On Thursday the beige two-storey condo on North Center Street was a highly sensitive major crime scene. By Friday morning, it was the set of a reality TV show beamed live throughout the world, as dozens of reporters streamed into the home of the San Bernardino massacre suspects, where police said they found a massive arsenal of weapons and ammunition.



Faced with an opportunity to go inside and the hope that clues lay within that would reveal something – anything – about the inscrutable couple alleged to have committed America’s deadliest mass shooting since Sandy Hook, members of the media rushed in.

On live television around the world, an extraordinary scene began with the image of a reporter using a crowbar to pry off plywood that had been put across the front door. As one man used a drill to unscrew the wooden barrier, a journalist from a British Sunday newspaper was clearly visible finishing the job of forcing open the door.



A man appeared from inside on the threshold, spoke briefly to those in the media closest to the door, and then stepped aside.

Once the way was clear, a rush of reporters, television cameramen and photographers rushed in like an unstoppable human tide, trampling through the rooms.

What unfolded in real time was a bizarre spectacle of a television reporter offering a guided tour through the suspects’ leftover belongings – children’s toys, flipping through family photographs and a copy of the Qur’an.

In a bedroom containing a crib, there was a computer monitor, with a trailing wire leading down to where a computer had been removed.

Camera crews, including one from the BBC, went room to room and some lingered over a series of pictures of women, speculating on who they might be.

A journalist for the Guardian arrived at the scene, but did not enter the apartment.

A radio journalist, filing his report outside the boarded-up front window, his notes on one knee, told listeners that the press had been “given unexpected access”.



It certainly appeared that way to the owner of the house, who stood in the front garden expressing bafflement as to the motives of the renters who had seemed like a normal young family, and resignation as to the media circus. “I did not expect any of this,” Doyle Miller said.

Miller said that law enforcement contacted him on Thursday night to say their investigation was complete and he could enter the property. He arrived on Friday morning to assess the damage caused by officers when they searched the home, fearing that it was booby-trapped. “I opened the door,” Miller said. “Once you open the door … they kind of forced their way in.”

At a later press conference, FBI assistant director David Bowdich said the agency had returned authority to the apartment back to the owners after the search. “Last night we turned that over back to the residents,” he said. “Once we’re out, we don’t have control of it.”

Within the hour, the White House was having to fend off questions of whether it was confident in the way the FBI was handling the investigation.



The British journalist who had wielded the crowbar, Toby Harnden, said on Twitter that the landlord had told them the FBI were done with the apartment, and allowed them to remove the plywood barrier and go in.

Landlord told us that FBI & police had finished with the scene & given him permission to go back into his property. https://t.co/Gp1ErnFxFI — Toby Harnden (@tobyharnden) December 4, 2015

Screwdriver used, w permission of landlord, to unscrew screws to take board off entrance. FBI had broken down door. https://t.co/7vLhK8qtEB — Toby Harnden (@tobyharnden) December 4, 2015

Within minutes of the footage airing live on cable news, the busy road a 15-minute drive from the site of the massacre was filled with reporters’ cars and TV trucks. A local cop was at the house, though not to preserve the integrity of the scene. “I’m here to make sure nobody’s double-parked,” he said.



Maya Pawooskar used to live close by and drove a couple of miles from her current home out of curiosity. “Actually I saw it asked in the White House press conference, asking the press secretary how is that they’re allowing? So I thought, I’d better go quickly before they stop!” she said.

The house was less damaged than she had imagined from watching police storm suspects’ homes on television crime dramas. “I think it was a little better than what they show on TV. I thought there would be more holes in the walls and stuff like that. The funny thing was, people were on top of the couches, on top of it all. When I went in it was chaos. I think there were like 50, 100 reporters in there,” she said.

Kelly McBride, an ethicist at the journalism education center the Poynter Institute, told the Guardian that the live broadcasts by news networks of the suspects’ home, so soon after the mass shooting, are “clearly” an invasion of privacy.

“In journalism we often invade people’s privacy with a journalistic purpose, but when you’re broadcasting live you have no way of bringing context to what you’re doing or creating any sort of process for making the judgments about which pieces of information are relevant to the story that you’re trying to tell.”

Within a couple hours, the door was being boarded up again.