“I wanted to shine a light on the process so people could understand what an execution is,” one radio producer explained. Orwell, Dickens, Norman Lewis and any other gallows reporter would say the same.The arguments for showing McVeigh’s death are various Retribution says that justice must be seen to be done. Liberalism insists that nothing human should be censored ­ haven’t we the right to decide for ourselves what to watch? Pragmatism reasons that since cameras will be there in Indiana, a bootleg version is bound to slip out ­ so why not do the job in a proper and sensitive way? Simple human curiosity demands a ringside seat There have always been baying mobs and tricoteuses. For 2,000 years the dominant icon in Western culture has been a man being put to death ­ since we glory in the nails knocked through Jesus’s feet and hands, why this squeamishness over Timothy McVeigh? It’s not as if he’ll be impaled, quartered, disembowelled, burnt at the stake, broken on a wheel, boiled in oil or stretched on a rack; his executioner will be a professional in a white coat with a kindly needle ­ a Dr Shipman sort.

And in a society where death is increasingly hidden behind hospital curtains or sensationalised on Hollywood screens, to depict what dying really means could be said to perform a useful service.Those are the arguments, and they deserve an airing But none is very persuasive. How far from “real” McVeigh’s demise will be to most viewers was nicely summed up by Donal MacIntyre when he said, in an attempt to justify the documentary he’ll be presenting on the night: “By being there in the middle of the execution we are offering a resolution for the characters.” Characters? This is the language of soap opera or of game shows. Timothy McVeigh gets the chop on Brookside or is voted out of the Big Brother house. Timothy McVeigh, you are the weakest link: goodbye.If the BBC were serious about seeing “how the families of the victims have been coping with their loss”, it would rely on the material it has already gathered, or revisit relatives a decent interval after McVeigh’s last breath, not poke microphones at them on the night. Why this frisson over live coverage? An execution is not a football match: the result is never in doubt. And what can the victims’ relatives say, except that McVeigh was evil and deserved to die, and that (though it can’t bring back the dead) they feel a little better for knowing he has gone? In their position, many of us would feel the same retributive rage. But that doesn’t make it edifying, or mean it’s right for them to brandish their triumphalist vengeance to the world.In a grown-up country such as The Netherlands or Sweden, live coverage of McVeigh’s death wouldn’t necessarily be sensationalist ­ an Orwellian desire to inform might underlie it.

In our own babyish culture the filtering lens is that of schlock-horror, with every clich?bout baddies and goodies reinforced. Infotainment is too dignified a word for it; emoto-eroticism is nearer the mark. In one corner, the mad-eyed bomber; in the other, the tearful relations; in-between, the mediating sagacity of a Jerry Springer or Robert Kilroy-Silk ­ that’s about the level. The camera won’t penetrate the psyche of the criminal and will shy away from the few stark medical truths. So what’s it doing there?To broadcast McVeigh’s death will also be to indulge the narcissism which made him plant his bomb in the first place. When condemned men are granted one last wish, they traditionally make a phone call or ask for a cigarette.

McVeigh’s wish, by all accounts, is to have film crews around ­ he regards his death as his “greatest moment”. Rather than acknowledging the horror of the crime he committed, or old-fashionedly repenting before his Maker, he is going on in front of the crowds for one last encore. It’s a stage-managed media event that demeans us all.One of the few things still dividing Britain from the US is that we don’t have the death penalty. Having camera crews around on the night of McVeigh’s execution will drag us down to the level of George Bush’s Texas and its medieval justice system.

It will be a kind of product endorsement, a normalising of capital punishment. It will make a lethal injection seem an acceptable way to see off criminals ­ a sweet and just desert, rather than the hi-tech spiked club to the head that it really is.. Veteran rocker Rod Stewart could well be looking at a new career as a relationship guru. “Marriage vows should be written like a dog licence that has to be renewed every year,” he said last week. “I think the vows should be changed because they have been in existence for 600 years, when people used to live until they were only 35.