long silence about it to Goldberg, telling him, “It’s a very complicated story, it was a very emotional thing, it was a very bad thing. It was something that should not have occurred.”