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Budd Dwyer’s suicide becomes media dilemma: To show or not to show photos, video?

Patriot-News - 1/20/2022

When a politician calls a news conference, he or she expects the media to cover it. Everything’s on the record.

But when corruption-convicted Pennsylvania Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer punctuated his Jan. 22, 1987, press conference by putting a .357 magnum in his mouth and pulling the trigger, it presented newspapers and news stations with a thorny ethical dilemma that’s still teaching lessons and causing pain 35 years later.

Newspaper photographers and TV videographers kept shooting throughout Dwyer’s shocking suicide. In doing so, Penn State journalism professor emeritus R. Thomas Berner said these journalists simply did their jobs.

“The photographer must keep taking the picture,” he said. “The newspaper doesn’t have to publish the photo, but the photographer must keep taking the pictures. It’s history.”

The dilemma is what to publish and broadcast, Berner said.

A typical suicide wouldn’t have been reported at all. The taking of one’s own life is one thing most media don’t cover. The exceptions are when the suicide is public and when the deceased is a public person.

Budd Dwyer’s death checked both boxes.

Suicides do not come any more public and newsworthy than a politician shooting himself in front of nearly three dozen reporters, photographers and videographers. This Pennsylvania political story quickly became national and international news.

But the decisions over what images should be published and how much of the video of his self-inflicted death should be broadcast became an ethical minefield for the media.

A series of photographs transmitted to newspapers across the country by the Associated Press showed close-ups of Dwyer just before and just after he pulled the trigger. In one of the images, Dwyer’s thin, salt-and-pepper hair is flying up in the air, seemingly just after shooting himself.

The series of Dwyer suicide close-ups were taken by Pulitzer Prize-winning AP photographer Paul Vathis. The shutter man won photo journalism’s top honor for his contemplative image of then-President John F. Kennedy walking a Camp David trail with Dwight D. Eisenhower following the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1962.

But former Patriot-News reporter Kenn Marshall, who worked alongside Vathis at the Pa. Capitol, said the late photographer wasn’t interested in a similar honor for the Dwyer photos, even though Vathis was again a Pulitzer finalist.

“He said he instinctively kept his finger on the camera and kept shooting the pictures,” Marshall said of Vathis. “But he didn’t want to win a Pulitzer for the Dwyer picture. He was proud of that (Kennedy) picture. He said the Dwyer picture, ‘nobody wants to see.’ He told me, ‘I’m glad I didn’t win’.”

As unsettling as the still photos of Dwyer’s suicide were, video shot by at least five television stations were even more shocking and disturbing. Their videotape contained the full act of the tall, husky Dwyer sticking the magnum in his mouth, pulling the trigger, collapsing in a heap on the floor and bleeding out through his nose and mouth.

It was up to each media outlet to decide how much to show to the public.

TV news had the most immediate decision to make. It takes time for newspaper presses to roll. But breaking news broadcasts can go out in mere minutes. The quicker, the better, in fact.

In Harrisburg, it was a snow day for most school districts. Children and young people were watching a re-run of “Webster” that morning on WHTM ABC27. Then, the station abruptly switched to a special news bulletin. The subsequent report contained the full video of Budd Dwyer’s suicide.

Cue a storm of complaints from parents and viewers, which came in by the hundreds and flooded WHTM’s phone lines, according to a report by the Patriot-News at the time.

Backlash against the broadcast was so intense, former station anchor and producer Rick Wagner went on the air at 12:30 p.m. that day and apologized. Wagner told his viewers, “we did not sufficiently set up the gruesome nature of the videotape.”

Yet, the station wasn’t done showing the full video of Dwyer’s suicide. On its 6 p.m. newscast, WHTM aired it again, this time preceding it with warnings and with phone numbers of mental health professionals who could be called for help, the Patriot-News reported.

In defending the decision to double-down, Wagner compared coverage of Dwyer’s suicide to the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, the attempted assassination of President Reagan, the John F. Kennedy assassination and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby, the Patriot-News wrote.

Simply put, Dwyer’s suicide was news, and that made the full video of his shocking act newsworthy, Wagner argued at the time.

By contrast, WGAL News 8 decided to run a 57-second clip with the “graphic portions” edited out, the station’s news director Ed Wickenheiser told the Patriot-News at the time. “Our decision was made very early on, and the big question was what we would show,” he said.

WHP-21 stopped the videotape with Dwyer holding the gun and moving his hand toward his mouth, according to the Patriot-News report.

“We decided it was not correct in our journalistic judgment to air the actual suicide,” then-news director Chris Fickes said. “I’m very comfortable with our decision. I think it was the right one.”

