Reporters on Friday were allowed inside the rental home of the couple identified as the shooters in this week’s deadly attack in San Bernardino, a decision that led to the live broadcast of photographs and other personal items on cable news.

While inside the Redlands, California, property, MSNBC showed reporter Kerry Sanders riffling through pictures, including at least one of a child.

Members of the media crowd into the bedroom of San Bernardino shooting suspects Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, after the landlord invited journalists into the townhouse Friday. A book containing passages from the Quran is seen at right. The Associated Press

“Let’s make sure we don’t see the children,” said Andrea Mitchell, as the photograph was shown. “Let’s not show the child, Kerry. Let’s cut away from that.”

During the broadcast, MSNBC also displayed a driver’s license, a crib and shredded paper inside a waste bin.

“MSNBC and other news organizations were invited into the home by the landlord after law enforcement officials had finished examining the site and returned control to the landlord,” MSNBC said in a statement. “Although MSNBC was not the first crew to enter the home, we did have the first live shots from inside. We regret that we briefly showed images of photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review.”

CNN was also at the house, which had been rented by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the couple who authorities say were behind Wednesday’s attack.

“CNN, like many other news organizations, was granted access to the home by the landlord,” a CNN spokesperson said in an email to The Post. “We made a conscious editorial decision not to show close-up footage of any material that could be considered sensitive or identifiable, such as photos or ID cards.”

Fourteen people were killed during the attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino on Wednesday, authorities say. Malik and Farook later died in a shootout with police on the same day.

Doyle Miller, the home’s landlord, told The Washington Post that after the FBI had “released the property” to him, he had decided to allow one media organization – which he did not specify – to tour the site. Others then “stormed in” he said, speaking outside the low-slung two-story property.

Miller said he was allowing others, including The Post, access to the home “for now.”

Department of Justice officials said the crime scene was closed down and the landlord was free to do anything with the home.

“Once we turn that location back over to the occupants of that residence, or once we board it up, anyone who goes in at that point, it’s not up to us,” David Bowdich, assistant director of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, said Friday at a press conference.

CNN’s law enforcement analyst appears shocked by what CNN’s reporters – and other reporters – were doing.

Miller, the landlord, said he had never seen Tashfeen Malik. He said Syed Farook was a “normal person,” but said he didn’t know much about the couple. The couple’s baby was already born at the time they moved in, he said.

The decision to broadcast live from the home – and, in particular, MSNBC’s broadcast of personal, identifiable items found inside – shocked many viewers, including some journalists, who found the spectacle of reporters and photographers riffling through photo albums and identifying documents deeply jarring.

Kelly McBride, a media ethicist and vice president at the Poynter Institute for journalism, told The Post that the live broadcasts like Friday’s amount to “an act of voyeurism instead of journalism.”

Assuming they had legal permission to be there, it was “perfectly reasonable” for reporters to go into the home and gather information, McBride said. But part of their ethical obligation to the public includes providing context for that information. “Broadcasting live precludes that,” she said.

“If you consider the journalist who’s standing on the threshold of this property, his primary duty is to inform his audience to the best that he is able with information that is accurate, verified, and in context,” McBride said.

But that’s only the first step. Then, she said, journalists must figure out “what portions of that information are relevant and how they’re relevant. And that takes another level of reporting from outside of the house.”

Media organizations at the rental home Wednesday should have been familiar with the ethics of reporting live from a crime scene, because such access is not unprecedented for journalists – though granting it to a pack of reporters all at once seemed unusual, McBride said.

McBride expressed concern that the live broadcasts would have a negative impact on public trust.

“I am sure that the public is looking at journalists going through anybody’s home – even a couple that is now universally despised as this – as a tawdry act,” she said. “There’s this image of journalists as lurking around trying to pick up any piece of dirt they can on anybody. This certainly reinforces that.”

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