Ever since the Malaysian airliner was shot down by a surface-to-air missile on Thursday, so very many people have used it as an opportunity to be terrible. See, for example, Wonkette hate favorite Bryan Fischer, who is pretty sure that it was awesome that a whole bunch of AIDS researchers were killed and also too why won't Obama shut up about the damn gays?
And let's not even get started on every conservative explaining that Dead Ronald Reagan would have already flown to Russia and personally kissed or murdered Putin, whichever showed more strength and manliness. But in that race to the bottom, do not count out Sky News reporter Colin Brazier, who thought it was a lovely idea to rummage through the luggage of a victim of the crash live on television.
“Everything people would pack, perhaps, to travel, sunglasses ...” he says as he stands amid strewn luggage.
“I think it’s a small girl’s bag by the looks of things. A set of keys, a toothbrush,” he continues picking things up out of a suitcase and showing them to the camera.
Christ on a cracker. How many things are wrong with this? All of the things, actually. The fact that the crash site is so unsecured that a random reporter can just wander through the wreckage toying with luggage? Bad! The fact that an actual factual human being thought that the best way to cover a terrible tragedy was to paw through the suitcase of a dead child? Super incredibly bad! The fact that it was a Sky News reporter and not a CNN reporter that did this? Actually really surprising! Apparently 24-hour news channels can suck just as hard across the pond.
To their credit, the Sky News apology was very, very British.
“Today whilst presenting from the site of the MH17 air crash, Colin Brazier reflected on the human tragedy of the event and showed audiences the content of one of the victims’ bags. Colin immediately recognised that this was inappropriate and said so on air. Both Colin and Sky News apologise profusely for any offence caused.”
See? The Brits know how to keep it relatively classy after they do something shockingly awful. CNN would probably have immediately made a mockup of the luggage back in the studio, brought in a luggage expert, and painstakingly recreated the child's luggage for the next 168 hours, so this is better, we guess? Small blessings.
Sky News Reporter Gives You Plane Crash News You Can Use By Ransacking Dead Child's Luggage
Especially an English Murdoch franchise prying into the private lives of private people? They only do that days ending in 'Y'!
Just keep watching. There could have been puppies on the flight, in which case it's only a matter time before some intrepid cable news reporter will be showing us their little carbonized corpses.