Why Do We Televise Eric Garner’s Execution, But Not Joseph Wood’s?

The news of Arizona’s botched execution of Joseph R. Wood III Wednesday afternoon has become another dominant story in this summer of news that won’t quit, but what’s really unusual about this event is the way in which it is being covered by the television news media, and how that contrasts with the coverage of another big story this week. In case you missed the news, convicted murderer Joseph Wood was executed Wednesday, but because of the increasingly improvisational nature of lethal injection drugs, it took him two hours to die. Governor Jan Brewer (R-Ariz.) released a statement promising a “review of the process,” adding “but fuck that guy.” (That’s a slight paraphrase.)

Television news has been covering the execution by televising descriptions of it from reporters who witnessed Wood’s demise, which is odd, because the guy was laying still, in a room that was presumably well-lit, so you’d think a decent television reporter would be able to get a camera on him. This is how we handled the killing of people by our government, by either wringing our hands or cheering, but always protected from the actual images of what is being done in our name.

Well, not always. While we don’t televise executions like that of Joseph Wood, there are some killings by our government that we’re perfectly fine with showing on TV, like the NYPD’s chokehold-aided takedown of suspected untaxed cigarette seller Eric Garner. This contrast could not have been more stark than on Wednesday night’s The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, during which the aforementioned somber descriptions of Wood’s execution were followed by a lengthy segment on the killing of Garner, who died last week when police put him in a chokehold and tackled him on the street, then provided no medical aid to him whatsoever.

The only reason we are hearing the story of Garner is that there was a camera recording the whole incident, and unlike Wood, there is no doubt that Garner suffered as he can be heard on the tape pleading for breath. That recording, which is of police actually killing a man, played on a loop during most of O’Donnell’s segment, like wallpaper:

Why is it, then, that we are allowed to see the absolutely gut-wrenching, unjust death of Eric Garner, but not the fully-sanctioned, legal killing of Joseph Wood, a killing which, after all, we are all a party to?

There’s this line of thinking among death penalty opponents that…READ MORE

By: Tommy Christopher

Tommy Christopher is The Daily Banter's White House Correspondent and Political Analyst. He's been a political reporter and liberal commentator since 2007, and has covered the White House since the beginning of the Obama administration, first for PoliticsDaily, and then for Mediaite. Christopher is a frequent guest on a variety of television, radio, and online programs, and was the villain in the documentaries The Audacity of Democracy and Hating Breitbart. He's also That Guy Who Live-Tweeted His Own Heart Attack, and the only person to have ever received public apologies from both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.