Orwell, waterboarding and torture

Before the Bush-Cheney years, the New York Times and other large newspapers regularly referred to waterboarding as “torture.” After it was revealed that the United States was waterboarding terrorism suspects, those papers largely stopped. After all, President Bush explained in 2005, “This government does not torture people.”

So in true Orwellian fashion, editors decided that to describe waterboarding as torture would amount to a breach of objectivity, for no reason except that, all of a sudden, there were powerful people who disputed that characterization.

That is the conclusion of a paper released earlier this year by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Titled “Torture at the Times: Waterboarding in the Media” (pdf), the study includes the following findings:

  • From the early 1930s until 1999, the New York Times characterized waterboarding as torture in 44 of 54 articles on the subject (81.5 percent), and the Los Angeles Times in 26 of 27 articles (96.3 percent).
  • From 2002 to 2008, the New York Times referred to waterboarding as torture in just two of 143 articles (1.4 percent); the Los Angeles Times, three of 63 (4.8 percent); the Wall Street Journal, one of 63 (1.6 percent); and USA Today, not at all.
  • “[T]he newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator.”

The study also finds that opinion writers at those papers were more likely to associate waterboarding with the T-word than were the news columns — further evidence that news editors deviated from the long-established understanding of what waterboarding really is in order to avoid being accused of anti-administration bias.

The study concludes:

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.

The Shorenstein Center has documented a shocking abrogation of duty by our top newspapers in helping Americans understand what the Bush-Cheney administration was doing in their name.

The study came out in April. I’m writing about it now because the redoubtable Jay Rosen tweeted about it yesterday. This is important stuff, and I hope Rosen has given it the push it needs to become more widely discussed.

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

In Cambridge, a dubious balancing act

I have not yet read the report of the Cambridge Review Committee, which investigated last July’s arrest of Harvard University scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. But unless someone tells me otherwise, I’m not sure I need to — the bottom line is enough.

According to news accounts, the committee found that both Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, the arresting officer, were to blame, and that each man missed opportunities to “de-escalate” the situation, which ended when Gates was arrested on disorderly-conduct charges. Those charges were quickly dismissed.

The only thing that strikes me as worth saying — again — is that Gates clearly lost it that day. But he was standing in his own home, believing (probably falsely) that he was the victim of racial profiling. Crowley had a badge, a gun and the certain knowledge that Gates was the resident, not an intruder.

Both men are not to blame. Crowley should have left.

Martin Finucane of the Boston Globe covers the story here, and Laura Crimaldi of the Boston Herald catches up with Gates’ lawyer, Harvard Law school professor Charles Ogletree.

Earlier coverage.

Donna Halper’s long journey with Rush

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04tniBnlcHc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
Lesley University professor, longtime radio consultant and friend of Media Nation Donna Halper was on hand in Hollywood last Friday when members of the band Rush were honored with a star on the Walk of Fame.

Halper discovered Rush when she was working as a disc jockey in Cleveland in 1974, and tirelessly promoted the band’s music. In her remarks last Friday, Halper said:

For nearly four decades, the members of Rush have remained true to themselves and true to their music. They have never allowed success to spoil them. They have never lost their integrity. And in a world where it often seems the good guys never win, Rush are living proof that sometimes, good people do finish first.

Halper also appears in a documentary about Rush called “Beyond the Lighted Stage,” which has had several local showings since its debut earlier this year. Here she talks about the film and her career.

Halper was right — sometimes good people do finish first.

At the Phoenix, new roles for Gantz, Garelick

The Boston Phoenix has announced more changes to the top of its masthead, as associate arts editor Jon Garelick has been named arts editor, and arts editor Jeffrey Gantz will become managing editor for arts.

The titles are more than semantic, according to an internal memo from new editor Carly Carioli. Jon will be in charge of the paper’s arts coverage, while Jeffrey’s role — a three-month assignment — will consist of easing the transition.

I had the privilege of working with both Jeffrey and Jon during my years at the Phoenix. In fact, Jeffrey was one of several people responsible for hiring me in 1991, as it was he who determined I had performed somewhat less miserably on the Phoenix’s notorious copy-editing test than other candidates.

In addition to being an admirably meticulous copy editor, Jeffrey was an expert on an eclectic variety of subjects that caught his interest — from soccer (I still remember my son, Tim, kicking a ball around with him at a company picnic on Georges Island), to espresso, to which varieties of cheese should be uppercased and which ones lowercased.

Jon, like Jeffrey, is a journalist with a daunting intellect. He has a deep background in music, especially jazz, and is highly regarded in the local arts community. He is also married to well-known local writer Clea Simon.

Jon is originally from Woonsocket, where I spent a couple of years as a student-reporter for the Woonsocket Call in the mid-1970s. Jon, a keen observer of his surroundings, once provided me with a hilarious example of the fractured syntax used by many old-time residents, who speak English that is heavily inflected with the French they learned growing up in Quebec: “Please throw me down the stairs my keys.”

