Many television stations throughout Pennsylvania broadcast taped footage of Dwyer's suicide to a midday audience. Philadelphia station
WPVI (Channel 6) showed Dwyer pulling the trigger and falling backwards, but did not show the bullet path.
[79] Over the next several hours, news editors had to decide how much of the graphic footage to air. Many chose not to air the final moments of the suicide and WPVI also chose not to show the gunshot a second time.
[80]
Many stations, including
WCAU and Pennsylvania's
Group W stations
KYW and
KDKA, froze the action just before the gunshot. However, the latter two allowed the audio of the shooting to continue under the frozen image. Group W's news cameraman William L. "Bill" Martin and reporter David Sollenberger had a camera set up at the conference. They chose to air the audio with a freeze-frame of the gun in Dwyer's mouth. Only a handful aired the unedited press conference.
WPVI in
Philadelphia re-broadcast the suicide footage in full on their 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.
Action News broadcast without warning the viewers. That station's broadcast is a source for copies circulating on the Internet.
WPXI in
Pittsburgh is reported by the
Associated Press to have broadcast the footage uncensored on an early newscast. In explaining the decision to air, WPXI operations manager By Williams said, "It's an important event [about] an important man." Williams avoided airing the footage in the evening newscasts, explaining, "Everyone knows by then that he did it. There are children out of school."
[81] However, in central Pennsylvania, many children were home from school during the day of Dwyer's suicide due to a snowstorm.
[13] Harrisburg TV station
WHTM-TV opted to broadcast uncut video of the suicide twice that day, defending the decision (despite hundreds of viewer complaints afterward) due to the important nature of the story.[
citation needed]
Many older students reacted to the event by creating
black comedy jokes. A study of the incidence of the jokes showed that they were told only in areas where stations showed uncensored footage of the press conference.
[82] At least one reporter present at Dwyer's suicide suffered from being a witness.
Tony Romeo, a radio reporter, was standing a few feet from Dwyer. After the suicide, Romeo developed
depression and took a break from journalism.
[83]