![]() One former colleague has noted her excellence as a newswoman, right up to that final broadcast. Chubbuck, or who were there that day in 1974, say they remember her and that day well. No known recording of the suicide exists, because the only tape capturing it was in the TV studio, and if it is still around, it has likely oxidized to the point of being unwatchable. She then pulled a gun from behind her desk and shot herself in the temple. ![]() Chubbuck looked squarely into the camera and read what she had written: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in blood and guts and in living color, you are going to see another first – an attempted suicide.” But the tape jammed, leaving her with air time to fill and what she saw as her ideal moment. On July 15th, 1974, she was reporting from the television studio when the schedule called for a segment on a bar fight in town. She planned her death carefully she purchased a gun expressly for that purpose, learned to use it, and even wrote a note to read on-air immediately before she committed the act. She was deeply depressed, but the manner in which she took her life made a scathing statement about the news media. Her story is dramatized in Antonio Campos’s film, Christine, which was shown at Sundance in 2016. In 1974, a 29-year-old television reporter named Christine Chubbuck committed suicide in the middle of a news broadcast, in Sarasota, Florida. I’ve already answered the substantive aspect of the question, but the example below is worth knowing for anyone studying journalism and its complicated, sometimes unfortunate history. ![]() Next I’ll share a tragic example that involves a young woman’s suicide, so feel free to stop reading here if that subject troubles you. For journalists, though, such an unscrupulous emphasis on violence can pose ethical, and even existential, dilemmas. “Bleeds” doesn’t need to imply actual blood the blood can be metaphorical.īut if there is real blood involved, even better - from a business perspective. But people tuned in, because the segment promised a scantily clad undercover police officer and men in handcuffs. Is there really a prostitution epidemic? Unlikely. That FOX 5 “Operation Gotcha” segment on prostitution on Long Island we viewed in class was problematic not just because of the police entrapment involved, but because the party that profited the most from the segment was the news channel itself. It ropes viewers in and holds their attention, a proverbial train wreck on prime time.īut that doesn’t mean it’s always justified or even ethical. You can actually see the police tape and red lights circling above the squad cars, the blood-splattered walls, the body bags being rolled out on stretchers. That’s mainly because of the visual aspect of TV news that we’ve talked about in previous classes. Nowhere is this more true than in television news, which coined the expression, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Basically, if there’s violence, conflict or death involved, it gets top billing.
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