The momentum toward public executions delivered in the privacy of our living room seems inescapable. I think there's a mean-spiritedness in our culture, as well as a level of great cynicism. When you combine those aspects with the way television has contextualized everything from animal torture to police shootings as entertainment in recent years, you can't help but believe the televised execution of a human being is just the next step on that continuum. Robert J. Thompson, founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University, supports the idea of televising executions. These are two entirely different things.
Reality television is entertainment that's contrived with people coming in on their own volition.
An execution, on the other hand, is news. This is a state-sanctioned event. What goes on with that execution is a public event in every sense of the word. I've always argued along with Phil Donahue that if we're going to have state governments executing people, the citizens really ought to know what that's all about. In today's media universe, that means pictures as well as words.