The opposite decision by ABC27 to twice broadcast the entire suicide still resonates 35 years later.

A long-time WHTM assignment editor asked by PennLive for comment replied in an email that the entire episode is still causing discomfort at the station.

Contacted for an interview about the case, ABC27 assignment editor George W. Richards responded that he would need to first check with news department and station managers for input.

“We’ve had a variety of owners over the past four decades who have had a variety of perspectives on this terrible moment in state history,” Richards wrote in his first email reply.

A few days later after a PennLive reporter contacted him again, Richards wrote that there would be no detailed response from the station’s management.

“I have not heard back from our News Director and/or the General Manager about the upcoming anniversary,” Richards wrote.

In explaining this further, Richards revealed just how sensitive the Budd Dwyer video remains for the news station.

“That terrible incident years ago was a dark day for many, including us here at WHTM,” Richards wrote. “It’s still an issue that pops up periodically in conversation in and outside the newsroom that creates bad feelings and discord. So, I decided many years ago to put that day behind me, move forward, and refrain from all discussions and involvement with the story. I don’t regret my decision.”

At the Patriot-News, which was about to churn out editions of Evening News that would carry banner headlines on Dwyer’s suicide, the quandary was which photo to publish.

Former Patriot-News City Editor John Troutman, then a young assistant city editor responsible for coverage of Harrisburg’s suburbs, said he argued strongly in favor of running the Vathis photo showing Dwyer just after pulling the trigger.

“I saw the picture when it came across,” the now-retired Troutman recalled. “It was just riveting. Dwyer’s hair was pointed straight up. It was right at the point of the impact of the bullet.”

As far as the young newsman was concerned, the image more than told the story.

“I was still a young assistant city editor coming up. I was all gung-ho,” said Troutman, who argued for publication because Dwyer’s suicide had “happened in public.”

Troutman’s bosses, including City Editor Dale Davenport, who was responsible for the Evening News, and Editor Ronald Minard, disagreed.

“That was some hand-wringing over, do we run it?” recalled Troutman, who now says not doing so was the right call.

“In hindsight I agree with the decision. I came to see that,” he said.

Marshall, who had called in with news of Dwyer’s suicide, also agrees.

“I don’t think there was any need to show him with the gun in his mouth,” he said. “Or the next shot, which showed the impact of the bullet.”

Those images would never run in the Patriot-News. Instead, the newspaper published another photo taken by a different AP photographer showing Dwyer with the gun in one hand, his other hand reaching out to keep people back.

Even 35 years later, with the images available online, PennLive is choosing not to run the more graphic Dwyer photos as part of this special report.

Plenty of other newspapers did publish the photos.

One of the more interesting research papers on which Dwyer photos newspapers published revealed that proximity to Dwyer’s hometown of Meadville, Pa., was a determining factor. The further away the publication was, the more likely it was to print the most graphic photos.

The research by Robert L. Baker examining coverage of 91 Pennsylvania dailies also revealed newspapers that published the graphic photos often wrote editorials to justify their decisions, arguing the “photos had tremendous impact.”

All of this made for plenty of debate and discussion in college journalism classes. But Berner said one Penn State journalism class had Dwyer’s daughter as a member. So when coverage of her father’s suicide was to be discussed, she was forewarned and absent that day.

“Whoever was teaching ethics the day of the discussion of the photo, she knew in advance and she did not come to class that day,” Berner said.

With the advent of the Internet, however, there’s no escaping the Dwyer suicide video nor those graphic photos. All live in perpetuity online, fueled mostly by prurient interests.

Budd Dwyer has even earned entry into the so-called Urban Dictionary, where his name holds various meanings, some of them obscene.

“It’s a sad commentary on society,” Berner said of the snuff-film-like interest online.

Greg Penny, who served as Dwyer’s deputy press secretary, remembers receiving a media call in the early 2000s that had nothing to do with his far-less political role at the time as spokesman for PennDOT District 8.

On the other end of the line, a Philadelphia Inquirer reporter wanted a comment on the Dwyer death video now gaining a cult following on the Internet.

“The Internet comes along, and it gets posted,” Penny said. “Here it is, you can view it online. I think it’s obscene.”

So does Marshall. Having witnessed it in person, neither he nor Penny has ever watched even a second of footage from Pennsylvania’s most infamous press conference.

“I have never watched it and I never will. I don’t need to see it again,” Marshall said. “I don’t know why people want to see something like that. It’s something I don’t understand. I never will.”

Editor’s note: For those who may be considering suicide, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 to speak with someone today.

©2022 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit pennlive.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.