Seven News airs dying moments of murdered security guard
The Seven Network last night made the controversial decision to broadcast vision of a man’s dying moments, as its evening news reported on the shooting murder of a Chubb security guard.
In the news story, vision of a paramedic attempting to resuscitate the victim, Garry Allibon, was shown as the reporter said: “This was the fight to save the security guard’s life. Paramedics worked desperately to revive Garry Allibon.”
It is understood that one viewer from Channel Seven Brisbane and another from Sydney has called the station to complain about the use of the video footage.
A Seven spokesman told Mumbrella:
I think you’ll find it wasn’t a ‘close-up’.
An exception from the classification zone rules applies to the broadcast of news and current affairs.
Additionally, news and current affairs programs do not require consumer advice. There was a strong public interest in broadcasting the report. Seven’s story included details of the TWU fund set up to support the security guard’s family.”
The use of the vision does not contravene commercial TV’s Code of Practice. But in terms of the “Classification of Other Material” it states:
2.4.1 Exception for news, current affairs and broadcasts of sporting events: these programs do not require classification, provided that the licensee exercises care in selecting material for broadcast having regard to:
2.4.1.1 the likely audience of the program; and
2.4.1.2 any identifiable public interest reason for presenting the program material.”
2.1.7 news, commentary on current events, and serious presentations of moral or social issues are permitted in lower classification zones, but must be presented with appropriate sensitivity to the classification zone.”
And in the Code’s “News and Current Affairs Programs” section:
4.1.2 news and current affairs programs are presented with care, having regard to the likely composition of the viewing audience and, in particular, the presence of children;
4.3.3 should have appropriate regard to the feelings of relatives and viewers when including images of dead or seriously wounded people. Images of that kind which may seriously distress or seriously offend a substantial number of viewers should be displayed only when there is an identifiable public interest reason for doing so.”
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
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It’s callous, though I wouldn’t say gratuitous. There probably isn’t a journo whose work hasn’t desensitised them to images of death and violence, and you can see the business reason behind Seven’s decision to broadcast its exclusive footage.
One can only hope Allibon’s family wasn’t watching.
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So Seven airs it- you claim it’s a a controversial decision in your opening remarks- then post the video up on your website for all to see??
(I probably would’ve never seen this if it wasnt for Mumbrella- and a lot of people are probably in the same boat)
What’s the difference between them doing it- and you doing it??
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Can’t help but agree with Anon on this one. don’t see how this is different than showing reports of funerals, etc? people die. sad but true.
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I saw this and thought it was such a bad call – imagine if you were the guards friends or family – no-one wants to see their loved one’s final moments displayed on the nightly news without any warning. Report on it, fair enough it’s news that a security guard was shot, but be much more sensitive with the visuals you use.
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I agree completely with ANON. I hadn’t seen it and wouldn’t have unless on your site – your criticism of Seven is more than a little hypocritical.
Beyond that I think it is completely unecessary for images like this to be broadcast – exactly what is the public interest being served in airing footage like this?
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Do we actually gain anything from watching Garry Allibon die?
I don’t think so. And it certainly doesn’t show “appropriate regard to the feelings of relatives”. I can’t imagine what pain they must have felt if they viewed this.
A very, very bad call on Seven’s part.
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Agree with Anon – shame mumbrella
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People, you have to press the play button to watch it. If you have done this, then you are only giving the media reasons to show it.
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Seriously Anon & Roger are you kidding?
How do adults get to form opinions without the ability to discover and review events such as this one? Mumbrella is not broadcasting to the unaware, but engaging mature minds to give mature opinions and commentary on how our society is evolving…this is why them putting it up is different.
As for the actual subject…this is hard to take during times when children could be watching. But i am a believer that adults need to see ‘consequence of action’. I know my views of driving changed for life when i witnessed a fatal car accident. we need to be more aware of the specifics and not hide behind excuses not to face reality.
So airing certain things at certain times is the fault here for me.
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I saw this on the news last night and was completely shocked…. it was totally inappropriate.
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Good point Anthony.
It wouldn’t be something appropriate for kids to watch and the article actually points to a section in the code of practice about this:
“4.1.2 news and current affairs programs are presented with care, having regard to the likely composition of the viewing audience and, in particular, the presence of children.”
Although of course the TV networks will interpret this however way they want…
And discussing this issue on Mumbrella is hardly hypocritical – unless the site has suddenly expanded its readership to the kiddie market!
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Thanks Mumbs for providing such an interesting point of contention for healthy discussion amongst informed media viewers such as ourselves. I appreciate you inviting us to consider and analyse this event.
And to those complaining – why did you press play if you weren’t also curious to see it? It’s reasonable you found it raised fear in you, but don’t shoot the messenger. Mumbrella have not condemned it, they simply brought to your attention an issue people are divided over.
