Fox News host Shepard Smith said Friday that he was deeply sorry that his show, “Studio B with Shepard Smith,” accidentally broadcast a live suicide at the end of a high speed car chase in Arizona.

The chase, which came to a grisly end outside of Phoenix, went on for about an hour and the suspect eclipsed speeds of 110 mph. Police said he fired shots at them from the driver’s seat of a stolen Dodge Caliber before ultimately shooting himself.

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Fox News was following the chase since it began, which Smith is known for doing — he once even wished for a car chase to keep viewers interested in the network’s analysis of the Supreme Court’s health care decision. But on Friday, Smith found himself apologizing.

“We really messed up and we’re all very sorry,” he said after returning from an impromptu commercial break and explaining that the network’s screw-up happened even despite a tape delay. “That didn’t belong on TV. We took every precaution we knew how to take to keep that from being on TV, and I personally apologize to you that that happened.”

Footage of the man’s suicide was almost immediately republished by BuzzFeed and Mediaite. [Ed. note: Both videos are extremely graphic and readers are asked to take that into consideration before clicking.] BuzzFeed later issued an amended video that did not show the suicide.

Numerous media studies show that reporting on suicide and showing the uncensored act can increase suicidal tendencies in vulnerable individuals, and most professional news organizations have policies that prohibit use of overly graphic or gory images or video. Individuals who are contemplating suicide are urged to call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK.

The suicidal man had not been named at time of this story’s publication.

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This video is from Fox News, broadcast Friday, Sept. 28, 2012.



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[Ed. note: It was with a great deal of internal debate that Raw Story linked to the video in question. We don’t encourage readers to click it. But we felt that to report on the story without linking to the video of the incident would be failing to give our readers a full and widely available context.]

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UPDATE: Fox released the following statement to TV Newser by Michael Clemente, executive VP, news editorial.