New York Times Bin Laden Story Shows Paper's Tangled Approach To Torture

A front page New York Times story on Wednesday shows the sometimes-tangled knots the paper has tied itself in when it comes to one word: torture.

The paper has been perhaps the most frequent target of those who criticize media outlets for refusing to label so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding as torture. Academic studies have analyzed the media's sudden shift during the Bush administration from calling waterboarding torture to calling it, well, something else. The paper has also wrestled very publicly with what kind of language it should use to describe things such as waterboarding.

The Times' Wednesday article focuses on the debate that has sprung up in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden about whether or not torture methods were critical in securing the intelligence that led to Bin Laden's compound. The piece sprinkles the word liberally throughout, but only when the authors, Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, are discussing "a national debate about torture" or "a partisan battle over torture." The article's online headline also reads, "Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture."

When it comes to labeling the actual methods used on detainees in American custody, though, Shane and Savage pull back, calling them, variously, "brutal interrogations," "the most harrowing set of the so-called enhanced measures," "harsh methods," "force" and "coercive techniques." These interrogations, in their own words, included waterboarding, as well as "slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in stress positions and keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours."

Ironically, the article appeared just a day after another piece in The Times. This one focused on survivors of Iraqi torture, and did not shy away from describing their ordeals as such, calling them "enduring episodes of torture" and using the word over 35 times throughout. The article even referred to Americans as torturers.

Comments

[joefoss]

07:24 PM on 05/06/2011

RE: "Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press."
Thomas Jefferson [1787]
How sad to see the mighty New York Times succumb to political pressure; but, it's not the first time, in recent history, that a bastion of the print media has let us down.
=At the beginning of the Reagan administration, the Washington Post used to accompany reports of presidential press conferences with a "fact check" feature. And, there were plenty of misstatements, half-truths and outright flights of fancy to correct from a president who, for example, sometimes confused president Grover Cleveland with pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander (whom Reagan portrayed on film).
=But, there was virulent push-back from the White House (e.g., Don Regan), and Post publisher, Katherine Graham, killed the fact-check column, saying: "It's up to the Democrats to correct the president's mistakes."
=Graham didn't explain how American citizens were to make sense of what was going on
in Washington, and the world, if the capital's leading newspaper only printed the White House version of reality.

[MilesLong]

10:13 AM on 05/05/2011

Had the New Your Times, along with every other NEWS organization stood up to GWB's administration instead of laying down for them, not only would they be healthier financially, but their credibility would still be intact.

Miles "Gone Forever" Long

[lolyla]

09:20 AM on 05/05/2011

That article in NYT would have been really great to read. Too bad it's a pay site now.

[milkmcphee]

01:26 AM on 05/06/2011

oh jeez, just turn off cookies!

[lolyla]

09:49 AM on 05/06/2011

I feel so stupid. That actually had not occurred to me. Thanks!

[rob2trade]

09:05 AM on 05/05/2011

Did you know there is still an open investigation into whether the actions of the CIA, in collecting evidence from Gitmo detainees, was illegal? YES, IT IS STILL OPEN

Eric Holder, announcing the second phase of the investigation in 2009:

"I have concluded," he said "that the information known to me warrants opening a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations."

Todays WSJ:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703937104576302890747157756.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

This is the hypocrisy of President Obama and the liberal agenda.

Yes, we all support what he did. We support the killing of Bin Laden, Obama made the right decision.
But it is the cold hard realities of the real world that the liberal agenda will never understand. Bush did what it takes to protect this country. He did what was necessary. Keeping this country safe is a dirty business. If Obama, or any other liberal were President at the time, we would never had obtained the info that made Bin Ladens killing possible.

Why isnt the press asking Obama or Holder about this?

Close this investigation, and get this off the CIA's back.

[fisherdude1969]

11:35 AM on 05/05/2011

well stated and all true, but nobody here will ever get it. F&F

[JavaSavant]

05:20 PM on 05/05/2011

You say "we all support what he did", but already Republicans are saying "what he did" to kill Bin Ladin was illegal and should be investigated.

Strangely enough, I agree with them. It SHOULD be investigated. So should lawbreaking by the CIA.

Anit-America, anti-Constitution Republicans like you should move to countries that don't have such laws. Maybe you would like living in Iran. Those of us that love America and the Constitution will stay here and defend it from those of you who would trash it.

[Mister Bill]

09:03 AM on 05/05/2011

I like hearing about the New York Times because it always helps me know the difference between right and wrong. If they say it is right then I know it is wrong. Anybody that thinks it is ok to steal to make a story is not an honest institution. I cannot place my faith and trust in this publication.

[BennBell]

09:03 AM on 05/05/2011

Torture by any other name would still fee as bad.

[fisherdude1969]

11:36 AM on 05/05/2011

and would still get the information we need from the bad guys.

[tacevad]

06:26 PM on 05/06/2011

bad info, yep everytime!

[greysells2]

06:38 AM on 05/05/2011

The NYT is morally bankrupt and poorly managed and does not deserve the support of readers and bloggers.

