Fox News apologises for airing live suicide
Fox News has apologised to viewers after the network aired a man shooting himself on live television.
The man had been involved in a car chase throughout Phoenix, Arizona for much of Friday afternoon, with police deciding to stop the chase but continue to follow the suspect with helicopters. Throughout this Fox News was streaming its own footage from a helicopter.
At around 3.30pm, Fox's footage showed the driver turn off the road and onto a dirt track where he stepped out of the car, and appeared to reach back inside before walking away.
He then stopped, raised what appeared to be a gun to his head, and fell to the ground.
News anchor Smith repeatedly yelled “Get off it!” in an attempt to stop the footage being shown, before the news programme swiftly cut to a break. On its return Smith said “we have some explaining to do.”
He went on to apologise for the graphic coverage, saying: "While we were taking that car chase and showing it to you live, when the guy pulled over and got out of the vehicle, we went on delay,"
"We created a five-second delay so that we would see in the studio what was happening five seconds before you did, so if anything went horribly wrong we were able to cut away from it."
"We really messed up, and we're all very sorry. That didn't belong on television. We took every precaution. I personally apologise to you that that happened," Smith continued.
"It's not time appropriate, it's not sensitive: it's just wrong. That won't happen again on my watch, and I'm terribly sorry,"
Fox then later issued a statement saying: "We took every precaution to avoid any such live incident by putting the helicopter pictures on a five second delay. Unfortunately, this mistake was the result of a severe human error and we apologize for what viewers ultimately saw on the screen."