Should you watch a tiger mauling a man – or a live-streamed execution? We asked an ethicist

It has never been easier for us to access images of people being harmed, maimed and killed.

Two recent cases have focused on very different, prominent stories of sharing graphic footage of deaths.

Footage has been widely shared of a UK man mauled to death by a tiger after he entered its enclosure in a Yorkshire wildlife park.

And the US Defense Department plans to live-stream the federal execution of Nidal Hassan , who killed 13 unarmed soldiers in a 2009 attack .

We often see news footage of natural disasters such as the floods in Nepal too, with terrible images of people running to almost certain death.

Some argue tech platforms and news media have a responsibly not to share such footage.

What about individuals? Do we have a responsibility not to share or watch such footage? In a statement about the tiger death, UK police asked people not to share the footage of videos circulating online.

Despite this, the video is watchable on some news sites and it has been widely shared on social media, such as Facebook.

Of the proposed live stream in the US, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said: “People need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things”.

But the UN human rights office has said live-streaming would be “tantamount to a public execution and would breach the absolute prohibition of torture”.

There are two main sets of ethical issues with broadcasting (or sharing) such material.

The first is about harms.

The second is about dignity.

They apply to both networks and platforms, and to us as individuals.