Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1998. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Reuters NewMedia, Inc.; Friday May 1 11:39 PM EDT
Arthur Spiegelman

Two of the six stations that broadcast the scene live kept their cameras rolling close-up even as the half-naked man, Daniel Jones, 40, pulled a shotgun from the open bed of his burning pick-up truck, propped it against a center divider and pulled the trigger to blow his brains out.

Jones's family said his mother was among the millions of people who watched the live broadcast and they were aghast at the pain and suffering it caused. Jones, who was HIV-positive, killed himself in a protest against a health care company that was refusing to pick up his medical bills.

By showing his death "live" Thursday, local TV stations triggered angry calls from viewers, especially mothers with young children, and outrage from media critics about what constitutes news.

Several stations apologized to viewers and one local anchorman, KNBC's Chuck Henry, said, "You do not know how much we regret that that (the actual suicide) got on the air."

With his hand on his heart, he said in a CNN interview, "I personally regret it."

Other local TV journalists said they were overtaken by events. UPN Channel 13's news director Steve Cohen said: "It's rush hour, and there's a man with a rifle on the freeway. That's a legitimate news story. No one knew what was going to unfold. We didn't want to show (the suicide). It just happened quicker than we were able to respond."

Another news director, KTLA's Jeff Wald, defended the coverage saying, "We're not in the censorship business, we're in the news business. It's our duty to tell people what's going on."

According to ratings issued Friday, showing the scene live led to a more than 10 percent jump in viewers for the afternoon period.

L.A. Times media critic Howard Rosenberg, who has long slammed local TV stations for their proclivity to go "live" at the drop of a traffic jam in this sprawling city, was furious.

"Apologizing is meaningless. It should never have happened. This is a day when Los Angeles TV stations should hang their heads in shame," he said, adding that live television has no safety net, no controls and had turned reporters into voyeurs.

"This is a story that was worth two lines in a newspaper but it was covered because technology created this monster called 'live TV' and they have to feed it. I timed 11 seconds from the time he took his shotgun out of the back of the truck and put it to his head -- that was time enough to cut away," Rosenberg said.

Going live to show a car chase is almost a weekly event on local television here which fields an army of helicopters to patrol the skies over the freeways and beam back traffic reports for a city that works and plays by car.

The most most famous "live" car chase ever shown was in 1994 when a nation's TV cameras were riveted on police chasing O.J. Simpson in a slow speed race that ended with the famed football player surrendering to face charges that he murdered his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ronald Goldman.

Rosenberg said that local television's love affair with going live had begun long before that chase.

Jones's sister Janet told the Orange County Register, "I don't think they should show my brother blowing his brains out. It's pretty horrible for the family to see it."

"My brother killed himself so that his family would not have to see him die," she said, after talking about his illness and his fear that he would die of AIDS.

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