Interviews before Execution

I watched this this morning, half awake. I’m not sure what to make of it. It is snuff sensationalism and emotional exploitation porn as much as it is a heart-wrenching and compellingly humane form of journalism the likes of which I have not yet seen. I have been sort of stunned the whole day.

From 2006 to 2012, a female TV reporter named Ding Yu produced a weekly show called Interviews before Execution for Henan Legal TV, in which she interviewed over 200 death row inmates shortly, sometimes immediately before they are executed. (According to Amnesty International, China executes the most people by more than an order of magnitude over its #2 competition, Pakistan. The United States is #6 on the list.) Here is a BBC2 documentary about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDQBuTzQa4Q