YREKA, Calif. (CN) — The children of a Northern California couple that died in the McKinney Fire are suing broadcasters that aired footage of their parents' dead bodies on private property during the wildfire, explaining that the news reports were how the plaintiffs found out they had died.
The family accuses CBS Broadcasting Inc. and American Broadcasting Companies Inc. of trespassing, invasion of privacy and inflicting emotional distress.
"Defendants took advantage of the destruction, confusion and terror of the McKinney fire, snuck onto private property, filmed the scene of plaintiffs' loved ones' deaths and published it to a national audience," the plaintiffs wrote in a May 16 complaint in Siskiyou County Superior Court.
Blaine Huber, Deborah Trudeau and Diane Kalling said they weren't contacted before ABC and CBS aired the footage from the Siskiyou County property, which included the deceased bodies of Huber and Trudeau’s parents, Charles and Judith Kays, following their death in a car while trying to escape the 2022 wildfire. (Kalling is the late Charles Kays' sister.)
Opening their complaint with a famous axiom about journalism — “if it bleeds, it leads" — the plaintiffs claimed the broadcasters were part of a civil conspiracy to gather the most eye-catching footage of the wildfire to garner viewers while disregarding the privacy rights of fire victims and their families.
They accuse the broadcasters of "intruding into the worst day of their lives and profiting from their grief."
The public didn't need to see footage of the two people dead in their car, the plaintiffs claim, and the journalists had no right to broadcast footage obtained while on private property, nor to show people what should have been private only to the victims’ family members.
Representatives of ABC and CBS at Walt Disney Studios Inc. and Paramount did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The McKinney Fire began on July 29 in 2022 in Northern California's Klamath National Forest. It burned more than 60 acres and killed four people in Siskiyou County — including Huber’s parents — becoming the deadliest fire that year and the second-most destructive.
Journalists frequently avoid publishing or broadcasting images or footage of people who have died before attempting to contact a person’s nearest of kin. News outlets usually publish images of dead people or gore only while acting in the public’s interest and if they determine a strong journalistic purpose for doing so.
Images of death in American news coverage have a controversial past, according to a 2020 study by the Center for Media Engagement. Some argue that such imagery is important to generate public awareness of major issues and events, while others say publishing those images might cause emotional distress or grief to loved ones, according to the center.
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