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Mass Media and the Death Penalty: Social Construction of Three Nebraska Executions.
On Friday, September 2, 1994, Harold Lamont "Walkin' Willie" Otey died in Nebraska's electric chair. Otey was one of 31 death row inmates nationwide to be executed in 1994. At 12:40 a.m. the Associated Press sent this bulletin to its Nebraska broadcast affiliates: "Harold Lamont Otey died in the electric chair early Friday for the rape and murder of a woman 17 years ago. It was the first Nebraska execution in 35 years."(1) In the urgent that followed seconds later, the state newswire added that Otey was the first to die in Nebraska's electric chair since Charles Starkweather was executed in 1959.
On Wednesday, July 17, 1996, the death penalty was enforced upon John Joubert. At 12:29 a.m. the Associated Press sent to its Nebraska broadcast affiliates: "John Joubert was put to death in Nebraska's electric chair for butchering two boys in an Omaha suburb 13 years ago" (Howard, 1996). On Tuesday, December 2, 1997, Robert E. Williams died in the electric chair. Long before the execution, he had confessed to murdering three women during a three-day crime spree in 1977. Associated Press reporter Robynn Tysver wrote: "His execution was the first daytime execution and the first to be witnessed by a victim's relative in Nebraska since the state resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1994 (Tysver, 1997)." This study analyzes the coverage of the executions of Otey, Joubert, and Williams by four Omaha, Nebraska television stations -- three of which covered the scenes live outside the Nebraska State Penitentiary during the scheduled time of execution. The purpose of this examination of the videotaped coverage of these executions -- for source selection and news organization routines, consonance of coverage, use of symbols as cultural meanings - is to better understand the role of local TV news in influencing public opinion. We propose that local television coverage of an execution scene is a social construction of reality, shaped by the social conflict of symbols, actors, and meanings, and influenced by journalistic-decision making that tends to create a consonant view among mass media. The death penalty in general, and execution by electric chair in particular, produces a difficult set of circumstances for local television news reporters. On the one hand, media are called upon to cover and even to treat as normal death penalty procedures of the state. On the other, electric chair executions are viewed by many as inhumane and painful death (Freedburg, 1997). Invented 100 years ago, the electric chair was originally seen "as a quick and painless execution method after witnesses were shocked by hangings that went awry" (Freedburg, 1997, A1). However, a botched ...See the full content of this document
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