Waterboarding Is Only Torture If John McCain Says So
Time for another blogger ethics panel. Or maybe just a bloggers’ style guide, one that states unequivocally that waterboarding is torture. Because–as Glenn reported earlier–the dead tree press only calls waterboarding torture when others do it. And they stopped referring to it as torture as soon as it became clear it had become US policy.
The results of this study demonstrate that there was a sudden, significant, shift in major print media’s treatment of waterboarding at the beginning of the 21st century. The media’s modern coverage of waterboarding did not begin in earnest until 2004, when the first stories about abuses at Abu Ghraib were released. After this point, articles most often used words such as “harsh” or “coercive” to describe waterboarding or simply gave the practice no treatment, rather than labeling it torture as they had done for the previous seven decades.
One of the most telling details from the study is the description of how newspapers admitted that waterboarding is torture without their omniscient editorial voice describing it as such: they quoted other people.
All four papers frequently balanced their use of softer treatment by quoting others calling waterboarding torture. Except for a brief spate of articles in 1902‐1903 in the NY Times which quoted mostly military officials and senators, almost all of the articles that quote others calling it torture appeared in 2007 and 2008.
More telling still, newspapers barely began to do that until 2007, three years after they started talking about torture, and they most often relied on John McCain to state what–before it became clear the US engaged in such torture–their own pages had stated fairly consistently beforehand.
When quoting others who call waterboarding torture, there is a shift in who the LA Times and the NY Times quoted over time.
Before 2007, the NY Times had only scattered articles quoting others. However, beginning in 2007, there is a marked increase in articles quoting others, primarily human rights groups and lawmakers. Human rights representatives predominate during the first half of the year. However, beginning in October, politicians were cited more frequently labeling waterboarding torture. Senator John McCain is the most common source, but other lawmakers also begin to be cited. By 2008, the articles’ references are more general such as “by many,” or “many legal authorities.” Stronger phrases such as “most of the civilized world” also begin to appear.
The dead tree press, apparently, couldn’t find an expert they believed could adequately voice the long-standing consensus that waterboarding is torture–a consensus recorded in their own pages (at least those of LAT and NYT)–until after McCain started speaking out on the topic.
One more point. The study only examined the four papers with the greatest circulation: NYT, LAT (both of which had extensive archives the study measured for previous uses of torture), USA Today, and WSJ (which didn’t have the same range of archives). So it did not include the WaPo in its study–the paper notorious for torture apology from both the newsroom and Fred Hiatt’s editorial page. So the numbers could be even worse!
What a remarkable measure of the cowardice of our press. And what a remarkable measure of how it happened that torture became acceptable. It’s not just that the press failed in their job, but it’s clear that’s a big part of it.
I’m glad you’re addressing that media study and Greenwald’s comments. It seems a subject tailor-made to your experience and expertise.
It’s disappointing the study did not look at other newspapers with extensive archives, if not as extensive as these four. It would have been a good check on overal results to examine shorter periods within the longer period they studied.
An obvious possibility would have been the war periods – the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf I and Gulf II – where the pressure for us to torture would have been most acute. Popular mainstream newspapers existed for each period and could have been compared to the main four. Perhaps that would make a good follow up study, but the political point has been made with these results.
Another comparison in English would have been to compare the imperial British press during similar periods. Debate over treatment of Boers comes to mind, of Indians, Jews, Kenyans and Malays are others. The Times and Guardian, for example, have extensive archives for the last hundred years. They cover similar issues, notably a failing empire’s struggle between its nobler aspirations and its brutal attempts to hold onto power and economic influence.
A few weeks back I had an e-mail exchange with a LA Times reporter over an article she wrote about John Yoo where she used the MSM’s favorite definition of water-boarding: “simulated drowning”. Re. my concerns over using language that softens and distorts the real drowning actually taking place, she replied:
“I’ve been trying for years to get a more accurate description of water-boarding as bringing the subject to the brink of death, without success.”
She suggested I write a Letter to the Editor to help drive the debate, which I did, but it was not published.
