Fox Broadcasts Suicide: Anchor Says Sorry
Man’s Suicide Accidently Broadcast on Live TV
FOX News was forced to issue an apology Friday afternoon after it accidently showed a carjacking suspect committing suicide after being cornered by police, reports NY Daily News.
Shepherd Smith made an apology on his afternoon program, which is watched by nearly two million people.
“We really messed up, and we’re all really sorry.”
“We created a five-second delay as if you were to bleep back your DVR five seconds … so that we would see in the studio five seconds before you did,” Smith explained. “So that if anything went horribly wrong, we’d be able to cut away from it without subjecting you to it. And we really messed up. And we’re all very sorry. That didn’t belong on TV. We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV, and I personally apologize to you that that happened.”
The drama began with a high-speed car chase in Salome, Arizona. The driver eventually pulled off onto a remote stretch of road and exited the vehicle.
After running a short distance and falling down, the man stood up, pulled out a weapon and pointed it at his head. FOX was struggling with its delay and did not cut away until the suspect had collapsed to the ground after shooting himself.
“We took every precaution to avoid any such live incident by putting the helicopter pictures on a five second delay,” said Michael Clemente, executive vice president of news editorial.
“Unfortunately, this mistake was the result of a severe human error and we apologise for what viewers ultimately saw on the screen.”
Smith was clearly uncomfortable narrating the live coverage of the story.
“This scares me,” he said.
“You wait for the end of these things and you worry about how they may end up,” he said.
“This makes me a little nervous, I got to tell you. A little nervous.”
Shepard Smith apologizes for Man Shooting Himself
im not a fan FOX News but Shepard Smith is a hell of a man to own up to that mistake… now if the rest of them just apologize for letting Glenn Beck on the air for that long time
There are PLENTY of reasons to dislike Fox News and what Murdoch is doing to journalism… But this video is not one of them. Shepard Smith is the best thing they have going for them, take that as you will. But calm the **** down. This was a very classy way of addressing the error on his part. Save your anger for Fox & Friends and the multiple other crazies they have.
they were loving the ratings boost
and they showed the suicide later that night after 11pm anyhow again.
and it’s on liveleak.com if anyone wants to see it unedited.
live chases are ratings grabs they learned this during the OJ Simpson car chase. And every network milks it as much as possible. They should ban live car chases by helicopter, it just eggs on the chase for drama and ratings anyhow.
Not enough bad things can happen to some folk.
Fox news. … we’ll have to leave that aspect of life there. I couldn’t speak about them in any sort of coherent manner. Talk about low information users.
The blame, for me, lies solidly on the hands of murdoch. The man’s use-by date is long over due. Perhaps the Prince [al waleed] shall deliver us from them. He did get rid of Beck. I’d suggest the philipino like entity, oreeeeAAAALLY, the mealy mouthed hannity – ALL PRESENTERS!
Ignorant as they are, they really have bought into the manure they are disseminating.