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Anthony:
So, you have difficulty ‘forming an opinion’ on the consequence of a gun being fired at a person?
The comparison with driving is a red herring. Most people drive. Cars are designed to get you from A to B.
Most people do not carry guns. Guns are designed to kill people. I’m not quite sure what other ‘consequence of action’ is coming into play here.
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I agree with Anthony that consequence of action is an important lesson. However, unless Seven had consulted with the family it is all rather insenstive. Personally I would want people to be shocked and appalled and understand how horrendous it all is if I lost a family member in this way – but not everyone feels the same
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i think like much of the news from Ch7 it was a bit inappropriate, they just don’t seem to “stop and think” very much
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and agree with those above, if you don’t want to see it, don’t press the play button
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With the integration of news from TV to web, it might have been more appropriate for the newsreader to direct people to their website to view the footage rather than show at a 6pm time-slot. Or show it on the late night news so the kids aren’t watching…..
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My initial respose was to condemn channel 7 and see this as a continueing demonstartion of their lack of ethics. However I think that this broadcast did serve to inform the public about the inescapable cosnequences of gun based crime and help the police in their work to catch these villains and when they face justice make it more likley that they receive maximum sentences. I did not read anywhere wether a warning was given to the viewers that a distressing scene would be broadcast but I hope it was. Perhpas if more news was broadcast of the reality of gun crime fewer young men would be attracted by its glamour.
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After being loyal to 7 News for years, I stopped watching last month after one of their journos exposed David Campbell’s private life which ended his career and caused great pain to him and his family.
It seems Channel 7 is spilling over from credible journos to tasteless tabloid.
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pernicky i may be, however you don’t actually view the death of this man at all- all i can see is something i’ve seen both on television and in real life- paramedics working their hardest to try and save a life.
thank god for them or my own family wouldn’t be the same
my sympathy to the man’s family….
i hope whoever watches this realises the consequence of actions too
i’ve seen much much worse on the news.
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@2.Anon you clearly don’t work in the industry. The difference is Seven FILMED this themselves and then aired it. Mumbrella is merely informing us. As @Anthony said (completly agree) how do we form opinions without forums such as this?
@Anon2 i think you will find you are mistaken. How is mumbrella being hypocritical when they are not actually criticising Seven? They are simply laying out the facts. Note the story is in the NEWS column not the OPINION column.
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You see it all the time on those Bondi Rescue programmes. They even won a Logie for it, if I’m not mistaken.
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I don’t have any problem with Channel 7 showing that footage. They kept a fair distance and didn’t show the man’s face or any blood or anything overtly distressing. We see so many misrepresentations of CPR in TV dramas I think it is good to show the real thing now and then, and I don’t think they did it in a way that was disrespectful to the dying man.
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@Anthony: Fair enough, you’re more than entitled to your opinion.
I’m really only making the point- that I don’t see the difference between what Ch7 did last night- and the hypocrisy of Mumbrella posting the same “controversial” video on the front page.
In saying that, I find your whole “play button” argument pretty absurd- It’s totally flawed for a whole bunch of reasons- but I’ll leave that for others to think about.
@JessB: I clearly don’t work in the industry? Why is that? Because I saw a shred of hypocrisy in Mumbrella posting the same video it claims was controversial for Ch7 to air? Yes, that makes sense…
And I understand that it wasn’t Mumbrella that filmed it, but just because you don’t film something doesn’t make you exempt from criticism for re-distributing that same content with 1 hand- and criticising the original source with the other.. Yes- even WITH a play button. Again- I’ll leave that to you to work out.
Let me be clear that I’m just asking the question: Why is it ok for Mumbrella to post the video- and not ok for Ch7 to air it?? (If that is in fact the basis for this article in the first place)
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It’s wrong!!!
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Sigh. Because @24 Anon my point was merely that if you did work in the industry you would realise that there there is in fact NO hypocrisy in mumbrella posting the video (but obviously you are entitled to your opinion) as they are just – and i repeat myself here- simply laying out the facts. Not criticizing, not laying the blame, not taking sides, just giving us information in a public forum designed for this exact purpose.
Whilst you could of course view the story headline as a criticism of Seven – really, its just telling you the facts because thats LITERALLY what happened, Seven did indeed “air dying moments of murdered security guard” .
In my opinion it would be only be hypocritical if the headline had said something like “should Seven have aired dying moments of murdered security guard?” and im assuming the video was deemed controversial because it was aired on the news in a 6pm time slot when children could be watching . Its Unlikely children would be on this website.
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“Sigh. Because @24 Anon my point was merely that if you did work in the industry you would realise that there there is in fact NO hypocrisy in mumbrella posting the video”
Oh- silly me for asking what the difference is!
