On Oct. 8, the Pentagon publicly announced its plans to condemn Nidal Malik Hasan to death by firing squad. Hasan, a former U.S. Army major who shot and killed 13 people and injured 32 others at the Fort Hood military base near Killeen, Texas, in 2009, would be the first person in 65 years to be executed by the U.S. military since the hanging of John A. Bennett in 1961. While this decision would already have been massively controversial on its own, the addition at the center of much of the discourse around this announcement is U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s claim that the event will be livestreamed.
These announcements have been at the center of a tremendous amount of debate and backlash from all over the world. Amongst the controversial nature of the return of military executions and capital punishment in general, the idea that a public execution could be carried out so shamelessly by the U.S. government in the 21st century has left many people appalled. It has been argued that the action of livestreaming brings the event to a new level of depravity, with some such as Sen. Patty Murray even opining that a part of the motivation for this decision is the entertainment value. It seems to be generally understood by a great number of people that real-life death and violence should be treated with care and respect when it comes to a situation like this, but taking a step back, is real-world tragedy not already being used for entertainment in a “socially acceptable” way?
True crime is a genre of media that has been the victim of sensationalization since the 16th century, and its ethics have often been debated. Critics of the genre claim that using violence and death for the purposes of entertainment, shock and popular consumption is disrespectful and in poor taste. In my opinion, there is a very real weight to these accusations. While traditional journalism surrounding violent crime often sanitizes or glosses over the gory details, true crime media finds its appeal for many in that it does not do this, often incorporating a level of storytelling and arranging the events in a way intended to create a level of mystery, suspense and shock, or to give the audience a supposed porthole into the mind of the criminal.
Through doing this, a lot of true crime content fails to give proper regard and respect to the victims and their families, a problem that presents itself in full-force in the supposed livestreaming of this execution as a “warning” with no regard given to the victim himself. It is important—as many of our generation are citizens of the internet—that we understand the effects that the content that we choose to consume has not just on ourselves, but on those involved. While the execution is an extreme example of this, all entertainment that focuses on real-world violence and death has a high possibility of being ethically skewed.
Last year, the internet dealt with a very different variety of the publication of violence. On Sept. 10, 2025, well-known right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk was shot during a public debate. Video was taken of the incident from multiple perspectives, and those perspectives spread rapidly on the internet. Many people expressed distaste for the public reach that these violent, often uncensored perspectives had, especially as social media algorithms seemed to deliver the videos to many people who did not want to view them.
Those who were taking these videos did not know what was going to happen on that day, and certainly cannot be blamed for taking the videos themselves, but the issue of their publication is a whole different story. While it could be argued that videos of this violent event ought to be public for journalistic purposes and the accurate documentation of the event, many people also argued that the posting of such videos shows a lack of “social media responsibility”, be it for disrespecting the death of a real person or for its hard-to-watch contents being shown to many without consent.
I believe that the conversation of the responsibility that internet users have when it comes to discussion and depiction of real-world violence, and especially death, is far from over, and the fact that our government has decided that public executions are back is ample proof of this. Public backlash and voices from both sides of the political spectrum pushing back against this decision have seemingly caused the Trump Administration to turn against the plan, despite their initial support. This is our responsibility as digital citizens, not only to discuss topics of death and violence with the respect they deserve, avoiding making a spectacle out of them, but to use our voices and call out those who would use tragedy as entertainment.
Whether the event is truly livestreamed or not, the publicity around it seems to have been deliberately crafted to generate a reaction out of the public, and as many have pointed out, the morbid curiosity and shock of the whole situation are bound to lead a number of people to express the same fascination with it that onlookers often expressed during the 1500s and 1600s public executions. I believe that this event and the conversation surrounding it should be our cue to look inward and strive to be conscious about how we interact with sensitive topics and their depictions on the internet, and how we can use our voices to protest against the sensationalization of horrendous events.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.