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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.'"
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.
Wife and I were watching this live. It was shocking to say the least. I'm sad to say I've now witnessed two suicides live on television over the years. Live television is difficult since people can be so unpredictable.
Gawker's Hamilton Nolan moral compass is way off, but greed has a tendency to do that. It was not ethical to repost the suicide just a cheap very sad grab to profit from it. They could of edited the video and posted a great article with class, dignity etc. but when your moral compass is pointing towards greed well there's the results. I'll stop ranting now :)
in a world full of war for the purpose of promoting democracy where thousands of civilians die from the fighting or aftermath? Oh yah we don't directly see it so its ok.... Out of sight out of mind.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Showing a suicide live on air is, in my opinion, going to far. The feed should have been cut earlier. On the other hand, the local media in my current home town has a policy of ignoring suicides completely and there have been some which would have been reasonably high profile if anyone had known. The suicide rate here is over 3 times the national average but the issue is swept under the carpet in case it takes away from our sunny, happy image and damages tourism. My concern is that it takes away awareness of the problem and leads to fewer resources for those who feel suicidal.
So tired of the "Darwin" meme. It expresses a sense of smug superiority that is entirely undeserved.
Murder is "at best" a form of population control, and certainly involves "Darwin" - the strongest murderers survive. Can we at least not interfere in this one?
Let's face it: suicide happens. You'll get far more suicides happening by not talking about it than you will by revealing the truth to people - even if a few copycat suicides in the immediate aftermath are inevitable. Hint: people don't just kill themselves because they've seen a death, but may simply have seen a method for doing something they wanted to do anyway.
Mediterranean and Middle Eastern countries are far less hypocritical with the news than Anglo-Saxon countries, frequently showing gruesome injuries or cadavers. If you're going to report the "news", it cannot just be the things which echo your opinions or which make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
tl;dr We cannot be as Victoria who pulls down the shutter to her Royal Train when travelling past the Dark Satanic Mills which society has built.
Seeing the mod war parent is going through, I have to ask: what is it with suicide that riles people up? The news air shootings all the time, and a lot of homicides are shown on camera - that's pretty much ok, it seems. But why are suicides a no-no? If you ask me, they're way less shocking, since no one is forcefully overriding anyone's will.
The question is whether TV directly influenced the suicide. That doesn't seem to have been the case here. This was apparently a failed crook who didn't want to go to jail.
It would be different if someone was attempting suicide to get attention, as in threatening to jump from a building, and that was covered on live TV. Then coverage would directly affect the odds of someone jumping.
Gawker is utter trash. Nobody should ever read or link to any of their sites.
Dunno, I sent that exact question to foxnewstips@foxnews.com yesterday but haven't received a reply yet.
Guess they're still thinking it over.
That's because just about everyone thinks suicide is evil, selfish, wrong, etc. Unless you're a pedophile, then do everyone a favor and go shoot yourself.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
But Fox couldn't have known that it was about to air a suicide.
Yes, they absolutely could, and did. A five-second delay was added when the guy got out of his car (why then and not before, and why it wasn't a one-minute delay, I don't know) but for reasons unknown it was, apparently, the in-studio monitors that got the delayed feed instead of the viewers.
Want to avoid this in future? Put a one-minute delay in - at least then it will be obvious if you've mis-switched it. My impression of American news hints that this happens often enough that it wouldn't be unreasonable to have a special circuit added for this sort of thing. Then you've also got the added advantage of not struggling to narrate events as they happen - the gallery can clue you in on what's coming up, and you can even advise sensitive viewers to look away if something surprising but non-fatal happens.
Of course, you could always try not appealing to lowest-common-denominator literal car-crash television in the first place.
<satire>PS Imagine how much worse the outrage would be if the guy had waved his wang at the helicopter.</satire>
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Ironic, isn't it?
Yes, nobody who dies from suicide could possibly have ever contributed anything to the benefit of society.
Let's face it: suicide happens. You'll get far more suicides happening by not talking about it than you will by revealing the truth to people - even if a few copycat suicides in the immediate aftermath are inevitable. Hint: people don't just kill themselves because they've seen a death, but may simply have seen a method for doing something they wanted to do anyway.
This is true, but they've noticed correlations between different ways that suicide is discussed and the suicide rate following it. The suicide rate tends to go down if it is discussed in a way that includes urging people who are thinking about it to get help. However, when someone's glorified for their suicide and no one says to get help if you're thinking about it, suicide rates tend to go up. Of course, that's all just correlation, not causation, but it is interesting.
I watched the unedited footage, it wasn't that bad. In Europe they show traffic accidents in all their horror, burned bodies and all.