Well done Jess- you make a compelling argument here. Its nearly as good as your “well, they didn’t film it” line.
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@anon agree with Jess. Given your sarcasm u seem unconvinced. Why exactly do u think mumb is being hypocritical? U havent really stated ur reasons very clearly.
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@28 Alex-
Mumbrella have obviously tried to make a point of this- and gone to the effort to write an email to Ch7 to get a statement re: airing the “controversial” footage.
They’ve made made the same footage available on their website that they’ve asked a Ch7 spokesman for response on.
Apologies for not being clearer- but I thought It was pretty obvious to most the point I was trying to make.
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@29anon – but how on earth would we know what the hell mumb was talking about without the footage??? It would be an extremely frustrating and stupid article if we were told what happened and given the response from Ch7 without the footage.
I hadn’t seen it on the news, so after reading, I needed to see it to know what was going on, how bad the visual was. It was extremely helpful as I thought I was going to see a man die with all the hoo-haa here. All I saw was our hard working wonderful medics go to town to save a mans life. If anything, maybe we should be using this to praise ambos everywhere instead of being ridiculous about footage being re-shown on a website dedicated to discussing what has happened in the media, with examples. If this offends you, go to the Wiggles site and get your PG on there.
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I didn’t see this on the news last night, my only exposure to this story is the clip above….assuming this is exactly what airred on Ch7 I don’t really see what all the fuss is about.
You can’t actually see anything in the video aside from an ambulance medic giving CPR and fighting for that poor man’s life.
Fair enough they probably shouldn’t have shown it at 6pm, but I am sure they have shown worse footage of the war in Afghanistan and/or of any other tragedies around the world and done it in the early evening without all these complaints
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@30 Bianca.
Again- I’m not saying Mumbrella are in the wrong for posting it. Nor have I said it offends me.
I’m saying- that in general terms- they’re doing the same thing Ch7 did last night.
How they choose to report it is really a matter for them.
You’ve completely missed the point.
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@32 Anon
Sorry but I think you missed the context point. This is a website which shows what has happened in the media world for media industry to comment on. It is shown with the option to read about what you are about to see and, yes, I will state again, with the option to not view it via the play button. (Your play button argument, or lack of, makes little sense)
The news is a tv program that shows the footage without any barriers to viewing, or any warnings about what is about to happen.
This is a website visited by a mostly adult audience.
The news, at 6pm is for all ages.
How is any of this the same thing?
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@33 Bianca-
We’re going around in circles. And yes- I clearly did miss your “context point”
Anyway- personally, I think that by Mumbrella posting this video here its- generally speaking- not really much different from Ch7 airing it.
News organisations will describe stories all the time without needing to show a visual reference to back up their case.
You’re fine to have your opinion, but I disagree with most of what you’ve said.
Cheers
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@34 Anon.
Great. You sound like a very reasonable person. Apologies for the Wiggles comment, that was totally uncalled for.
Now, lets get back to more important things.
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Channel 7 usually show such sound judgement.
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There are far too many members of the public commenting here and it is ruining discussion.
It’s starting to make me wonder if it would be worth giving up anonymity and being required to present industry credentials to be able to post here.
Not quite, but nearly.
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Its all about money – I’ll even ad an url to a misquote which sums up the business even if it is a misquote. If I were the executive/lawyer/producer — Id have spoken to his nearest relatives first.
http://urbanlegends.about.com/.....ompson.htm
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Channel 7, have reached the level of “Tabloid” and this video and that of the NSW Minister are merely the evidence.
Can someone advise me what the term should be, we know that “Tabloid” has become the tstandard for this kind of cheap, ambulance chasing junk in our newspapers.. what is it called when on TV?
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I’m sorry to be morbid however I have to correct you on your suggestion that this was his “dying moments”.
The Paramedics were performing CPR and applying chest compressions. This almost always follows cardiac arrest. By definition, the victim is generally already “dead” at that stage. CPR is an attempt to revive a victim. A second read of your text notes this.
You may also be interested in an article I wrote in today’s Daily Telegraph.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com......5877610771
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i love a good snuff film. got any more?
what cheeses me off is that we get 3 weeks of reporting over aussie soldiers dying in afghanistan, but ABSOLUTELY NOTHING whenever we kill some innocent afghan civilians. whats up with that? all those innocent woman and children dying, and nothing on the telly! are some deaths better than others? what a waste!
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I think it is great they showed it.
If anything is being desensitised its when we hear about a stabbing or a shooting in the city on the news, its becoming all too common. Footage like this really hits home that its actually someones father, husband or son that has unfortunateley had his life taken away from him by some scumbag.
Although there should of maybe been a verbal warning before the segment started for the little ones or family relatives that may have been watching.
It gives me a whole new sense of appriciation for what my partner does for a living.
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