Carly, in his memo, referred to Jeffrey as “a tireless editor, critic, protector of style, and keeper of institutional wisdom,” and to Jon as “a fantastic judge and incubator of raw writing talent.” Best of luck to both of them.

Boston in red and blue

Robert David Sullivan has a fascinating piece in the Boston Globe today on Eric Fischer, who has plotted on maps of Boston (left) and other cities where tourists (red) and residents (blue) take photos in their hometowns, based on what they post to the social-networking photo site Flickr.

As you might expect, Fenway Park and Faneuil Hall are heavily red, whereas blue predominates in the neighborhoods. Sullivan observes that neither captures the true Boston — it’s the tourist spots and the neighborhood joints together that form the most complete picture.

And it’s a great example of how coming up with new ways to visualize data help us tell stories we might not have even known existed.

Our new, customer-friendly RMV

From the Department of You Can’t Make This Up: I had to clear up a matter with the Registry for Motor Vehicles this morning, and decided to do it online. Other than taking care of it in person, I figured it was my best bet to get print-outable confirmation that could be produced in case of a side-of-the-highway misunderstanding.

So I did. But before I logged off, I was informed that even though the transaction had been processed, it could take up to three days to clear. Sounded to me like the Registry’s website was little more than a front end to an old-fashioned hand-processing operation.

It gets better. Within minutes, I received an e-mail confirmation. All was forgiven — until I actually read it:

Citation Number xxx has been paid in the amount of xxx. To ensure the Citation is fully cleared and your license remains active, immediate action is required. Please contact the Phone Center or visit a Branch to confirm this matter is now resolved.

Yes, you read that correctly. I paid up online. I got an e-mail confirming that I paid. Yet now I have to call the Registry just to make really, really sure. Amazing. And remember, we’re all paying for this.

On David Weigel’s forced departure

For the time being, I’m going to take a pass on writing a full item about David Weigel’s firing/forced-resignation/whatever-you-want-to-call-it from the Washington Post. I recommend this round-up at Salon by Alex Pareene and a blog post by John McQuaid. And you must read Post ombudsman Andy Alexander’s commentary, as loathsome an example of the genre as I’ve seen in many years.

More: Conor Friedersdorf tells Alexander, “Rather than encouraging reporters and opinion writers to be fair, accurate, and intellectually honest, you’re creating incentives whereby reporters are encouraged to conceal their true opinions, opinion writers are encouraged to be movement hacks, and between the two there is no overlap.”

Obama lucks into a decisive moment

Gen. David Petraeus

From a political and perhaps also from a substantive perspective, it strikes me that President Obama got very lucky when Gen. Stanley McChrystal self-destructed in the pages of Rolling Stone. By putting Gen. David Petraeus in charge, Obama has given himself cover no matter what happens in Afghanistan.

Petraeus is our most respected military leader. If he is able to make significant progress in transforming Afghanistan into a functioning state that does not provide a safe haven for terrorists, then that will be a signal success. And if he can’t, then we all may reasonably conclude that no one can. That’s oversimplification, but it’s also reality.

“What Petraeus brings to this war is discipline and an understanding of history. Both of these are needed right now in a moment where the U.S. effort is failing,” writes Charles Sennott, executive editor of GlobalPost.

Obama also got lucky in that he was handed an opportunity to show he understands how to administer a well-deserved public ass-kicking. “Didn’t expect Obama to put McChrystal through such an elaborate ritual humiliation,” journalist John McQuaid tweeted approvingly yesterday.

I agree. Like Josh Marshall, I feared that Obama would find some way to split the difference. Instead, the president reminded us all of what it means to have a military that answers to civilian leadership.

More: Jay Rosen trashes Politico to good effect.

2007 Department of Defense photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Another dumb move by CNN

Why would anyone at CNN think it was a good idea to give a prime-time talk show to former New York governor Eliot Spitzer and Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker? There is only one reason anyone thinks Spitzer will be a ratings winner, and it’s not his non-existent journalism background or even his sharp analytical mind.

I’m not going to rehash what I’ve said before about CNN; you can read it here if you like.

Briefly, though, CNN touts itself as a profitable, news-driven alternative to the ideological talk shows on Fox and MSNBC. So why act as though your every programming decision is based on ratings? If CNN is truly in a different business from Fox and MSNBC, then what does it mean to say CNN comes in “third”?

Given that there is almost no way CNN can have an impact at 8 p.m. against the O’Reilly-Olbermann juggernaut, Jon Klein and company should have tried something radical. Like news. How about an hour of CNN International, which everyone who has traveled overseas tells me is exponentially better than what’s on the three U.S. cable nets?