I just don't get why this is such a big deal. I loath Fox News because they're the propaganda arm of the GOP, not because of something trivial like this.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I could have been much, much worse it could have been a woman exposing her breasts after she got out of the car. Then Fox News would be in real big trouble.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
That's understandable - people who wanted to do it might be pushed over the edge in the few days after. But, looking again at context, I'm not sure that the statistic is very useful. In the long term, does a graphic depiction of suicide cause people to talk about suicide more? And does that cause people to get help?
Of course things can be horrible for first/third party survivors of the immediate copycat methods, but would they have eventually attempted suicide anyway? IOW does anyone seriously think that not talking about suicide stops people ever killing themselves?
In the long term, it seems better to confront reality rather than to pan away the moment someone might be in danger of revealing it.
In their drive for the sensational, they've stumbled upon the old, highly unethical "snuff video" genre. I wonder if their ex-commentator/madman Glen Beck would approve.
Now its out on the Internet. I sense a new angle for net censorship coming in 3...2...1...
The good news is that invoking the Darwin meme doesn't make one immune from it.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
Maybe I'm just a desensitized product of the times, but I fail to see why this is a big deal. The video isn't disturbing to me. There's no blood or brain matter shown, no audio. A far cry from something like the detailed Bud Dwyer suicide that aired live sometime back in the 80s I think. I still cringe when I think about seeing it.
Suicide is a reality. As a society we need to drop the taboo and understand suicide, genocide, war, etc. are all too real. I'd argue it is society, not me, who is really desensitized. Out of sight out of mind as a previous comment stated. The problem won't go away if you bury your head in sand. These things are shocking, sometimes disturbing, but they should be. Rather than ignoring them we should shed more light on them instead of living in a round corners, padded, molded plastic half true reality.
Truckin like the Doo-Dah man...
Correct. I think the idea that people go with that data is that it SHOULD be discussed, but it should be discussed with the respect that it can be a very sensitive subject for many people out there. Not talking about it isn't going to change anything, but talking about it can push the thoughts people are having about it to the surface. Those thoughts being brought to the surface can be a good thing, if they are dealt with in a healthy manner, but if they're not dealt with, they can push someone over the edge--all that some people need is to have it brought out.
For example, I think one year in my high school. Right at the beginning of the school year, one student committed suicide. Now, this was a large high school, where the vast majority of people didn't have a clue who this kid was. But word spread to everyone, and nothing was really done about it. By the time the first semester ended, there were six more suicides, at which point the school finally started doing something about it, talking about it regularly and offering counseling for anyone with a free pass to get out of class to go talk to someone about it and deal with it in a healthy manner. There was still a couple of more suicides in the second semester, but it was noticeably improved over the rash of them that went through the first semester. And that ended up being a policy that the school held on to, and it seemed to work--the suicide rate ended up below the normal before the extreme high that hit that one semester.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Sorry, no. Yelling "Fire" in a crowded theater is generally accepted as a limitation of free speech. It's a crime, and it should be a crime. Likewise, suicides should not be shown on TV. They are much more harmful than your average TV violence. It is well-established in the psychology literature that seeing a suicide in detail can be enough to push someone who's borderline-suicidal over the edge. Do some reading.
Darwin Award is fine. It's just when people use the title where it wouldn't apply. You don't simply kill yourself and get an "award." You kill yourself in some kind of spectacularly stupid way, that results in your accidental death, implying that you just took place in natural selection.
A dude shooting himself in the head is just a suicide.
Hemingway ruined english class for pretty much EVERYONE. Don't put him in the same class as Cobain.
Fixed that for you.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
Eye on the TV
'cause tragedy thrills me
Whatever flavour
It happens to be like;
Killed by the husband
Drowned by the ocean
Shot by his own son
She used the poison in his tea
And kissed him goodbye
That's my kind of story
It's no fun 'til someone dies
Could we have your name and address so we can make sure not to help you WHEN you get sick and infirm.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Smug superiority? He was a criminal that killed himself after putting the lives of many innocent people at risk. Most people ARE better than that piece of human garbage.
That's funny, because the societies that protect the weak tend to be the strongest in the world, while those that persecute the weak tend to end up in the dustbin of history. Perhaps this is because a compassionate society that cares for its weaker members makes everyone stronger. And perhaps mental illness doesn't hurt society nearly as much as the traits of indifference and contempt.
The music industry, in attempting to sell the world "the next nirvana" was what ruined POP MUSIC during the 90's. If that's all you listened to, that's your fault. Kurt Cobain was an artist in the truest sense of the word, caring about nothing other than creating what he saw as art.
Is it compassion to force someone that wants to die to live? Let's look at the person who committed suicide here - he was probably going to prison, and knowing US prisons death might have been a less cruel alternative. So why not let him die on his own terms?
The more that remove themselves from it, the better.
Since you feel so strongly about it, why don't you kill yourself. I don't suppose your genes would be missed either. My guess: you have a big ego that says your life is more important than anybody else. Which gets me back to the smug sense of superiority.
