You might remember this story from last September, when a Phoenix-area man's post-police-chase suicide was caught on camera by KSAZ, the local Fox affiliate, and broadcast nationally by Fox News.

Now, the three children of the suspect-turned-suicide are suing Fox News for emotional distress from watching their dad commit suicide.

From ABC News, via Mediaite:

In a lawsuit filed in Phoenix, Ariz., earlier this month, the three children of JoDon Romero, ages 9, 13, and 15, claim they have suffered emotional distress after watching a clip of the video posted to the internet.

The two older children claim that since watching the video, they have been unable to attend school and suffer flashbacks, "sleep disturbance and obtrusive thoughts," according to the lawsuit.

Romero, 32, is alleged to have carjacked a vehicle and led police on high speed chase in which he shot at squad cars and the television helicopter that pursued him. Fox broadcast the chase live, without a delay, on Sept 28, 2012 during "Studio B with Shepard Smith," including the dramatic final moments in which Romero exited his vehicle, drew a gun, and shot himself in the head.
According to the suit, rumors that an unnamed man could be seen killing himself began circulating in the schools of Romero's two older children, high school student JoDon Jr, and his middle school brother Frank.

"After school, the older boys went home and began looking for the suicide on the internet," according to the suit.

They found the video on YouTube and "as they watched, they realized in horror that they were watching their father."

Now, I'm not sure what the biggest problem here is: that Fox News accidentally showed the death of a man of live television in search of car-chase-footage ratings; or that these kids happened to find footage of their father shooting himself in the head as they looked for footage of a man shooting himself in the head.

Fox News screwed up — they admitted as much immediately after the fact, having apparently put the wrong video feed on a five-second delay — and they claim to have taken steps to never do that again. Time will tell, as there's bound to be another person shooting themselves on camera at some point in the future.

But what bothers me the most is that these kids are suing Fox News for putting up coverage that they themselves searched out on the Internet.

It's true that we, as a society, need to protect our children — but at the risk of sounding heartless, I'm not certain that Fox News should be held liable for covering a news event simply because these children searched for ripped footage of a man killing himself after a dangerous, high-speed car chase and found their father.

[h/t: Paleofuture]

A few weeks ago, we made mention of the small spat between Weekly boss Dan Gibson and James T. Harris, who appears to have stumbled into an unlocked radio booth at 104.1 The Truth.

In that, we mentioned that Harris has repeatedly turned down opportunities to work out his differences with Gibson, saying that he's "past it," or something.

But the thing is, he doesn't seem to be "past" anything, between raising a fuss about a mention of him in the latest edition of "The Skinny," and sending tweets out about the Weekly and Gibson during his downtime from making Facebook posts about the kinds of images that conservative grandparents forward around.

Because you asked for it, here is the Tucson Weekly hold music! Trololo... The Full Original Version.: http://t.co/rex0AMK8RH via @youtube
— James T Harris (@JamesTHarris) June 21, 2013

Is Dan Gibson the Paula Dean of The Tucson Weekly? Of course not!!! (Made u look!)
— James T Harris (@JamesTHarris) June 23, 2013

Looking past the fact he actually can't correctly spell the name of the disgraced celebrity he references (it's "Deen," as anyone who saw anything news related over the weekend could tell you), Harris seems to have a weird hate-boner for Tucson Weekly — whether it's because The Beautiful Man thinks that Dan is, well, a beautiful man, or because he wants to create some sort of controversy to stir up readership and an audience to improve his listenership, whatever. It's his thing. Not sure why he doesn't have anything better to do at 7:30 on a Saturday night, but who are we to judge?

Still, it still strikes us as curious that he's coming after Gibson, Nintzel and the Weekly as a whole without even the professional courtesy to stop using worn-out movie references (red pills, harry and lloyd, ben stiller lol, etc.) and jokes that discerning fifth graders would call lame.

