WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense confirmed Thursday that the firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed, fulfilling Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s promise that the proceeding would be public — and, as Fox News reported, streamed. Details, the Pentagon added, will follow. Which, in television, is what you say right before the commercial break.
It is believed to be the first public execution in the United States in nearly a century, and the production plan reflects that kind of occasion. Multiple camera angles. Drone coverage. A pre-game panel of senior officials at noon, one hour ahead of the 1 p.m. ceremony, so viewers can warm up with strategy discussion before the main event.
“People keep asking whether a livestream is appropriate,” said Deputy Press Secretary Colin Acheson, who has never once been asked the question by anyone but has prepared an answer regardless. “I’d ask those people: what’s more inappropriate — the public seeing justice carried out, or the public seeing justice carried out through the filtered lens of legacy media? At least our feed has honest color grading.”
The administration’s position, as has been well-documented, is that transparency is what the founders meant. They did not actually say that. The founders said a great many things, most of which are on gift cards now. But the logic tracks. If the government is going to do something historic, the American people deserve a picture of it in at least 1080p.
Critics have called the broadcast a spectacle. Supporters note that the critics objected to the spectacle before the schedule was even released, which is the behavior of people who wanted a spectacle of their own and simply didn’t get the broadcast rights.
BROADCAST SPECS: WHAT THE PENTAGON HAS CONFIRMED
- Platform: Livestreamed. Which platform, when, and with what captioning remains among the details that will follow.
- Pre-game: Noon panel, senior officials, topics expected to include readiness, logistics, and the weather.
- Replay policy: None. Final.
- Watch parties: Encouraged at installations. Popcorn policy under review by a working group.
- Commercial inventory: Not sold. Yet. The phrase "details will follow" is doing a lot of work in this document.
Network executives, for their part, have been careful not to claim they are airing it, while also carefully not saying they won’t. One cable executive, speaking anonymously, said the decision would come down to “whether the numbers justify the newsroom meeting about the numbers.” That is, frankly, the most honest sentence any network has written this year.
At press time, a streaming service had quietly filed a trademark application for the phrase “You Are The Jury Of One,” and the working group on popcorn had scheduled its first meeting, its second meeting, and a feasibility study for the third.