When a society is successful, it finally has the luxury of protecting its weakest members. You may have your cause and effect reversed.
The bad news is that proving your stupidity by invoking brainless memes doesn't cause immediate death,
Hey, maybe those people were just pissed off at society taking their contributions and treating them like dirt, and decided to go on strike in a rather final way. If that's the case, trying to stop the suicide is just strikebreaking.
Turing particularly got the short end of the stick; Van Gogh famously sold only one painting in his lifetime, not counting "sales" to his brother. He also ate his paint and likely wouldn't have produced what he did if he wasn't crazy already.
He may also be simply pulling it out of his ass. It may have some truth to it if you either limit it to the 20th century or later or if you exclude those enslaved from being categorized as weaker members of society, but without those provisos, it's almost laughably false.
Up until the 20th century, social safety nets didn't really exist. The closest to it were debtors prisons, indentured servitude and even outright slavery. And it's hard to argue that Roman, Egyptian and the European Monarchy societies aren't the strongest in history given how long the period was when they were the dominant societies on earth.
That's the real story here. Not that he committed suicide, but that he'd rather die than get caught (again?). Every law we have and every rule we enforce is about being a deterrant to going to jail. When death is more attractive than jail, laws no longer mean anything.
They'll want to control how much this video gets around for this reason. It's not about people seeing a suicide, it's about the awareness that death is a more viable solution than jail for many.
It's a video embodiment of "nothing to lose", and that sort of thing scares the people who have much to lose rather shitless and for good reason.
That's funny, because the societies that protect the weak tend to be the strongest in the world, while those that persecute the weak tend to end up in the dustbin of history.
Thats true... of the societies that protect the weak from the strong. That is, from being victimized by the strong.
That is not and never will be true concerning protecting adult people from themselves. In that case, there is no victim. Pretending that there is amounts to treating chronological adults like mental and spiritual infants. The only effect it can have is to cripple and retard their ability to deal with reality, make sound decisions, and actually live life. In fact that would be a living death. It would destroy the joy, meaning, and purpose that life has to offer.
It also makes it easier to institute a totalitarian cradle-to-grave state, because adults who cannot deal with reality and make good decisions need some kind of authority to tell them how to live. That's bad for everyone.
Perhaps this is because a compassionate society that cares for its weaker members makes everyone stronger.
Sometimes compassion requires the fortitude to respect the way people want to live (or not live) their lives, and to restrain your urge to appoint yourself the judge and jury concerning how they should deal with life.
Besides which, if there are no sometimes dire consequences and no bad examples, how do you expect someone to mature into a person who is fully human? You can't do that if you cannot make your own decisions and reap the consequences. No matter how hard you try.
And perhaps mental illness doesn't hurt society nearly as much as the traits of indifference and contempt.
I hate to break it to you but there are plenty of criminals who are not mentally ill (i.e. not legally insane). Some people are simply evil and they understand fully what they are doing. Your compassion is wasted on such people -- they interpret it as weakness and exploitability. In fact the more sociopathic types will let you believe you're doing good so long as they can take advantage of you. You have to have the judgment to tell the difference. There is no algorithm for doing so.
To speculate, did you ever think that by the time the chase ended, perhaps this individual preferred death over being pounded in the ass by Bubba for a couple of decades? Maybe you would have chosen Bubba, but you must admit someone else might not.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Oh jeez, you're one of those 53% idiots. Your tendency to swallow political cliches without any sanity checking does not argue for your intelligence. If we had a eugenics comitttee that allocated the right to reproduce, you'd clearly be on the bottom of the list.
Fortunately, the Nazis made that approach to social engineering unfashionable (pretty much their only positive contribution to evolution), so you're free to reproduce. Which is fine with me, because it's perfectly possible for your children to be smarter than you. Just keep them away from the TV set and find someone to teach them a few critical thinking skills.
Is it compassion to force someone that wants to die to live?
I agree with your indictment of the US prison system, but I wanted to zoom out and try to answer this question in isolation.
I can understand the argument that if the person is a legal adult of sound mind, they are due a certain amount of autonomy over their life. However, people who commit suicide are rarely of sound mind. Decisions made in the heat of the moment are often not what you really want.
IMO, it's compassion to help end the suffering of someone who is terminally ill and in pain and wishes to die. It is also compassion to protect a mentally ill person who is at risk of self-harm from the worst effects of their illness.
Whether this case is closer to the former or the latter, I'll leave to a moral philosopher to judge.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
What the Darwin Awards are missing is that the person may have already procreated prior to dying in a spectacular way.
There are harsh words in parent post. Not really untrue, but very harsh to the delicate ears of slashdotters.
