Sky News reporter Colin Brazier has apologised for a 'serious error of judgement' after he was criticised for going through personal effects of a passenger on Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 while on air.
In a piece published in The Guardian today, the veteran reporter said he had "got things wrong".
"If there was someone to apologise to in person, I would," Brazier wrote.
Brazier, an award-winning reporter who was the first British journalist to enter Iraq with coalition troops during the 2003 invasion, was broadcasting from the crash site of flight MH17 on Sunday when he picked up items from an open suitcase full of a victim’s belongings.
He quickly realised his mistake, telling the audience: “I shouldn’t really be doing this, I suppose.”
However the broadcast was met with an outpouring of outrage on Twitter, with many calling his actions “shocking” and “disgusting”, and Sky News issued a statement of apology that evening.
British Prime Minister David Cameron meanwhile apparently referenced the incident in the House of Commons when he said people leafing through victims’ belongings and suitcases was “completely inappropriate” and called on the media and pro-Russian separatists to understand they were dealing with “effectively a murder scene”.
Writing today, Brazier acknowledged it was a "serious error of judgement".
"hile presenting Sky's lunchtime coverage of the flight MH17 disaster, I stooped down to look at a piece of debris," he wrote.
"It was a child's suitcase. I put my hand inside and lifted up a water bottle and a set of keys. As I did so my mental circuit-breaker finally engaged and I apologised instantly on-air for what I was doing."
Brazier, the father of six young children, said in recent years that he had been doing less reporting from sites such as that which greeted him on Sunday, and that it had been "like the set of a horror story", permeated by "the nauseating smell of death" and with none of the normal restrictions usually imposed by authorities in the aftermath of such events.
"The sights were shocking," he wrote. "I could not comprehend what we seeing."
It was in this context, he explained, that his gaffe came.
"I stood above a pile of belongings, pointing to items strewn across the ground," he wrote.
"Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a pink drinking flask. It looked familiar. My six-year-old daughter, Kitty, has one just like it."
Brazier said he bent down to pick up the flask, and that as he did so he "lost it".
"I fought for some self-control, not thinking all that clearly as I did so," he wrote.
"Too late, I realised that I was crossing a line."