We get it, James. Like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, you will not be ignored (see, we can do it too!), but the flip side to it is that, if you're feeling froggy, you should probably jump — though probably not in the same way that you jumped from your CNN interview back in 2008:

If you love baseball, I mean really love baseball, then you love Roberto Clemente. And if you love Clemente, then you will think of this video as I do — an absolute gift.

Enjoy:

And my favorite Clemente quote:

"I felt kind of bashful (when the fans went crazy). I'm a very quiet, shy person, although you writers might not believe because I shout sometimes."

This video from the Irish-brand LowLow Cheese is brilliant. It takes all the ridiculous diet-food advertising cliches and reminds us that in the end, Madison Avenue should just kiss our cheese-loving and not-dancing-with-our-yogurt asses.

Couldn't we see two dudes talking over their fat-free yogurt or doing the underwear prance with their special cereal? Look, confession time: If I'm going to dance with anything that's edible, it will be a bottle of mezcal.

If you're a tablet user paying for magazine subscriptions, take note: The Pima County Library is now using a service to provide us magazines for free.

Announcement from those library revolutionaries:

Imagine having your own personal library of your favorite magazines ready to read on your computer, tablet, or smartphone. For free!

Pima County Public Library (PCPL) is making it happen with Zinio, a new service that is now available to all PCPL cardholders.

With Zinio, you can access, download, and read the Library’s collection of online magazines from cover to cover. Whether you’re inside or outside the Library, Zinio gives you the full magazine experience as if you were holding the paper copy right in your hands.

PCPL’s Zinio service offers:
· Full color digital copies of 196 popular magazine titles, including 32 Spanish-language titles.
· Unlimited 24/7 access to magazines.
· Audio and video interactive features for many titles.
· Magazines don’t check back in; they’re yours for as long as you want.

“Reading magazines will never be the same,” said Jennifer Caldwell, PCPL’s Electronic Resources Librarian. “Zinio will probably be one of the most popular digital services that the Library offers for our patrons. It’s fun, easy to use, and all you need is a library card.”

To use Zinio, you need to create a library Zinio account and a Zinio.com account. Instructions can be found at www.library.pima.gov, and Library cards are available at all 27 PCPL locations.

KOLD viewers have probably noticed the absence of chief meteorologist Chuck George on broadcasts for the last week or so. In fact, his Facebook page is flooded with posts inquiring why he hasn't been on air. George, who through a news story aired by KOLD recently announced he is engaged in a long-running battle with depression, may have suffered another setback.

George most recently appeared June 7 on the station’s 5 and 6 pm newscasts, but was not on the air at 10pm. Aaron Pickering filled in on that prime time shift. George hasn’t been seen on television since. Furthermore, he’s been absent from social media, which George utilizes with frequency under normal circumstances.

Upon retrospective viewing, George appeared to struggle more with the 5 pm newscast. He’s good enough to get through the weather reports, but they certainly don’t rank as high water efforts. He’ll do little things like miss his marks, or wander a bit too close to the camera, but generally he manages to make it through.

Perhaps it’s reading too much into it, but the required news banter interaction is where uncomfortable signs appear. On the June 7 newscasts, Teresa Jun and Heather Rowe occupied the anchor seats, and they seemed to go into some variation of Pleasantville mode, a bit over-smiley, almost as if they were hoping a happy demeanor would act to diffuse an unpredictable situation so the weatherman didn’t blurt out something that would really get some attention.

If the absence is long-term, it would be George’s at least fourth lengthy hiatus from KOLD since 2010.

Long-time KOLD/KMSB news anchor Scott Kilbury has left the station and accepted a position as the main news anchor for WHEC TV in Rochester, New York.

While Kilbury considers Southern Arizona home, he has a great deal of familiarity with the Rochester area.
“Between the ages of 10 and 15, I lived in upstate New York,” Kilbury said. “When I went to Rochester it was so clean and nice. It’s beautiful, has a great downtown. They treated me well at the station. People like it there and have been there for a long time.”

