Slashdot Mirror
A Suicide Goes Viral On the Internet
Hugh Pickens writes "Will Oremus reports that Fox News showed a grisly spectacle Friday afternoon during a live car chase when the suspect got out of his car, stumbled down a hillside, pulled a gun, and shot himself in the head. As the scene unfolded, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith grew increasingly apprehensive, then yelled 'get off it, get off it!,' belatedly urging the show's producers to stop the live feed as it became obvious the man was going to do something rash. Fox News cut awkwardly to a commercial just after showing his death and after Fox aired the on-air suicide, Smith apologized to viewers, saying, 'We really messed up.' However BuzzFeed immediately posted the footage on YouTube, where it garnered more than 1,000 'likes' in under an hour, sparking immediate blowback. 'Who's worse? @FoxNews for airing the suicide, or @BuzzFeed for re-posting the video just in case you missed it the first time?' posted the Columbia Journalism Review. Gawker's Hamilton Nolan called his site's decision to post the video 'ethical,' because 'it is news' but research suggests that graphic depictions of suicide in the media can spur copycat suicides, especially among young people, and the World Health Organization's guidelines warn against sensationalizing it. Virtually everyone who has studied it agrees that, at a minimum, suicides should be covered with a modicum of sensitivity and context (PDF). 'Of course it's news that Fox News accidentally aired the video. And you can make a good case that Fox was inviting this type of debacle with its habit of airing live car-chase feeds. But Fox couldn't have known that it was about to air a suicide. BuzzFeed, by contrast, knew exactly what it was doing,' writes Oremus. 'That might be good business for BuzzFeed, but it's hard to see the benefit for anyone else.'"
Are the best form of population control , and do involve a bit of Darwin. Can we atleast not interfere in this one? Already we interfere with him by using medical stuff
and those who don't like it can just kill themselves!
Before anyone starts jumping on Fox News for whatever axe they have to grind with them, please substitute Fox News with "CNN" or "MSNBC" and ask yourself if your vitriol would be just the same.
"CNN went to court and won the right to lie in news broadcasts"
"MSNBC went to court and won the right to lie in news broadcasts"
Nope, doesn't work.
Vitriol unchanged.
I have complete confidence that behind the scenes, the top people at Fox are delighted beyond belief over this. This is the type of cheap and vulgar thing that they are famous for.
You need to remember that the decline of journalism - especially TV journalism - in this country (the US) is the direct result of Fox's (Rupert Murdoch's) desire to appeal to the "Conservative" populace and the lowest common denominator in the US. This was stated explicitly in the mission statement of the network when he created it in the 80's. And as a result the other networks have followed and we now have this spiral to the bottom. CNN has done well in not following to closely and they're pretty good with the hard news; as well as NPR.
Fox and their talking heads, propagated this myth of the "liberal media", formatted the news accordingly, and as a result we in the US have a portion of our electorate that is so ill-informed that they are steering much this country down a road that is becoming quite scary.
But our news organizations in the US have become lazy, incompetent, and over sensationalism all because of Fox's leadership down the toilet. Much of the BS in Washington is because our news organizations are letting those people get away with their non-sense and frankly, when I really want to know what's going on in Washington, I look to foreign sources - like the Economist for one.
please substitute Fox News with "CNN" or "MSNBC" and ask yourself if your vitriol would be just the same.
No, the vitriol wouldn't be the same (though it would be horrible for any network). Fox News has been the media arm of the Republican party for as long as Fox has been on cable. It has a decade long history of pushing Republican-approved propaganda. All of its past offenses and lies add up. It's easier to be MORE outraged at Fox, all other things equal, because Fox has been doing this for longer than anybody else.
Some might argue that CNN has been around longer than Fox and should be held to account for its years of "liberal bias". I disagree. CNN's bias (if it exists) has never been as extreme (truly outrageous) as Fox News' bias. It would be outrageous if CNN showed something like this, but that outrage wouldn't be added onto over a decade of journalistic abuse.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I replied to your AC troll pre-emptive defence of Fox News that aims to set up the high-school-quality debate technique that says that anyone who criticises Fox in the following discussion is somehow wrong because you already brought that up and "owned" the argument. (I assume that was you bravely not logging in, since you've taken the time to reply to a comment "that added nothing to the discussion" yet somehow was additive enough to be worth replying to, and in your haste to reply you forgot to check the bravery box).
"Hey guys, let's discuss topic X, but before we do, I know what you're all going to say so if you say that X sucks then you just don't get it! This debate is only allowed to have opinions I agree with!"
To reply directly to your guesswork over what I think of Fox News; no I don't usually bitch about them taking things out of context, I just assume they always do wherever possible. I save any bitching for egregious lies or the hilarious times where they don't understand grade school maths and create pie charts that add up to more than 100%, or for their fairly typical hypocrisy (for example, criticism of the president during Bush era = unamerican, unpatriotic hate speech, criticism of the president during Obama era = constitutionally protected free speech and show of patriotism).
They're a toxic propaganda channel funded by wealthy special interests who pay well for the truth to be heavily distorted, hence the lawsuit over the right to lie. If they'd lost that suit it becomes very difficult for them to carry out their primary mandate. I have much more than "one sentence" to draw on for my axe grinding - I don't type out everything in my head every time I post a message. I'm not sure how else to address that point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeJbOU4nmHQ
Why is it okay to show Bear Grylls mudering animals needlessly? You know his camera crew's got a pack full of Power Bars. It's completely gratuitous. At the very least, if he wanted to show survival techniques, he could catch and release the animals.
Once I saw him in a tunnel in Vietnam I think it was, on his way to a helicopter waiting to take him out on the other side, pull a frog out of a hole and eat it raw. That was totally unnecessary.
Put him on trial for murder.