During “Studio B with Shepard Smith,” Fox News was airing a car chase on a 5-second delay, but that was not enough to prevent the program from showing the suspect shoot himself during the broadcast.

Poynter faculty member Al Tompkins, who has covered suicides and car chases, says by email, “There is simply no excuse for this. It is sensationalism to carry it in the first place. Whatever local reasons there might be to carry it do not apply to a national audience. And yet this happens time and again and has for more than a decade and a half. Each time, TV stations apologize while enjoying a temporary ratings bump.”

In a related follow-up, Tompkins reviews Smith’s love of car chases, the risks of police pursuit and questions to consider before going live.

Smith apologized immediately on air Friday. Michael Clemente, Fox’s executive vice president for news, issued a statement:

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.

While Fox aired the video unintentionally, BuzzFeed and Gawker both published the video online.

Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan explains:

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.

BuzzFeed also explained:

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.

Car chase ends when suspect kills himself on live TV

During "Studio B with Shepard Smith," Fox News was airing a car chase on a 5-second delay, but that was not enough to prevent the program from showing the suspect shoot himself during the broadcast. The program cut to commercial immediately after.

Storified by Julie Moos · Fri, Sep 28 2012 12:51:03