The Phoenix stations are hustling to cover the caught on video story of a police car chase that ended in the suspect shooting himself, which went viral in a matter of minutes after it aired live on Fox News Channel. The KSAZ website had it first, with a brief writeup and a fuzzy photo at 2:44 ET (11:44 local time), though it did not post the controversial video.
KSAZ is owned by Fox.
The Scripps station, KNXV, had a story up on its site at 3:39 ET. The story mentioned the clip running on FNC:
Helicopter video of the pursuit was carried live around the country on Fox News. Because of what Fox News called a technical mistake, the apparent death of the suspect was shown live on the air. Fox News host Shepard Smith personally apologized, saying, “that didn’t belong on TV.”
Twitter positively lit up in the minutes after it aired. Tweeted Drudge Report: Car chase ends with suicide live on national TV… **WARNING: GRAPHIC**
The KTKV site and KPNX’s joint AZCentral.com site did not have the story up by 4:10 ET. [UPDATE: Both linked to AP stories on the chase/shooting after this first posted.]
UPDATE: We reported here that KPHO.com didn’t have the story up by 4:10 ET (1:10 local time), but the station contacted us to say it was up on the site at 3:20 ET, offering a timestamp to back it up. Not sure why it didn’t appear on our web browser in New York.
KPHO.com posted the AP story at 4:19 ET.
I don’t see the story on the CNN home page.
