The headline of the article, featured in The Weekend Australian newspaper, had all the right attributes to grab attention.  As did the intriguing picture of the bullet-riddled execution chair in Utah, raising my interest even more.  "What?  Why are there bullet holes in a chair normally reserved for death by lethal injection," I asked myself.  Picture of handcuffed man in orange prison attire - yes, I check myself before reading one word of the article, we are talking about the US here.  So, I press on to read the article to figure out how someone, in this day and age, in a Western country, can still be shot by firing squad.

I'm not going to get into the argument of whether the death penalty is right or wrong, who deserves what or even name the prisoner.  That is a debate for another arena.  What struck me most about this article, which I can't share because the printed article is not available verbatim on The Australian newspaper website, was the fourth paragraph and the caption under the main photograph.

Fourth paragraph said, "Utah Attorney-General Mark Shurtleff used Twitter to make the announcement he had given final approval for the execution."

Caption under the main photo said, "The Utah Attorney-General used Twitter to announce he had approved the execution of (man's name), above."

Call me old-fashioned but is this really the forum to announce such news?  How many followers does this man have?  How many does he have now.  And not surprising Twitter has gone wild with comment about whether or not this is appropriate from a man of that office and standing.

The beauty of social media is that it provides the man and woman in the street an opportunity to share information, create debate and discussion and allow exchanges not controlled by tabloid news desks.  Maybe this works within the geographical area he represents.  Maybe people wanted this type of real-time confirmation that this convicted murderer was at death's door.

Aside from the twitter part, there was another interesting part of the article which also left me speechless - "The firing squad - volunteers selected by lottery, one with a wax bullet so that none knows for certain whether he killed the prisoner - count down to the moment of the execution in quiet unison so that they all fire at once."  A lottery?  A wax bullet?  Read the article, please.  Tell me what all this means for the greater good of humanity?

Is this what we want to read in the press?  Is this what we want to know?  Yes, it was straight reporting - this article by Giles Whittell with information sourced from The Times and AFP.  But imagine the difference we would have if someone had have written an opinion piece on this story and all its gory elements.

In a world gone mad, media gets tangled and unfortunately fails to look for the right side up in this instance.  Let's hope the Twitter community continue to create their own boundaries and keep this type of real-time news in its place.

A PDF of the actual article can be found here.

The online article from The Weekend Australian, which differs from the printed copy, can be found here.