I'd agree there is some news value to showing such a thing, but that value becomes tenuous with repeated showings. When I worked in northern Michigan, we had video of a veteran police officer being shot during an armed standoff. We opted to show the video (with warnings) unedited because it also showed the heroic effort by his colleagues to drag him out of danger and to an ambulance. He died a few minutes later.
We didn’t show it again. It’s the same rule most news organizations use with the 9-11 attacks— the rule in our newsroom is, no planes hitting buildings, no buildings coming down. I am sure there will be exceptions, which we will judge case by case.
(Here’s the shameless plug—sounds like a good topic of discussion for our ethics panel at the spring convention in Decatur).
