This past Sunday night, NBC Evening News opened their program: “Good evening, we begin tonight with a story we would rather not be telling.” Earlier that day, at approximately 11 am, a man uploaded a series of videos to Facebook, utilizing the social media platform’s live-streaming function.

In the first video, the Cleveland man announced his intention to commit murder. In the second video, uploaded minutes later, the man shot an elderly man, 74 year old Robert Godwin Sr.

In the third and final video, the man recorded his confession and manifesto. This horrific violence was live-streamed and shared on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for two hours before Facebook disabled the man’s account. The video continues to circulate on social media and has been viewed by millions.

This live-streamed murder is the latest incident in a series of violent events that have been uploaded to Facebook. In the last year alone, Facebook responded to live-streamed rape, torture, suicide, and now murder. While this latest violent incident has prompted important conversations about Facebook’s role as gatekeeper of graphic content, I am more disturbed by the gratuitous pleasure the media took in reporting this live-streamed murder.

On Sunday, the day of the Cleveland murder, the evening news programs barely concealed their glee about covering the gruesome killing. NBC News opened with the story, anchor Kate Snow breathlessly saying, “Good evening, we begin tonight with a story we would rather not be telling, a horrific and brutal crime tailored to the reality that we all live in now, a world where social media allows people to broadcast their every move in real time.”

With no warning, the Facebook Live footage fills the screen and a reporter’s voiceover explains the event. The viewer sees the live-streamed face of the killer, and then the report cuts to the footage of Godwin as the killer approaches in his car.

The killer states his intention to kill, and raises a gun to Godwin’s head, which has been intentionally blurred by NBC. The footage then cuts to the elderly man lying dead on the sidewalk. This all occurs within the first minute and 16 seconds of the news program.

Again, there was no warning by NBC News that they were going to broadcast this gratuitous display of violence into millions of homes. NBC and all other news programs that shared this footage jumped at the chance to exploit the extreme shock value of the footage, while claiming they are merely fulfilling their duty to report the “news”.

I am disgusted by the way that NBC and others exploited the murder of Godwin in pursuit of ratings. NBC News and other programs that distributed this footage participated in the sadistic display of brutalized black bodies. White America is so desensitized to the abuse of black people that NBC News and others calculated that viewers would not turn off their televisions in disgust. Instead, viewers became complicit in the voyeurism of violence.

Some have compared the Facebook Live murder to the live-streamed shooting of Philando Castile, which was also broadcast by the news. However, these events could not be more different. In the case of Castile, his murder was streamed on Facebook Live by his girlfriend after he was pulled over and shot by a St. Anthony police officer. Diamond Reynolds, Castile’s girlfriend, began streaming the traffic stop in order to document police brutality. Because the police sometimes destroy video evidence recorded by citizens, Reynolds utilized Facebook live-streaming feature to ensure that the video would not be erased.

The Facebook Live video of Castile dying in his car quickly spread across social media. It become another in a series of video recordings of black people dying as a result of police brutality. The video of Castile was recorded to document state violence. The Cleveland murder was recorded to terrorize. It is a serious mistake to conflate the two videos.

It is reprehensible that the media would share this video. Furthermore, in a stunning display of recklessness, after broadcasting numerous photographs of the killer, NBC News played footage of his live-streamed “manifesto”. During an epidemic of mass shootings in this country, the media directly contributes to the growing threat of copycats.

Experts contend that the way the media covers mass shootings increases the chances of another shooting. In an interview with Mother Jones, FBI Special Agent Andre Simons said that shooters post online manifestos “to claim credit and to articulate the grievance behind the attack… We believe they do it to heighten the media attention that will be given to them, the infamy and notoriety they believe they’ll derive from the event,” Simons said.

To combat the copycat effect, experts say that the media should change the way it covers shootings. Responsible coverage would feature minimal use of attackers’ names, and their images even less so. NBC News and others failed to uphold these principles.

In an age of viral mass shootings, journalism must evolve to provide ethical coverage. The voyeuristic broadcasting of violence against black people is unacceptable. The exploitative coverage of mass shootings for ratings is unsustainable and reprehensible. We can and must do better.