Interesting quote from a reporter. Her colleagues at the Independent in the UK don’t seem to have the same phobia. This is from 2007:
The title of that piece, written by an editor, quotes Malcolm Nance as saying: “Waterboarding is torture – I did it myself,” in the relatively safe, rule-bound environment of a SERE school.
Is the LAT reporter saying that she can’t get experts like Malcolm Nance to inform her adequately about waterboarding or that she can’t get more accurate descriptions of it in her work past editorial censorship? If the latter, she ought not to punt the problem to a reader; she should make that a story in its own right. It deserves front-page treatment (another decision subject to editorial control).
One way round the problem might be for her to describe waterboarding as practiced by others, then insert the Malcolm Nance description and add the comment that, although American administrations disagree that that describes American practices, there is no independent evidence to support that contention. That, too, seems likely to be expunged owing to editorial censorship. Thank goodness for the internets.
And carpet bombing a city that is capital of a country that did not attack you, and has been falsely linked to a terrorist attack against your own country, and kills thousands of people… what can we call that? Even the “authorities” fail to call it what it was — a war crime.
I guess we’re relatively lucky with waterboarding and torture, at least the powers that be deign to note that some may call such behavior “torture.” What do they call it in the cocktail lounges that service K Street, or the neighborhoods near the NY Times and Washington Post? Or in the Capitol cloakroom? In the White House living room?
Nice piece, EW.
Proof of Complicity in Torture; Craig Murray; 6/30/10
http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2010/06/proof_of_compli.html
Britain Moves Forward on Torture Probe; Scott Horton; 3/30/10
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/06/hbc-90007328
From your Craig Murray link:
It looks like he’s trying to do a Daniel Ellsberg end run around the British govt (and media?) so as to get the FOIA’d memos in front of the public at the same time as the hearings that he thinks are going to exclude them and him. Come on, small people, notice!
(I have to say, I just love this guy.)
This article and post, while not surprising, do indeed turn over new ground. I am left with two questions:
1. How much, if any, of this editorial and journalistic defalcation was the result, direct or indirect, of the fact that these papers are public companies (at least as to the NYT – I dunno the ownership arrangement at the LAT) and have been, for a subsantial if not the entirety of the relevant time, owned in large part by one or more hedge funds? What are teh other economic interests of those hedge funds and who are their investors? I suspect some digging there might reveal that there were people who had an ecominic or policy interest in furthering torture as a practice of the USG, if only to help them keep the proles in line.
2. A while back, I recall a post (I wanna say it was at Greenwald’s but I’m probably wrong there) in which the narator is relating meeting some prominent Republican bankers back prior to the ’07 crash, when the discussion turned to the fact that there was no way what we were then calling the Shitpile could resolve without a full blown recession if not depression. The Republican bankers were quoted as saying “then it seems like it might be a good time for Democrats to take power.” I have long been of the opinion that the repeated instances of one Republican candidate after another getting out of the way of McCain in late 07 nd early 08 was that party’s way of handing the hot potato of being the nominee (almost sure to lose given the party’s performance in 01-08) to someone who would not refuse it but (because of his ego and unrequitable ambition) would gladly accept it, even though he would probably know he was taking one for the team. How much of this editorial and journalistic defalcation was a way of these Establishment papers cushioning the electoral blow by moving the frame just a little bit, so as to make it possible to dodge the issue of torture in the campaign and also to limit the damage (and consequent Democratic majorities) a campaign which featured even a half-assed discussion of the issue (maybe even one informed by Civilization instead of Drill, Baby, Drill) would yield?
Not only did these papers not do a good job of reporting the waterboarding issue, we need also remember they have don no job (not een a half-assed one) discussing the torture provided for in the Army Field Manual (which the doddering fool from Arizona likes to wave around like Tinkerbell’s wand, fixing all), nor the issue of involuntary human experimentation. Both those provisions were law well in advance of the 08 campaign, in the MCA, sponsored by John McCain (inter alia).
Or, in short, besides the usual suspects cui bono and why from this journalistic defalcation?
