A thoughtful article here by John Mark Reynolds.
An excerpt:
Humans cannot be baptized with online water, because we are not just minds, but bodies. Only a coward breaks up with an email, because some news deserves eye-to-eye contact.
Death is such an event. It is physical and spiritual. A man created in the image of God has passed through the greatest and final challenge. Cultures that debase this event, debase their own humanity. The death of any human being is an awful thing. It is momentous and sacred. Reporting on it requires thought, compassion, and a human touch.
This is why it was wrong for a government official to “tweet” the news of an execution. Twitter can convey information and the writer’s immediate feelings, but any death, especially one sanctioned by the state, demands more seriousness.
Dostoevsky wrote a novel on crime and punishment, but evidently Utah could not muster three hundred words. The convict and the community deserve the best thoughts our officials have on these topics and not the raw unfiltered data alone. The moment of death is too momentous and the readers are too various to allow for such broadcasting without greater care than a twitter feed allows.
You can read the whole thing.
