As the LA TIMES reports:
Chinese state television Friday broadcast live images of the last moments of four foreign drug traffickers who were about to be executed for the 2011 killings of 13 Chinese fishermen on the Mekong River. Although the cameras pulled away before the lethal injections, the coverage was unprecedented, unleashing a storm of criticism and debate about the death penalty.
Psychologists decried the coverage as distressing to children. Lawyers complained that it violated a clause in the criminal code against parading the condemned before execution.