Kilbury was at KOLD for a long time, over 12 years, and during that span he seemed to be the station’s go-to talent when it wanted to make a change or launch a new product. He left a successful stint on the sports desk to help stabilize otherwise transitional uncertainty in the station’s morning news block. While in sports, it was Kilbury who helped to launch the station’s well-known Overtime segments, the quirky skits that air as a lead-in to KOLD’s Friday night high school football coverage.

“We won two Emmys for those,” Kilbury recalled.

Once it lost Oprah Winfrey’s 4 p.m. talk show ratings juggernaut, KOLD wanted to expand its news presence with an hour-long newscast. It reached out to Kilbury, and asked him to act as co-anchor, which meant working double shifts—morning and afternoons—for a seven-month period.

And when Raycom, which owns KOLD, reached an agreement with Belo to produce the 9 p.m. news on KMSB TV 11, it was Kilbury the station approached to take the reins. The 9 p.m. newscast recently registered its best ratings numbers, with Kilbury at the helm.

Kilbury moved from upstate New York to Benson at the age of 15. He attended college locally and worked at the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind for eight years—“I named my first child after one of the kids there”—before landing television gigs in Montana and Nebraska. He returned to the area when the KOLD opportunity presented itself in 2001.

“My family is here. My wife’s family is here. I would call Tucson home, but the irony is that from age 10-15 I lived in upstate New York,” Kilbury said. “I’m talking to the news director and he’s telling me my mom taught at the same middle school he went to in Utica. There are all these weird connections. For the kids this is the perfect fit. My oldest is looking forward to fishing and skiing, like I did, and not having to worry about burning his feet on the asphalt in the summer. But I’m going to really miss the great people in this community for all their love and support.”

Kilbury's first day on the air in Rochester is July 15.

Oh, lord, here's the trailer for the Lifetime Original Movie about Anna Nicole Smith's life. I guess it's a perfect match, but seriously, Daniel Day Lewis is in this? (Correction: No, dammit, he is not. But hey, Cary Elwes of The Princess Bride is! We assume he lost a wager and had to choose between this or a battle to the pain, and now feels he made a huge mistake.)

Could be interesting, or could be that the only good thing to come out of this production is the cool cover of the Fame theme-song ... it airs June 29, alert the DVR.

While for a while it seemed really fashionable for Star writers to badmouth the comment section on their own website (by my recollection, Tim Steller called it a "cesspool" when Mark Evans hosted the Buckmaster Show a few weeks ago), today Senior Editor Debbie Kornmiller announced that the site would go to exclusive Facebook-based commenting next week:

We will begin using Facebook’s commenting system on our stories and blogs.

Our main goals are to create a more courteous environment for discussion and to give readers an easier way to share Star content with friends. Facebook takes away the anonymity by requiring that account holders use their real name.

Our switch means readers must have a Facebook account to post in comment threads. If you’re already on Facebook, you’ll simply use that as your login to StarNet.

While certainly the move will eliminate some anonymous or pseudonymous commenting, mostly among people not savvy enough to realize you can create fifty Facebook accounts with various names if that sort of thing suits you, the comment section on the article about comment sections has become a wake, mourning the end of a way of life for some ... spending hours a day arguing about Obama on the Star's website.

Here are five somewhat predictably bizarre comments from those working through the stages of grief (and yes, one of these comments is from someone with an "Obama as Hitler" avatar, because of course it is):

We've been pretty open about our love for The Militant Baker. Last time we talked with her, her world was taking off, you know, before the Today Show. Back then she shared her dream of organizing a body acceptance conference on the UA campus in 2014.

Well, it looks like Ms. Baker is getting closer to that goal. This week she launched an indiegogo campaign, and has already reached 20 percent of her $10,000 goal.

We love The Militant Baker. We love the name of her conference — "Body Love, A Womens Conference, Change Your World Not Your Body." We also love her campaign video. We'll also love you if you consider lending your support.