You know, I wonder how much the change in coverage of waterboarding happened in 2007 bc Michael Hayden acknowledged it on the record? That is, maybe the press was asked to hold any reference to WB until CIA had acknowledged it directly, and only at that point would the press present an opposing view about it being torture?
Just speculation, mind you.
But that would be interesting, if true, bc it would suggest CIA was skewing coverage by not acknowledging the program and based on that asking the press to hold off?
I can’t find a big enough tinfoil hat to wear to make that jump myself, but perhaps it’s my unwillingness to plumb the final depths of dead tree reporting that stands in my way. *g*
But, but, I know 3 of those dead tree presses have archives dating back to ’47 or so… I’m sure those Japanese officers feel vindicated 60+ years later…!
This would be a good diary to “spotlight”– especially to journalists writing for these very same newspapers.
Bob in AZ
Spotlighted to 10 journalists at the LA Times, NY Times, and WaPo!
Bob in AZ
Also this is front-paged on Michael Moore right now (Mike and Friends Blog sidebar) — link to a picture diary about Minnesota law school protest again Prof. Robert Delahunty, Yoo cohort in torture memos when at OLC, saying he should be tried for war crimes:
(I have to say, I just love Minnesota. And law school protest signs :-)
On the willingness to use “torture”, here’s an excerpt from the Independent’s obituary of a senior French general, Marcel Bigeard, who had served in WWII and France’s colonial wars in SE Asia (where he parachuted into Dien Bien Phu before it fell) and Algeria (where he was famous for his brutal interrogations). The Independent has no reluctance to use the word “torture”:
Related to the torture discussion is going to war on false pretenses or in the absence of legal justification for using armed force. It’s a development that is either causally related to the American adoption of torture or shows a similar disdain for the rule of law as a legitimate legal and political limit on the exercise of executive power.
It relates to this discussion also because the Brits have taken what to American eyes must seem the unseemly step of releasing 2002-03 internal memos between their Attorney General and the Prime Minister. These show a sudden reversal in the AG’s, Lord Goldsmith’s, advice that the UK had no legal reason to launch a war with Iraq, in the absence of a further UN resolution.
The reason for this recent release of traditionally secret internal legal advice between a prime minister and his top government lawyer? The public’s urgent right to know. From the Independent today (emphasis added):
That change of heart, purportedly based on new information from the Foreign Office, happened at about the time of an urgent meeting between Blair and Bush and after an approximate date to go to war had already been set. EW has discussed this topic at length elsewhere.
What’s interesting is the decision to make this public and to let the chips fall where they may. Say what you like about soggy chips and playing tennis on grass, the Brits do some things extremely well.
Patrick Fitzgerald, Torture Prosecutor? By Scott Horton
Is there a possibilty that the Chilcott Inquiry could have an effect here- in that the reason we went to illegally occupy Irak was prefabricated prevarications – could that finding have an legs here. ?
Any response here is not likely to be prison time, prosecution, dismissal from office or resignation, only embarrassment or being further enriched by some neo-con or neo-liberal think [sic] tank. The US media is too in thrall to the government, and Obama is too dedicated to his double standard of punishing whistleblowers while ignoring the past criminality of politicians and the powerful.
Something I saved by “a somewhat popular blogger”.
I can relate to the sentiment, but really, that’s just a mirror image of “The terrorists are monsters and should be tortured because that is what you do to monsters.”
There, but for the grace of chance, go I. It is not the banality but the universality of evil that matters most. You cannot fight evil and retain your balance without admitting that those who have fallen are different from those who might in proven history only, not due to some hypothetical innate difference. Pace George Lucas, evil does not conveniently bear horns, or a discernible skin color.
They should be judged, not by history, not by gods, but by us. Let’s leave destruction to those of papal infallibility.
earlofhuntingdon@21
Its hard not to be cynical is it not ?
But yet the LiberalDemocrats across the pond might yet turn up something we can still use here . And not all media is enthralled Chris Matthews has been pounding away at Dick Cheney pretty steady here lately
And the Durham grand jury is still out …
Is it being cynical or realistic? Anyway, I’d rather be Mark Twain than Charley Brown.