[patililac]

04:06 AM on 05/05/2011

Many people in the FBI and CIA (some who helped interrogate) have discussed how torture does not necessarily lead to the right answers. I have never heard one of the interrogators come out with specific information or proof about how this information was used. Since we wasted so much time on Obama's birth certificate, maybe we can force torture supporters to show us the proof. Where are the documents? Come on, people, if these enhanced inTERRORgations helped that much, we would have found OBL much sooner.

[fisherdude1969]

11:40 AM on 05/05/2011

in what world do you live? Have you not been reading the press accounts as to how OBL was captured? Multiple bad guys in Gitmo and secret prisons, some on whom waterboarding was used, provided nicknames and hints as to OBL's courier. They don't just say "OBL's is at this address and here is a copy of his schedule." Intelligence takes time to gather and analyze.

Waterboarding is not torture and waterboarding and other techniques helpled to find and k*ll OBL. These are the facts whether you choose to believe them or not.

[StopThePlanet]

11:27 PM on 05/04/2011

Two words: Judith Miller.
 
Of course they didn't want to call waterboarding torture.  They were heavily involved in selling the Iraq war.

[greysells2]

06:40 AM on 05/05/2011

See my comment above on moral bankruptcy and poor management. F&F'd

[ghull]

10:28 PM on 05/04/2011

Yes, of course the end always justifies the means. What a thoughtful philosophy!

[Mister Bill]

08:57 AM on 05/05/2011

Yes, look at what Hilary Clinton's mentor says "They are passionately committed to a mystical objectivity where passions are suspect… They can be recognized by one of two verbals brands. “We agree with the ends but not the means” or “This is not the time.” The means-and-end moralists or non-doers always end up on their ends without any means." Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals

[ghull]

09:38 AM on 05/05/2011

Let's look at this in a little depth, shall we? One, there is no clear evidence that information obtained through torture was crucial in getting Bin Laden. Two, even were there such information, there is no evidence that it could not have been obtained through less morally-suspect means. Three, even if there were such evidence and it could not have been obtained any other way, it is absolutely unclear that this was the right thing to do.

The unfortunate fact is that Bin Laden won. He and Al Qaeda spent a few thousand dollars on a scheme that has transformed the U.S. into a national security state in which there is no communications privacy and no right to trial, and that has induced that nation to waste multiple trillions of dollars in unnecessary wars.

Now forever gone is that proud nation that was never afraid to put wrong-doers on trial. We killed the man and lost our soul in the process. Are you happy with that deal?

[Juzoitami]

09:28 PM on 05/04/2011

I don't suppose that it occurred to the author that it would have been incredibly monotonous to refer to it as 'torture' every time the subject was addressed? The name of the article, after all, is "Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture." I read the article this morning and it never occurred to me that they were wrestling with the appropriateness of the word. Maybe that's my bias, though. I've accepted that my country has undermined our basic constitutional protections regarding illegal searches, torture and the illegality of assassinations.

[scrappydoodle]

10:32 PM on 05/04/2011

you really think they stopped using the word around January of 2009 because it was monotonous ?

[Juzoitami]

07:13 AM on 05/05/2011

Where does it say in the article that the Times stopped using the word 'torture'? This article is much ado about nothing.

[john whalen]

08:20 PM on 05/04/2011

Are you glad that the Obama administration got rid of Osama???? If yes then you can't complain about the methods used to obtain the information which helped us find him!!

[Paul Robertson]

03:52 AM on 05/05/2011

Not true
1) it's debatable whether information yielded through torture was vital to locating Osama.
2) to assert that the end justifies the means is a poor justification for an immoral act

[SFGiantsfan]

09:18 AM on 05/05/2011

You cannot minimize the value of one piece of a puzzle, how you arrived at it vs. another. Fact is - enhanced interrogations technics were used. Fact is - rendition was used. Fact is - black ops were used. All the stuff that President Obama campaigned against. This is the irony.

Question - if we had the knowledge that a group was planning on committing an atrocity against the US? Should we take a preemptive strike? Is that immoral?

[pmorlan]

08:19 PM on 05/04/2011

It's truly pathetic that the paper of record goes out of it's way to obfuscate.

[greysells2]

06:42 AM on 05/05/2011

"obfuscate" and dissemble.

[Mister Bill]

08:49 AM on 05/05/2011

and to disseminate biased opinions based on erroneous elitist conclusions.

[luckyone77]

08:03 PM on 05/04/2011

First we invade under the pretext that we have to get OBL, but then let him slip across the border at Tora Bora; Bush justifies that OBL wasn't who we really were after, but that we still have to continue the war for other reasons. It seems highly curious that a decade later, and after just one week of intensive scrutiny of Gitmo prison files and the US torture policies there, suddenly we just happen to "find" OBL and take him out, in order to refocus the media stories. This isn't a war about terrorism, it is a war about media spin and cover up, and it blows my mind that people still fall for this manipulation.

[leorangerie]

08:02 PM on 05/04/2011

The NYTimes was once the paragon of the press. Now it just seems like another so-so blog.