THE COWARDICE OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM: FEAR OF THE T-WORD

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 3 May 2009

Norman Kelley

Nothing better shows the utter cowardice of American journalism than Washington Post reporters refusing to call a spade a spade. In other a word, calling "enhanced interrogation" torture.

Yesterday, during a chat with the Post’s Dana Priest, a questioner revisited the issue, specifically asking why the paper doesn’t call waterboarding "torture." This time however, the questioner received a different (and somewhat shocking) answer. According to Priest, the Post doesn’t call waterboarding "torture" because the Bush administration doesn’t:

Q: If they are going to follow the analogy on reporting other criminal issues, why wouldn’t reporters use the term "alleged torture" or "accused of torture"? Waterboarding is torture, no one disputes it. To substitute "harsh interrogation techniques’ with regard to waterboarding is like saying "manslaughter" when the charge is "murder."

PRIEST: Not true. The Bush administration would dispute that waterboarding is torture. That’s what the memos are all about. Torture is a crime. There is not a lot of case history to define torture.

And as TP argued:

Let’s be clear, as the questioner noted, waterboarding is torture and torture is a crime under U.S. law (as Priest acknowledged). Prominent Republicans and Democrats — from Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder — all agree. In fact, the United States "convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war" after World War II.

 The Bush administration (even President Bush himself) admitted that it had authorized waterboarding on three terror suspect detainees, and the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel memos released earlier this month confirm it.

Note to The Washington Post: The reason many former Bush administration officials who were involved in authorizing waterboarding don’t call it "torture" is because they would be admitting to a crime punishable with long prison sentences. Presumably, they make this argument because the do not want to go to jail.

As Media Matters’s Jamison Foser noted of Kane’s "libel" arguement, "So who does the Post think is going to sue them for libel if they refer to torture as ‘torture’? It doesn’t seem like there is a long line of people who participated in harsh interrogations torture who are eager to litigate their conduct, but maybe I’m wrong."

And this was the once storied newspaper that broke the Watergate story?

Let’s face it: the United States has become a politically depraved society masquerading as a democratic republic. It’s easy to cite people like Charles Krauthammer’s demented justification for torture, but what else would one expect from someone whose profession is a willing executioner of such a policy. However, average Americans also think it’s okay to torture people. Now you have reporters too afraid to call engage in truthful reporting.

This does not bode well for the democratic process. It’s Orwellian, which makes the process of self-correction difficult. This kind of mindset may well represent the insidious nazification of American society.

The country may have tried to save its soul by voting for Obama, but it has shown that it has opted to do the devil’s work by being so casual about torture, rationalizing it, and refusing to call it by its true name.

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Norman Kelley is an independent journalist, author, and former segment radio producer at WBAI 99.5 FM Pacifica Radio. He has written for Society, L A Weekly, The Brooklyn Rail, The Village Voice, The Nation, New York Press, Newsday, Word.com, The Black Star News, New Politics, Black Renaissance/Noir, and The Bedford Stuyvesant Current.

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