https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7541-8119
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ABSTRACT
The federal government executed thirteen individuals in the last seven months of the Trump administration. While American media discourse in 2020 was focused largely on other events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the presidential election, the news media nevertheless served as a key source of information about the executions to the American public. This study examines accounts of the executions from online news sources in order to identify the ways in which news outlets that lean to opposing ends of the political spectrum framed the executions. A thematic content analysis shows that the executions were discussed in the context of major events of the time, including the presidential election, the pandemic, and demonstrations calling for racial justice. News sources that lean to the political left tended to frame the executions as a political move by President Trump, who was backed by a conservative Supreme Court while neglecting more pressing issues like managing the pandemic. Right-leaning sources were more likely to frame the executions as overdue justice that had been unnecessarily delayed by frivolous lawsuits and baseless claims of racial injustice. Implications for public support and the future of capital punishment are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. A note on citations: due to space constraints, I will not cite every news article in which a given theme is found. The citations serve as examples of the theme under discussion.
2. Both right- and left-leaning sources noted that Judge Chutkan was appointed by President Obama (see Lehman Citation2020a; Berman and Flynn Citation2019), possibly allowing their audiences to transfer their own feelings on Obama to the judge and come to their own conclusions about why she would issue such rulings.
3. A federal judge granted the stay, though it was overturned on appeal. The execution was conducted without the victims’ family in attendance.
4. The racial breakdown of the thirteen executed by the Trump administration: six white people (including the only woman on federal death row), one Native American man, and six Black men.