Cable crews' live airing from San Bernardino shooters' house triggers criticism

Future broadcast journalism students got another unique case study Friday when camera crews barged into the townhouse belonging to the now-dead suspects in the San Bernardino shooting.

In the grim and brazen scenes aired repeatedly on cable news and other news outlets' websites, reporters and cameramen are seen browsing through the documents, furniture and household items belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, who were killed in a shootout with the police Wednesday. Their shooting rampage, now being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, killed 14 and wounded 21.

The FBI had executed a search warrant and seized evidence from the house hours after the shooting. And “we turned (the house) over,” David Bowdich, assistant director of the F.B.I.’s Los Angeles office, said in a news conference Friday. As the property owner, Doyle Miller, approached the house, he was asked by reporters to open it for reporters. He obliged, by opening the plywood that had been shut.

The casual and sudden act of charitable disclosure left even the on-site journalists stunned. “I don’t think anyone expected this to happen today,” CNN correspondent Victor Blackwell said on the air Friday.

Cameras captured the gloomy scene of the crib that belonged to the couple's six-month old infant. Reporters are seen sifting through mail. Photos and ID cards were shown. Signs of the couple’s Islamic faith – books, a banner, prayer beads – were emphasized. A neighbor even walked through it with a dog, CNN reported.

CNN and MSNBC were among the outlets to broadcast live from the scene. And predictably, howls of protests and questions of media ethics were unleashed on social media. (Reporters from The Desert Sun, a newspaper owned by USA TODAY’s parent, Gannett, also entered the house and captured video but didn’t air the footage live.)

“Although MSNBC was not the first crew to enter the home, we did have the first live shots from inside. We regret that we briefly showed images of photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review," MSNBC said in a statement.

In a statement, CNN said it "made a conscious editorial decision not to show close-up footage of any material that could be considered sensitive or identifiable, such as photos or ID cards."

Reporters’ incursion turned out to be mostly voyeuristic as it produced nearly nothing of substantive news value -- possibly other than a list of items the FBI had already seized.

Kelly McBride, who teaches media ethics for the Poynter Institute, said in a blog post that “the journalists who walked through the door did the right thing.”

But she took issue with the live airing of the invasion. “Because any information you gather by prowling through someone’s home is inherently out of context, the newsrooms that use this information have a duty to put it in context,” McBride wrote.

Mark Feldstein, a former TV correspondent who teaches journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, says the reporters’ actions were “less a matter of ethics but taste.”

“All reporters feel the hot breath of competition,” Feldstein says. “You can’t ignore ratings pressure. There’s pressure to air ‘breaking news’ live no matter how trivial.”