#VIRGINIA SHOOTING ON AIR VIDEO FREE#
#VIRGINIA SHOOTING ON AIR VIDEO CRACK#

“On one hand, there’s a concern that somehow it’s going to inspire other people in a copycat performance, but on the other hand news reporters are reporting the story because it’s of grave public interest,” Cant said. journalist James Foley spread through social media, even though video-sharing sites tried to stop it from going viral. Last year, a video that the Islamic State released showing the beheading of U.S. Facebook took down the picture and suspended Medina’s account, but the photo had been passed along for at least five hours, CNN reported. In 2013, Florida resident Derek Medina confessed to killing his wife on Facebook and posted a picture of her corpse on the kitchen floor.

#VIRGINIA SHOOTING ON AIR VIDEO FREE#

Wednesday’s shooting wasn’t the first or likely the last time a social media business, which walks a fine line between censorship and free speech, will have to make tough calls about violent content. YouTube has clear policies against videos of gratuitous violence and we remove them when they’re flagged,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to the families affected by this terrible crime. “The Internet is inherently more difficult to control because it has several gatekeepers,” said Rita Cant, a legal fellow at the Center for Democracy & Technology’s Free Expression Project.įacebook, Twitter and Google-owned YouTube all have rules against promoting violence on their sites, but with billions of videos uploaded every day, the companies heavily rely on their users to report harmful content. Even as one violent video or account comes down, another pops back up.

#VIRGINIA SHOOTING ON AIR VIDEO CRACK#

Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn reacted swiftly by suspending the gunman’s accounts, but by then it was too late, the video had spread.Īs posting, linking and streaming videos online become more immediate, the Virginia shooting highlights a growing challenge among social media companies that try to crack down on users who promote violence online, experts say.

Within minutes, his comments were retweeted and the video reposted by others on social media as the world tried to avert its eyes from the gruesome scene popping up online. The suspect, identified as Vester Lee Flanagan II, posted the footage on Facebook and tweeted about the murder under the name Bryce Williams - his on-air identity when he was a reporter at the same television station. Not only did viewers of the broadcast see the murder unfold on WDBJ, but the suspected shooter recorded his own 56-second video. The chilling video showed a man pointing a gun at a Virginia reporter and cameraman before fatally shooting them Wednesday on live television, but the horror didn’t stop there.

Virginia shooting on air video