Execution on Web harmful to society

An Internet company sued last week to be allowed to broadcast Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh's execution on the Internet. McVeigh is set to be executed May 16 in a Terre Haute penitentiary for the 1995, bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, Okla. That blast killed 168 people. \nEntertainment Networks, Inc., a Tampa, Fla., company that produces adult-themed Web sites filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and the Justice Department Thursday in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of Indiana, claiming the federal regulation that bars witnesses from photographing or making audio or video recordings of an execution violates the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of the press. \n Regardless of the First Amendment rights the Internet company might have, it would clearly be in poor taste and harmful to society to broadcast the execution.\n The Webcast will only glorify what McVeigh did. It will glorify the fact that he is unremorseful and might give impressionable young people the idea that this is a good way to get 15 minutes of fame. To some, broadcasting his execution on the Internet would make McVeigh a martyr. The media should not promote this type of thinking, and they would with a live Webcast. \nWhat about children who could potentially see this Webcast? Children are impressionable, and creating a martyr out of McVeigh would be wrong.\nSome might argue that McVeigh has rights, too, and shouldn't his last wish be honored? McVeigh has said he would like his execution broadcast, and this would certainly be a way to honor his wish, to ensure he would live in infamy for all time. But McVeigh should not get his wish -- he lost his rights when he took the rights and wishes of the 168 people he killed on that fateful day.\nStaff vote: 10 - 1 - 0 (yes - no - abstain)