While reporting on apartment-jumping Russian model Ruslana Korshunova, who reportedly committed suicide on Sunday after leaping to her death, Fox News broke what most media types would argue is an ethics commandment: Thou shalt not show the dead. This tenet falls somewhere next to “Thou shalt not show sex abuse victims,” though clearly on the other side of “Thou shalt be OK if you show a dead Saddam Hussein hanging from the rafters.” Now, following its various apologies to Obama’s camp, FNC is apologizing for broadcasting Korshunova’s corpse, lying partially covered by a sheet on the street.

Weekend programming exec producer David Clark said, “It was a producer error and we deeply regret it.”

Indeed they regret it — especially the fallout part, where everyone with a blog has been calling for their head on a stick. And, perhaps, rightly so: One does not stamp “Exclusive” on the footage, and have Geraldo Rivera saying “These are the last images of her broken body being lifted off the Manhattan sidewalk, where shocked and sickened witnesses watched her smash onto the concrete,” if it was simply a “mistake” — the shots were very obviously used for sensational affect, and the cable network was proud to be the only ones to have them. (TVNewser has the video.)

Read more at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/jossip/~3/324063756/.