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The Morality of a Macabre Spectacle
What Happens When Justice Becomes Entertainment
There is something revealing about the things we are willing to watch when we believe the person on the screen deserves what is happening to them. The idea of broadcasting the execution of Nidal Hasan, the US Army psychiatrist convicted of killing 13 people and injuring 32 others in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, bring this into sharp focus.
When I first heard of the proposal to livestream the firing squad execution of the convicted murderer, my immediate reaction was that something had gone badly wrong. This is saying something given the turbulent and divided state of contemporary America. Whatever one thinks about capital punishment, turning a person’s death into a public spectacle seems to cross a troubling moral boundary. Alongside a raft of world leaders and other prominent figures, this week Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, described the proposal as ‘abhorrent’, stating that media platforms have a social responsibility to do the right thing and urging them to not broadcast the execution.
In the days that followed the announcement however, I found myself looking beyond that initial reaction toward some more potentially fundamental questions. Does the fact that someone has committed an appalling crime change the moral obligations we have…
