Fox Broadcasts Suicide: Anchor Says Sorry For Mistake
Fox Accidentally Broadcasts Live Suicide On Television
A car chase in Arizona was broadcast live on Fox News on Friday. As the car chase proceeded, the driver stopped the car, exited the vehicle, raised a gun to his head, and immediately fell to the ground.
After the horrific scene, Fox News cut to commercial. Upon coming back from commercial, network anchor Shepard Smith apologized for the images which were broadcast, reports the Washington Post.
“We really messed up, and we’re all really sorry,” said Smith.
Smith cited human error as the reason for the images being shown on live television. Fox News, like most media organizations, has a five second delay in the broadcast to allow for editing or cutting away. In this instance, the human editor failed to stop the images during the five second window.
“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.”
Helicopter media crews are taught to zoom out into a wide angle when scenes may become violent. The Fox News affiliate in Arizona did not break into a wide angle when the suspect exited the vehicle.
