One of the most puzzling aspects of the ongoing revelations of the use of torture by the Bush administration, has been the reluctance of the mainstream media to use the word to describe the treatment of many detainees. The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPR ... the list goes on and on. Normally the way they phrase it is "harsh interrogation" or "enhanced interrogation techniques" or - the most cowardly option - "what some people describe as torture."
I remember very well this reluctance when I worked in the media. After the Abu Ghraib photos emerged, I wrote a column about the US using torture, detailing how the US had actually used it many times in the past. I was told I could not use the word "torture." I said look at the photos, read about what was done to the detainees ... if it looks like a duck, etc. No, you can't use the word torture I was told. The unspoken reason was "Americans' don't torture."
Well, we now know that this isn't true. And we've known it for quite a while. Everyone, it seems, except the mainstream media, and former Bush administration and CIA officials desperate to cover up their tracks. Recently the MSM have developed another "meme." It's left versus right on the issue. Only left-wing bloggers are calling it torture.
Wrong. The Obama administration calls waterboarding torture. International law calls it torture. Several top military and intelligence officials call it torture. But the mainstream media are still pussyfooting around the obvious.
In a piece this morning in the Huffington Post, Arianne Huffington wrote:
"This is a defining moment for America.
"The way we respond -- or fail to respond -- to the revelations about the Bush administration's use of torture will delineate -- for ourselves and for the world -- the kind of country we are.
"It is a test of our courage and our convictions. A test of whether we are indeed a nation of laws -- or a nation that pays lip service to the notion of being a nation of laws."
And this is the point that the MSM refuses to address. It's not a question of right versus left, it's a question of right versus wrong. If we look the other way, refuse to address the way the previous administration ignored both American and international law, or used dubious legal opinions to provide a fig leaf for its law breaking, then you can be sure some other future administration will do the same thing.
So why has the MSM been so reluctant to call a duck a duck?
I think we're dealing with another weapons of mass destruction moment. The MSM missed the obvious signs that torturing was occuring (Abu Ghraib was one hell of an obvious sign). They allowed their fear of being called too liberal to report the facts, and hid behind the excuse of "objectivity." And the Washington-based media, once again, valued their contacts inside the administration more than they valued reporting the truth.
As CNN's Campbell Brown so famously said during last year's presidential campaign, "If someone tells me it's sunny outside and I look and it's raining, I'm going to say it's raining." Even now, with the torture memos, the Red Cross report and the Senate report, the MSM STILL refuse to telling us it's raining outside.
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