PHOENIX — In a case with national implications, an attorney is asking the Arizona Supreme Court to rule that networks and stations that don’t use tape delays on live events can be held liable if they broadcast something disturbing, even if that’s inadvertent.
David Abney, representing the family of JoDon Romero who committed suicide on national TV, said Fox News should have realized that the 80-mile high-speed chase in 2012 that ended near Tonopah was likely to end badly. But he said the network chose not to use the tape-delay system it has.
The result, said Abney, is his children, hearing about a televised suicide, were able to access the scene later on YouTube. Only then, he said, did they realize the victim was their father.
The family sued for intentional infliction of emotional distress.
But the Court of Appeals ruled that the chase — and how it ended — was a matter of public concern. The judges said networks and TV stations have no obligation to cut away.
Abney now hopes to convince the state’s high court otherwise.
If Abney gets his way, it would affect more than just this case.
It could force TV stations to rethink what has become a more-and-more common practice of broadcasting all sorts of events live. And while that likely starts with car chases, it could even extend to broadcasts of fires and police hostage incidents that could end in tragedy.
“Networks that want to get out on a tightrope and broadcast things that could go bad at any second have a responsibility to make sure that the public, and especially the people who are related to somebody who’s shown on television, are not subject to emotional distress,” Abney said. “It’s just common sense.”
And he said the facts in this case show that Fox made the wrong decision.
“If you’re going to broadcast things like a car chase, and the police are right behind the suspect, and the man stops and jumps out of the car, something bad is probably going to happen,” Abney said, whether a suicide or a police shoot-out.
“A broadcaster ought to be very careful at that point to make sure that what goes out on the air is not something that’s going to demolish the feelings of the people that that man has left behind,” he said.
He also sniffed at the idea that this was something that warranted live national news coverage.
“Fox News was broadcasting the chase nationally as infotainment,” he told the court in his pleadings, putting it on the air for no other reason than it was happening at the moment. “Fox News only did that because infotainment’s goal is packaging and presenting titillating or dangerous events as ‘news.’”
