The internet was abuzz this week with horror at the actions of Sky News reporter Colin Brazier, who was reporting live from the Malaysia Airlines crash site in Eastern Ukraine for the 24-hour news network. He picked up crash victims' luggage live on air, and rummaged through its contents, describing them to camera. Mr. Brazier now realizes he "crossed a line," and wrote a sort of mea culpa in the Guardian.
Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a pink drinking flask. It looked familiar. My six-year-old daughter, Kitty, has one just like it.
I bent down and, what my Twitter critics cannot hear – because of the sound quality of internet replays of the broadcast – is that I had lost it. It is a cardinal sin of broadcasting, in my book anyway, to start blubbing on-air. I fought for some self-control, not thinking all that clearly as I did so.
Too late, I realised that I was crossing a line. I thought aloud: "we shouldn't be doing this … this is a mistake", an instant apology that was only selectively quoted by those determined to see what I did as a powerful example of journalistic vulturism.
