I almost cannot believe what I am reading.
About two hours ago, Fox News was covering a live Arizona car chase on air, on Shepard Smith's show. The man was pursued by policemen after a carjacking Roughly an hour into the chase, the man pulled into a dirt roadway, got out of his car, and then—while the cameras rolled, live, on television, in front of who knows how many eyes—put the gun to his head, pulled the trigger, and died.
Viewers saw everything.
Tell me this is not the end of all decency in the media.
From the Observer:
“You know, you wait for the end of these things, and then you worry about how they may end,” Shepard Smith told viewers today while showing live coverage of an Arizona car chase in which a carjacker was trying to outrun the authorities. Unfortunately, Mr. Smith didn’t know how right he was about to be would be.
[snip]
As the man puts the gun to his head and pulls the trigger, you can hear someone in the control room yell “Oh! Whoa!” before the screen cuts back to Mr. Smith, screaming to the crew, “Get off it! Get off it! GET OFF IT!!” The segment then cut to commercial.
After coming back from break, Mr. Smith apologized to viewers, saying that even though there was a five-second delay, they weren’t able to cut away in time from the horrific scene. “We really messed up,” Mr. Smith said. “And we are all very sorry.”
His apology appears sincere:
It sounds like folks in charge of editing made a series of errors that prevented the delay from working as it should have. Now, we all know Fox News is not a legitimate news organization; it's even classified and owned under the Entertainment division of Newscorp. But the station is perceived as news by a significant number of people, and in this case should be held accountable as such. It can also not be argued that it is large player in the media. But hardly the only one with terrible ethical judgement today:
Buzzfeed, Gawker, and Mediatite all uploaded and posted the unedited video of the suicide, under the pretense that it was newsworthy enough to do so.
Here are their respective outrageously ridiculous explanations for the decisions to post it:
BuzzFeed spokesperson Ashley McCollum:
Making an editorial decision on how to cover a sensitive, tragic news event like this is never an easy one. But it is, indeed, a news event and we are a news organization. We posted both an edited version and the full version and we respect our readers' judgment.
Gawker reporter Hamilton Nolan:
*A word on our decision to run the Fox News clip: some Gawker staffers were against publishing the clip. My position was that it is clearly news, and that we should run it on that basis. When we heard that Fox News had aired a suicide, what was the first thing we all did? Search on the internet for the clip. The clip is news. It is unpleasant, but it is news. You may legitimately decide to watch it or not, but it is news. (And for those who think this is all a cynical page view ploy, a cute cat video will do better than a gruesome suicide video; it's also a far easier choice not to publish something like this, just to spare yourself the negative outcry.) When we start picking and choosing whether or not we run clearly newsworthy things based on whether or not they make us queasy, we're in slippery slope territory. It is, in my opinion, ethical to run the clip. (Some of my colleagues may still disagree.)
Mediaite spokesperson Jen Glickel:
Mediaite focuses on the way news is covered and this is clearly newsworthy in that world. In fact so much so that this could change the way cable news networks cover unpredictable and dangerous live events. Furthermore, the internet is different than television. With a live television event there are risks that an unsuspecting viewer will turn on the tv and suddenly be subjected to a horrifying image. On the internet, however, a user will have made a concerted decision to watch the video despite our large warnings about the graphic nature of the content.
I added emphasis on the most transparently self-serving, pandering-to-transparency portions of their reasoning,
because it flies in the face of common fucking sense and journalistic media integrity to post a
NEWSWORTHY video of oh, I don't know, a Senator being given a blowjob by an intern; a young child being molested; or
a freaking guy blowing his brains out on camera.
As the Atlantic Wire says:
The problem with covering suicides is that it can be exploitative and it can encourage others to follow suit. The federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued guidelines for covering suicides (PDF), urging journalists to stay away from sensationalism and to avoid publishing photos of victims' grieving relatives, the scene of the incident, and the method of death. The Radio Television Digital News Association also lists guidelines, advising producers to "Consider not using the photo of the person who killed him/herself. It will make the suicide less glamorous to someone considering imitating the act."
Not to mention that Buzzfeed, Gawker, and Mediaite, by posting the video, are making money through internet traffic that arrives to see that video. Profiteering from the virality of a suicide video strikes me as an ethical line worth not crossing. They can hide behind their "this is news and it's up to each individual to make up his or her mind whether to view it' bullshit frame, but I think some things should not show up on sites that gallivant as news media organizations.
Or are pornography and suicide videos fair game now?
I know suicides are common, and I know there are videos out there of it happening, and I know this is real life and that real life is gruesome, but all those things notwithstanding, I think news sites have a moral obligation not to show certain things to wide audiences of people, especially with the age-neutral nature of most internet websites. To do so is to abuse the medium and abuse their influence in a way that is unjustifiable. I've never seen someone commit suicide, and if I witness it live someday, I have to live with the consequences of this "being real life", but at least I have the choice to let "real life" happen. For people who were shown that clip on TV today, or who saw the video posted on self-proclaimed news media organizations' websites, that choice has been taken from them—especially if they are too young to exercise the quality of judgement, of choice, that comes with age.
The media sites that posted that video made their choice today, and I hope they know the consequences of the choice they've made.