Fox News has just accidentally aired a suicide on live television during Shepard Smith’s 3p.m. news coverage show.
The story had been following a car chase in Phoneix, AZ and Fox failed to cut away in time as the driver reportedly left his vehicle, began running and eventually shot himself in the head.
Here is what Fox’s Shep Smith said after the mishap:
“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.
That’s why I didn’t talk for 10 seconds. We created a five second delay as if you were to bleep back your DVR 5 seconds, that’s what we did to 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.
And we really messed up. And we’re all very sorry. That didn’t belong on TV. We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV. And I personally apologzie to you that that happened.Sometimes we see a lot of things that we don’t let get to you, because it’s not time appropriate, it’s insensitve, it’s just wrong. And that was just wrong. And that won’t happen again on my watch, and I’m sorry
We’ll update you on what happened with that guy and how that went down tonight on “The Fox Report.”
I’m sorry.
Smith at one point begins to scream “Get off it! Get off it! Get it off!” to someone off camera in an effort to pull the video feed however, it did not come in time. The studio was running on a five second delay.
