real life deaths on TV

[Julius Leonard Marx]

Didn't Donahue feature a live execution on his show in the early 90s?

Phil Donahue wanted to show an execution, filed a law suit to be able to do so and lost. He is an opponent of the death penalty and argued that if people saw an execution, they would not support the death penalty. That ignores the fact that when executions were public, lots of people showed up for public hangings, beheadings, etc.

Give people what they want and they will come.

 

[BoscoGoldBear]

If I recall, CBS' "60 Minutes" aired a story on Jack Kervorkian which showed him assisting the suicide of ALS patient, Thomas Youk, on the tape, which aired unedited. KHOU in Houston refused to run that segment, citing Belo's commitment to not showing "moment of death" images, and instead cut away to a short local newscast before returning to "60 Minutes."

Kervorkian was later convicted of murderin assisting Mr. Youk's suicide. Kervorkian has pledged to never assist in another suicide since being released earlier this year.

IIRC, my little cousin (who's 29 now) reported in the San Antonio Express-News that KENS-TV 5, also owned by Belo, refused to air "60 Minutes" that night. I'm not sure if WBZ-TV aired that piece or "60 Minutes" for that matter, as I was struggling to get NFL finals for my brother vs. brother football pool (which was since extended to some family and friends) on ESPN, so no, I didn't watch.

 

[davect]

In 1986, the helicopter in which a WNBC radio traffic reporter was doing a live report malfunctioned and crashed. Live on the air. You can still find audio clips of the accident on the internet. Even though it's audio-only it still a bit disturbing.

 

[BRNout]

In 1986, the helicopter in which a WNBC radio traffic reporter was doing a live report malfunctioned and crashed. Live on the air. You can still find audio clips of the accident on the internet. Even though it's audio-only it still a bit disturbing.

I've heard it and it is haunting. You can hear something go wrong with the engine and the reporter's voice change pitch and tone (a woman, though I do not recall her name). It's more than "a little" disturbing....it's spooky enough to ruin your afternoon.

And, sure did air live on 66 WNBC's afternoon drive show - I think it was some time after Howard Stern left. At first, it didn't appear that the jock fully appreciated the gravity of the situation. A little later, programming was interrupted by the news department to convey what had happened.

Very sad - the reporter died, though the pilot made it through some pretty bad injuries. Going up every day to report traffic from a 'copter is more hazardous than most of us even consider.

 

[Stanislav]

In 1986, the helicopter in which a WNBC radio traffic reporter was doing a live report malfunctioned and crashed. Live on the air. You can still find audio clips of the accident on the internet. Even though it's audio-only it still a bit disturbing.

I've heard it and it is haunting. You can hear something go wrong with the engine and the reporter's voice change pitch and tone (a woman, though I do not recall her name). It's more than "a little" disturbing....it's spooky enough to ruin your afternoon.

I agree - I listened to it once, and will never do so again. Especially the last seconds when she is frantically screaming "HIT THE WATER!!!" over and over. The reason being that this poor woman had actually been in a PREVIOUS 'copter crash and survived -- that one went down in the water, and I suppose she was hoping to go into the drink again rather than something more solid. (Although, at least at higher speeds like a crashing jet, hitting the water is still like hitting a brick wall...)

Equally haunting is the video of the Phoenix helicopter collision that came from one of the doomed craft (the one belonging to ch. 15). Seeing the picture jerk at the moment of collision (and the reporter's exclamation of "Oh, Jeez!!!") followed by the sudden spinning, breaking up video, and then seeing the anchorwoman's eyes as they cut back to the studio (it was clear she realized that SOMETHING bad had just happened)...well, that's another one you don't want to see more than once.

 

[Ultimajock]

In 1986, the helicopter in which a WNBC radio traffic reporter was doing a live report malfunctioned and crashed. Live on the air. You can still find audio clips of the accident on the internet. Even though it's audio-only it still a bit disturbing.

I've heard it and it is haunting. You can hear something go wrong with the engine and the reporter's voice change pitch and tone (a woman, though I do not recall her name). It's more than "a little" disturbing....it's spooky enough to ruin your afternoon.

And, sure did air live on 66 WNBC's afternoon drive show - I think it was some time after Howard Stern left. At first, it didn't appear that the jock fully appreciated the gravity of the situation.

...the date was 22 October 1986, the reporter killed in that crash was Jane Dornacker, who'd just come to WNBC a few months earlier from KFRC San Francisco. Curiously, she'd survived an earlier copter crash and continued doing WNBC's traffic reports from a Rockefeller Center studio, but station management pressured her into going back up in the copter again. This one, it turned out, was misfit with an Army surplus sprag clutch not intended for civilian aircraft usage, and the thing wasn't adequately lubricated at the time of the crash. The host on the afternoon drive shift at the time was Joey Reynolds, who has since become an overnight staple on WOR. Tellingly, GE dumped the entire NBC Radio division just before the NTSC report on the crash -- http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id=20001213X35064&key=1 -- came back...