After Fox News aired the suicide of a man being chased by police in Arizona, anchor Shepard Smith apologized to viewers for allowing it to be broadcast.
He said, "We really messed up." The footage on Friday was of a crime suspect that was fleeing in a car that was followed by police. When Shepard's show went on air the man got out of the car and began running then pulled out a gun and shot himself in the head.
The camera cut to Smith yelling to his control room, "Get off it. Get off it. Get off it." Then the show cut to commercial, abruptly.
After the incident occurred, Smith said that the network has a five second delay during breaking news and that the footage shouldn't have been shown.
He said, "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.
So, that's why I didn't talk for about 10 seconds. We created a five second delay as if you were to bleep back your DVR five seconds, that's what we did with the picture we were showing you, so that we could see in the studio five seconds before you did, so if anything went horribly wrong, we would be able to cut away from it without subjecting you to it." He continued to personally apologize for the incident.
Fox News' executive vice president of news editorial, Michael Clement released a statement to TVNewser, that said, 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."
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