It was shortly before 4 p.m. on a Thursday when Jones placed a shotgun beneath his chin, at busy freeway intersection in Los Angeles, and ended his life - on television. Journalists and others may disagree about whether viewers should have been shown his suicide and his blood-splattered body. After all, live television footage indelibly captured the consequences of his violence, while also seeming to reduce tragedy to entertainment with a cinematic Hollywood ending. One can envision just such a debate, with the videotape being rerun in newsrooms at the many Los Angeles TV stations that interrupted regular programming to televise Jones' fading moments of life.

But there was no such dialogue that afternoon of April 30,1998. There was no time for one, because the TV pictures of Jones retrieving a shotgun from his smouldering pick-up, then blasting half his head away as police and news choppers hovered above, were live.

No time to ponder. No safeguards. In an age valuing media speed over reflection, the Jones shooting happened and was transmitted simultaneously.

The TV shot, heard throughout much of the world was a seminal moment in newscasting excess, one representing the ultimate horror of knee-jerk live coverage that in recent years had been careening across the television-scape like fugitives fleeing police in those familiar Southern California freeway chases.

Fearing what Jones might do with his shotgun, police had closed the two freeways leading to the interchange, creating a gridlock, as peak rush hour approached an epic traffic story even for Los Angeles. The news choppers could have covered that story from afar. Instead they were directed down for closer live shots of Jones, and two were especially tight on him when he suddenly shot himself.

Has there been a better example of coverage being driven perilously by the combined forces of intense competition and technology? While eyeing their competitors, stations went live on Jones because they could, not because there was a journalistic need. News executives and reporters shed their roles as professional observers with responsibility for making deliberate decisions about what goes on the air and themselves became transfixed by his bizarre and volatile behaviour.

The live coverage was widely criticised, and several stations afterward aired mea culpas, offering hope that even the media's worst amnesiacs finally had learned a lesson they wouldn't forget. But others were sceptical, wondering whether some of the authority of journalism died that day in Los Angeles along with Jones.
Courtesy Media Studies Journal