Times We Sat And Watched While People Died On Live TV

Then there are the big incidents, usually associated with a news event and seemingly happening more and more over the last 20 years as cable news channels jockey to be the first to bring you big events without thinking about what they’re showing. At its best, television news connects us and helps us come together during great tragedy. At it’s worst, it’s little more than a giant snuff film.

#1 John F. Kennedy Assassination

we would guess this is the death that has probably been seen more on television than any other in the history of death caught live on film. Unless you were in Dallas that morning in 1963, you probably didn’t see this as it happened. For years people wondered if someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald (a name you’ll see again on this list) was not the only person responsible for Kennedy’s death.

#2 The 9/11 Jumpers

The way our presidential elections are conducted with bitter rhetoric, the way we go through airports, the way we are forced to thank everybody in the military for their service…it all comes out of 9/11. One of the toughest scenes of that day, prior to the collapse of the buildings, were of Trade Center office workers standing in the spots where windows had been knocked out, trying to make the decision to jump to their death or not. Remember, their building was already struck by a plane, filled with smoke and fire and there was no sign of rescue.

#3 Robert Dwyer

You probably know this story in passing, but only because of Filter’s song “Hey Man Nice Shot” which isn’t about Kurt Cobain’s suicide as many people mistakenly believe. Nope, Robert “Budd” Dwyer was a former state senator in Pennsylvania who had risen to state Treasurer, called a news conference and killed himself with a gun at the state capitol in front of reporters and news cameras who all-too-happily showed it on television. Dwyer had been found guilty of taking bribes in exchange for influencing government contracts and was scheduled to be sentenced the next day.

#4 Victor Barrio

You’d think the bull might win more often, but this 1,100-plus pound monster scored a rare win for the mammals, killing a bullfighter for the first time since 1985. Yeah, people get hurt all of the time during the actual Running of the Bulls through Pamplona, but that’s what happens when drunk people stand in the way of charging animals in small spaces. Bullfighters are trained and “fights” are seen more as an artistic dance than an actual battle.

#5 The Challenger Explosion

All of those years of promising “regular” people being astronauts and seeing ourselves eventually being up there were coming true until tragedy struck 73 seconds into the launch. McAuliffe and the other six members of the Challenger shuttle were killed when the spaceship exploded off the coast of Florida. Many in NASA have said that the accident, caused by o-ring issues in the rocket fuel boosters, set the space program back by not only years or decades, but to a place it would never recover from. It’s hard to dispute since the greatest leaps forward in civilian space travel are now being made by private companies, not governments.

#6 Doug Dedge

In 1998, Dedge, a fighter who ran an MMA training school in Florida visited Ukraine to participate in a televised tournament. He fought against a guy named Yehven Zolotaryov. After about five minutes, the American was pinned down and struck by his opponents in the face by a flurry of punches, somewhere between 12 and 15. The ref probably should have stopped it quicker, but clearly didn’t expect Dedge to collapse when he tried to make it to his feet, being pronounced dead due to brain trauma, all while a TV audience of tens of thousands watched.

#7 Owen Hart

Owen Hart accidentally flipped the switch on his safety harness, causing him to plummet to his death from the rafters of Kemper Arena. Hart was supposed to descend in as a superhero character known as The Blue Blazer for a match against The Godfather at a World Wrestling Entertainment pay-per-view. The wrestling company caught a lot of flack from people for continuing the show when it was known to almost everybody producing the program, although not the fans in attendance that Hart had died.

#8 Alison Parker and Adam Ward

It was just another cut-away, forgettable morning segment for everyone involved the morning of August 26, 2015, in Moneta, Virginia, when reporter Alison Parker was supposed to interview the director of the local chamber of commerce. Behind the camera was Adam Ward, only 24, shooting what was probably a very boring assignment. What nobody planned on was Bryce Williams, who was a reporter fired a couple years earlier from the same TV station, showing up at the scene. The attack, which left Parker and Ward dead, was shown live and later cell phone footage shot by Williams at the time of the attack was released. Vicki Gardner, the subject of the interview, was shot, but survived. Williams escaped and led police on a five-hour chase, ending when he committed suicide.

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