But rather than Darwin awards, the better method of population control is to support the GLBT in their efforts to establish gay marriage rights, and so on. Each gay marriage removes TWO individuals from the reproductive circus. We need much more of that happening.
Will
The problem that a lot of people have with this attitude is that it sounds like you're making excuses why nothing needs fixing. Most people don't turn to crime because they are inherently evil. Most people turn to crime because life dealt them a bad hand.
I find people will find or create whatever perception is convenient for them, with "convenient" meaning they do not have to change their perspective. Bonus points if they get to tell someone else how wrong they are, perhaps with condemnatory vitriol.
To say "nothing needs fixing" misses the point. Governments tend to become tyrannical. That's just a fact and has been a repeating pattern throughout history. Does that mean we just give up and submit to tyranny? No. It means we need constant vigilence. Crime is the same way. No, what people want is some kind of simple, easy, painless, one-shot Final Ultimate Perfect Solution that brings Heaven to Earth. They will remain disappointed.
If you want to talk of attitudes that are tiresome, this "life dealt them a bad hand" nonsense is a good start. I have both read about and personally known people who grew up under terrible conditions. Poverty, child abuse, neglect, gang violence, you name it. Some of it frankly makes me want to puke.
The people fitting that description whom I have met also happen to be some of the noblest and most kind-hearted individuals I have ever known. They didn't use their rough life as an excuse to menace and victimize others. They seem to understand that victimizing others just creates more people who will have the upbringing that they had, and they don't wish to perpetuate it.
So we are left, then, with what you seem to find inconvenient. There is at some point a difference between the criminals who had a rough life and think it's okay to create more victims, and those who had horrible upbringings and became wonderful people in spite of everything. What is the difference then? I say it's the nature of the person. Some struggle against the evil that was placed inside of them and lose. Others are victorious. It's a mysterious thing. It doesn't lend itself to the easy answers we always want. Why is that so hard to accept? We have become so arrogant as a society that we think we can scientifically explain every last detail of the universe?
I love logic. Logic works for problems within its domain. This isn't one of them. This requires a more organic understanding, spiritual if you like, though that's a rather loaded word these days, since people think that's something you get from a book, a leader, or pretty much anywhere except inside yourself.
Like I said, sometimes a rabid dog needs to be put down. You can speculate about where rabies originally came from, but you won't find any ultimate answers.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
To speculate, did you ever think that by the time the chase ended, perhaps this individual preferred death over being pounded in the ass by Bubba for a couple of decades? Maybe you would have chosen Bubba, but you must admit someone else might not.
You make some interesting points, but this "prison rape is part of the punishment" meme is particularly worrisome. First, there is the tacit assumption that prison rape is common, or at least significantly more common than base-rate rape. If true, we are not designing our prisons and guard procedures responsibly.
Next, and perhaps more disturbing, is the idea that this is ok, and even expected. After all, everyone in prison is a subhuman criminal and therefore deserves any treatment they get no matter how terrible, right?
This idea is so ingrained that it's even made light of in comedy movies (Office Space, for one..)
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You make some interesting points, but this "prison rape is part of the punishment" meme is particularly worrisome. First, there is the tacit assumption that prison rape is common, or at least significantly more common than base-rate rape. If true, we are not designing our prisons and guard procedures responsibly.
I think it's fucked up and I think that prison administrators who don't do everything possible to discourage it, prevent it, and severely punish anyone who does it are just plain evil.
However, it certainly does happen. Think about it. An inmate is locked in a confined environment with a bunch of people who have already demonstrated lawless and/or violent tendencies, some of whom may be in prison in the first place for raping someone, with little else to do all day except pump iron and establish what are basically sub-groups or gangs with a hierarchical structure. In a place with no women.
Next, and perhaps more disturbing, is the idea that this is ok, and even expected. After all, everyone in prison is a subhuman criminal and therefore deserves any treatment they get no matter how terrible, right?
I hope this never, ever happens, but if you yourself were facing a long prison sentence, are you telling me the possibility of being someone's bitch would never cross your mind? Prison is a dog-eat-dog environment full of aggressive people. It is not an environment where you can keep to yourself, mind your own business, and be left alone. Hell, that's quite difficult to do in regular society because so many people have no life of their own, are meddlesome and self-important, and must insert themselves into every little trivial situation.
This idea is so ingrained that it's even made light of in comedy movies (Office Space, for one..)
If this stereotype were completely 100% baseless and entirely the product of someone's imagination, it would be one of the few I've ever heard of.
At any rate, if you read my previous post and thought I approved of this, you grossly misunderstood what I said. I deliberately made no comment about it one way or the other, except to mention that someone who has already shown he makes rash decisions might have also considered it. Furthermore, I am not one of the mindless sheeple who repeats a meme with no concept of where it came from. The fact that this is ingrained only reinforces the point I was making.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein