Glenn GreenwaldNPR's ombudsman: Why we bar the word "torture"
Anyone who believes that NPR is a "liberal" media outlet -- and anyone who wants to understand the decay of American journalism -- should read this column by NPR's Ombudsman, Alicia C. Shepard, as she explains and justifies why NPR bars the use of the word "torture" to describe what the Bush administration did. Responding to what she calls "a slew of emails challenging NPR's policy of using the words 'harsh interrogation tactics' or 'enhanced interrogation techniques' to describe the treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration," Shepard hauls out every trite and misleading bit of journalistic conventional wisdom to dismiss listeners' concerns and defend NPR's Orwellian practice (as I noted recently when writing about The New York Times' refusal to use the word "torture," NPR's compulsive use of Bush euphemisms has been a constant complaint of the excellent blog NPR Check).
Let's just take her claims one by one, because they're so instructive:She describes Koppel's standard as "clear enough" -- and it is. So why doesn't NPR use that standard? Because -- she argues -- "the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed."How should NPR describe the tactics used to coerce information out of terrorism suspects?
Ted Koppel, the former ABC Nightline host and commentator on Talk of the Nation, said in May that the U.S. should "define it [torture] as being any technique or practice which, when applied to an American prisoner in some other country or captured by some other entity, that we would object to. If we object to it being done to an American, then I think it's torture."
That seems clear enough, but the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed.
So what? How does the fact that torture is illegal mean that NPR shouldn't describe as "torture" tactics which -- when used against Americans -- the U.S. government has long condemned as "torture"? Her objection to Koppel's very sensible standard is a total non-sequitur. How does the criminality of torture serve as an argument against what Koppel advocated? It doesn't. She's just in defend-NPR-at-any-cost mode and wants to justify its refusal to use the word "torture," and Koppel's standard would compel the opposite conclusion, because so many of the tactics that were authorized by Bush were ones the U.S. -- and the rest of the civilized world -- have always called "torture." If the U.S. repeatedly referred to tactics as "torture" when used by others, what possible justification is there for helping Bush officials call it something else when they themselves use those tactics? That's the key question raised by Koppel and her "answer" -- torture is illegal and is a very serious matter -- rather obviously says nothing about that question.What a slimy formulation this is. It's true that "both Presidents Bush and Obama have insisted that the United States does not use torture," but they're not -- as she tries to imply -- in agreement about whether the tactics Bush authorized are "torture." In his first week in office, Obama barred the tactics in question by Executive Order, ordering the CIA to confine itself to the Army Field Manual. So when Obama says that "the United States does not use torture," that has nothing to do with the so-called "enhanced interrogation tactics" Bush authorized. To the contrary, both Obama and the U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, have both said unequivocally that waterboarding is torture (John McCain, noting that "it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot's genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today," said the same thing).Both Presidents Bush and Obama have insisted that the United States does not use torture. Officials during the Bush administration acknowledged the use of what they called "enhanced interrogation techniques."Nobody argues that "all interrogation could be classified as torture," so what's the point of denying a claim nobody makes? The point is that extended sleep deprivation, prolonged forced nudity, hypothermia and waterboarding someone 183 times -- particularly when done together -- are all unquestionably, indisputably "torture" under every relevant authority.Also, not all interrogation could be classified as torture. Sleep deprivation, nudity and facial slaps are different from, say, pouring water on a cloth over someone's face for 20 to 40 seconds to create the sensation of drowning -- a practice known as waterboarding.
The U.S. has prosecuted those acts as torture in the past. Multiple media outlets and even the U.S. Government have routinely described those acts as "torture" when used against Americans, rather than by Americans. The tactics are ones we copied from manuals designed to inure our own troops to the torture techniques used by some of the world's worst tyrants. They resulted in numerous deaths. Until the Bush administration decided to call it something other than "torture" so that they could do it, nobody had any questions about whether this was "torture."
If there are tactics about which there is a reasonable dispute, then those need not be called torture by NPR. But many of the tactics that were authorized are "torture" in every sense of the word. Over 100 detainees died in U.S. custody. Even Shepard acknowledges that detainees died in U.S. custody as a result of interrogations:How can you kill a detainee using interrogation tactics without torturing him? There is no reasonable debate about many of these tactics, and NPR is doing nothing other than misleading its listeners by refusing to apply the term and instead adopting Orwellian government euphemisms.A basic rule of vivid writing is: "Show, Don't Tell." An excellent example of using facts rather than coded language was a 2005 piece by former NPR reporter John McChesney. It gave meticulous details of tactics used against an Iraqi detainee at Abu Graib who later died.
All of the evidence proves these tactics are "torture" using every credible and reasonable definition of the term. The only thing NPR has to set against that is: "Bush says it's not torture." But that's good enough for our modern journalist: after all, if a government official insists that something is false, they will refrain from stating that it is true -- no matter how true it is. That's because their only role is to pass on what each side says and leave it at that. That, of course, is the very definition of a "mindless stenographer" -- a term they bizarrely find offensive even as they apply to themselves its defining traits.Here's the nub of the matter - the crux of journalistic decay in America. Who cares if NPR is "seen" as siding with the White House or its critics? How it is perceived -- and who it angers -- should have nothing to do with how it reports. Its reporting should be guided by the truth, by verifiable facts, and by the objective meaning of words [notably, NPR's excuse -- "the Right will get angry at us if we call it 'torture'" -- is identical to The Washington Post's excuse for why they stopped calling Dan Froomkin a reporter (it angers the Right); it's amazing how much The Liberal Media makes editorial decisions based on a desire to please the Right].It's a no-win case for journalists. If journalists use the words "harsh interrogation techniques," they can be seen as siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer. If journalists use the word "torture," then they can be accused of siding with those who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration.
Also, note that Shepard explicitly admits that, with its language choice, NPR has opted to be "seen siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer." That, too, is an odd choice for a supposedly Liberal Media outlet. And note her snide and revealing assumption -- conventional wisdom among the establishment media -- that the only people who want these tactics to be called "torture" are those "who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration" (or, as David Ignatius put it, "liberal score-settlers"). It doesn't seem to occur to her that something other than base vindictiveness - such as a desire to maintain the universal taboo against torture, or allegiance to accuracy in language - might motivate those who want NPR to call torture "torture," rather than prettify it with banality-of-evil euphemisms invented by the very people who perpetrated it.There was no consensus on whether Saddam had nuclear weapons and was involved in the 9/11 attacks -- some said he was; some said he wasn't -- and therefore NPR shouldn't take a position. There's no consensus on whether the world is only 6,000 years old -- some say it is; some say it isn't -- and therefore NPR shouldn't take a position. Bush said he didn't authorize torture ("period") -- some say he did; some say he didn't -- and therefore NPR shouldn't take a position.There has been no clear consensus on what constitutes torture, noted Brian Duffy, NPR's former managing editor in late April. "President Bush said, 'We do not torture -- period.' Yet water-boarding and several other tactics not approved in the Army Field Manual were approved by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) during his administration," said Duffy.So the President emphatically said it was torture. So did the Attorney General. But they issued "no overarching statement" on the issue? What does that even mean? What's an "overarching statement"? More to the point, why do they need Obama to say it in order to report it? Something is either true or it isn't -- even if Obama doesn't issue an "overarching statement" acknowledging it. Why should the claims of political officials determine what a news organization does and does not report and how they report it?"During his confirmation hearings, Attorney General-designate Eric Holder said clearly that water-boarding was torture, and President Obama has said the same thing," [Duffy] continued. "But the Obama Administration has issued no overarching statement on the issue. . . ."This passage is the second time Shepard described waterboarding with the pleasant-sounding, clinical, minimizing phrase: "poured water down a detainee's mouth and nostrils for 40 seconds." Note the other nice-sounding descriptions for what the U.S. did ("forced to stand for hours along side a wall"; that almost sounds peaceful, like a yoga pose: "along side a wall").To me, it makes more sense to describe the techniques and skip the characterization. For example, reporters could say that the U.S. military poured water down a detainee's mouth and nostrils for 40 seconds. Or they could detail such self-explanatory techniques as forcing detainees into cramped confines crawling with insects, or forced to stand for hours along side a wall.
Any mention of the numerous detainee deaths? Or the mental and physical havoc wreaked on these detainees? Or the freezing temperatures and cold water and "walling" and severe stress positions? No. In light of that, does anyone believe that she doesn't have an opinion on this topic, and that the opinion is that these techniques are not "torture"? She makes the tactics sound milder than Dick "dunk-in-the-water" Cheney does. As is virtually always the case with modern journalists, those who scream the loudest about how they must refrain from stating facts in order to maintain "neutrality" are the ones who, in reality, are the least neutral of all. They're just too dishonest to acknowledge it.
One last point: all of this underscores the reasons why Dan Froomkin had to be disappeared from The Post and why he is such a pure journalist in the aberrational sense. Here's how Froomkin addressed this very same question just last week in a Post online chat:That's what real journalists do, by definition. They state facts regardless of who it offends and whether government officials deny them. NPR should try that sometime.Reader: If the Post can't or won't call the techniques torture, the Post's editorial position lines up exactly with the Bush Administration's line that they didn't torture, doesn't it?
Dan Froomkin: I call it torture. Over and over again.
UPDATE: In comments, johnqeniac makes an excellent point which could apply to many other topics:Exactly. But in that case, the U.S. Government uses the term "Terrorist" in all sorts of ways, and though its use is vigorously disputed around the world, NPR will still use it (and does use it) because the Government uses it (and/or because -- as is true for torture -- the term clearly applies despite the existence of those who dispute its application). But that's what our establishment media organizations are first and foremost: spokespeople for government claims, and they take their cues from the government. (Note, similarly, NPR's free-wheeling and quite subjective use of the descriptive term "extremist" when it suits them, even in the face of substantial dispute over its applicability).How about banning the use of the word 'terrorist' for exactly the same set of pathetic excuses?
If NPR were sincere about their 'describe, don't label' doctrine, then they would forego the use of the words 'terrorist' and 'terrorism' in favor of something like 'harsh combat techniques'.
UPDATE II: Even GE-owned NBC News was willing -- at least once, in 2006 -- to use a descriptive phrase that the Bush administration vigorously disputed in a matter "loaded with political and social implications":The reason for calling it a "civil war" even though Bush officials and their followers vehemently denied that it was? Because it was a "civil war." That fact, standing alone, ought to be decisive.NBC News on Monday branded the Iraq conflict a civil war -- a decision that put it at odds with the White House and that analysts said would increase public disillusionment with the U.S. troop presence there.
NBC, a major U.S. television network, said the Iraqi government's inability to stop spiraling violence between rival factions fit its definition of civil war.
The Bush administration has for months declined to call the violence a civil war -- although the U.S. general overseeing the Iraq operation said in August there was a risk -- and a White House official on Monday disputed NBC's assessment. . .
Several analysts said NBC's decision was important as the administration would face more pressure to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq if the U.S. public comes to view the conflict as a civil war.
Glenn GreenwaldNPR Ombudsman refuses interview regarding "torture"
NPR's Ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, wrote a column last week justifying NPR's policy of using euphemisms such as "enhanced interrogation tactics" -- while barring the use of the word "torture" -- to describe the interrogation tactics used by the Bush administration. I wrote a critique of that column which was widely cited, and the comment section to her column was filled with hundreds of angry criticisms -- many times the number of comments her column typically attracts (usually in the range of 10-20). As a result of all that, last week I extended an invitation to Shepard to discuss her column with me on Salon Radio, and was told by an NPR representative that she would respond to the invitation by Monday.
Yesterday, we received Shepard's response: no. According to the Salon intern who tenaciously pursued Shepard all week and spoke with her yesterday:I've conducted close to 100 interviews since we launched Salon Radio in July of last year -- including numerous interviews with people expressing views I criticized rather harshly (one of whom was NPR's Tom Gjelten) -- and not a single one could be characterized as a "shouting match." In fact, I don't think any of them entail anyone raising their voices at all. That's a rather lame excuse to avoid facing challenges to one's arguments. And if it's really true that I made "misleading" statements about her column (despite my excerpting large portions of what she wrote), that would be all the more reason to clarify what she believes.I just got off the phone with Alicia Shepard. She declined to have an interview, or to go on Salon Radio. To quote, she thought "misleading things" were written about her on Salon, and said "I don't want to get into a shouting match." As for what the "misleading" statements were, she didn't clarify.
But this is a quite common affliction in our political discourse. There are many people who love to opine pedantically and express all sorts of provocative opinions -- as long as they don't ever have to confront criticisms of those views. People like Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol will stay hiding on Fox News where they can spout all sorts of claims without challenge, but then refuse to be questioned about those views by someone like Bill Moyers. Rachel Maddow constantly invites prominent Republicans on her show so she can interview them, but most refuse. I can't even imagine writing a column that caused as much anger as Shepard's did -- on a topic as obviously controversial as torture -- and then refusing to discuss it with someone who led the objections to what I wrote. That's why I've debated journalists I've criticized and have even gone on right-wing talk radio to discuss columns I wrote, and routinely respond to criticisms in the comment section to the posts I write. For reasons I've explained before -- in response to a Marc Ambinder post advocating that pundits be more willing to engage those with whom they disagree -- seeking out a public forum in which to express controversial views (as Shepard has done) entails the obligation to confront critics and criticisms. Refusing to do so is irresponsible cowardice that singularly enables reckless opining (The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus did the same thing after writing columns advocating that Bush officials not be investigated for the crimes they committed only to then refuse to be questioned about her views).
Revealingly, after my interview invitation was extended to her last week, Shepard did appear for a five-minute segment on an NPR program -- On the Media -- to discuss her column with an NPR host. There's only so much an interviewer can accomplish in a five-minute segment, and that's particularly true when one is an NPR host interviewing a fellow NPR employee about an NPR management policy. That said, the interviewer -- Bob Garfield -- did a very good job of asking some of the key questions (though there are many others I'd like to ask her). As a result, even with those constraints, the emptiness of Shepard's rationale quickly became evident. The segment can be heard here (or by clicking PLAY on the player below) and is recommended. The comment section to the interview is filled with NPR listeners furious at the NPR policy and Shepard's defense of it. It's not hard to see why Shepard is eager to avoid being questioned adversarially, outside of NPR, about her position.
Glenn GreenwaldThe still-growing NPR "torture" controversy
There are several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday about the refusal of NPR's Ombdusman, Alica Shepard, to be interviewed by me about NPR's ban on using the word "torture" to describe the Bush administration's interrogation tactics. Given the utter vapidity of her rationale ("there are two sides to the issue. And I'm not sure, why is it so important to call something torture?"), I was momentarily amazed to learn that she actually teaches "Media Ethics" to graduate students at Georgetown University (my amazement quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith -- Doug Feith -- to teach students "national security policy" and that Berkeley Law School has John Yoo "teaching law" to its students; next semester at Georgetown: Karl Rove teaches Civility in a Post-Partisan Age, Bill Kristol lectures on Accountability in Punditry, while David Gregory examines The Role of Intellect in Adversarial Questioning).
NPR's "torture" ban and its Ombudsman's incoherent defense of it has now turned into a significant controversy for NPR -- and rightfully so. Yesterday, The Huffington Post trumpeted the controversy in a prominent headline all day long, focusing on Shepard's refusal to be interviewed here. The media reporter Simon Owens wrote a long column on Shepard's refusal to discuss her rationale with me despite my having been a primary critic of NPR's policy (indeed, this controversy began several weeks ago when I noted the ample documentation from NPR Check of NPR's steadfast refusal to use the word "torture" and the embarrassing contortions it employs to accomplish that).
Also, along with her On the Media appearance this weekend, Shepard went on another NPR-affiliated show -- Patt Morrison's KPCC Southern California Public Radio program -- in a quality segment that included several good questions from Morrison (and even better ones from callers); a very well-compiled, illustrative and cringe-inducing montage of NPR's repeatedly going out of its way to avoid calling Bush interrogation tactics "torture," juxtaposed with an excerpt where NPR explicitly accused Iraqis in Sadr City of "using torture" against detainees; and, finally, the inclusion in the discussion of a Berkeley Professor of Linguistics explaining why it matters so much what the media does in this regard and how virtually all media around the world -- other than what he called the "spineless U.S. media" -- call these tactics "torture" (the KPCC program credits my criticisms of Shepard for catalyzing the controversy and the segment can be heard here). Amazingly, a caller asked Shepard about the advent of blogs and how it has diversified commentary, and in replying, Shepard put on her most condescending and self-glorifying voice to say this:That's from the same person who refuses to "dialogue" about her views outside of NPR-affiliated confines.I think, um, we're now at a stage where the debate is between dialogue and diatribe, and I wish there was more dialogue. I think there's more diatribe.
Along those lines, Shepard has gone back to her NPR blog to write yet another column about this controversy and to assure NPR listeners in her headline that "Your Voices Have Been Heard." In it, she references my criticisms without bothering to address any of them, and also claims, for whatever it's worth: "For the record, I have brought this issue and the volume of comments to the attention of NPR's top editorial staff."
Finally, Shepard today will appear on yet another NPR program, the nationally broadcast Talk of the Nation, beginning at 2:00 p.m. EST, for a segment entitled "Why Doesn't NPR Call Waterboarding Torture?" Readers here are obviously quite familiar with this controvery as well as Shepard's conduct in it thus far and could obviously pose excellent questions to her. Her appearance this afternoon on Talk of the Nation provides a good opportunity for that (the call-in number is 800-989-8255; for those in cities (such as NYC) where NPR doesn't broadcast that show, CarolynC has information about where to hear it).
* * * * *
Several weeks ago, when writing about all of the various euphemisms employed by The New York Times to avoid using the word "torture," I wrote about why I think this matters so much and why the media's use of euphemisms invented by the government torturers themselves so vividly reflects the core corruption of American "journalism":That second paragraph is a pure distillation of how Shepard -- the "Media Ethics" Professor in Georgetown's graduate journalism program and NPR's Ombudsman -- explicitly thinks. And that -- a refusal to state facts and instead amplify and give credence to plain falsehoods -- is one of the principal and most destructive sicknesses in American establishment journalism. All of that was perfectly captured by penetratingly true satire back in August, 2004, from Jon Stewart and Daily Show "reporter" Rob Corddry [sent to me this week by a reader to illustrate what NPR is doing]:This active media complicity in concealing that our Government created a systematic torture regime -- by refusing ever to say so -- is one of the principal reasons it was allowed to happen for so long . . . The steadfast, ongoing refusal of our leading media institutions to refer to what the Bush administration did as "torture" -- even in the face of more than 100 detainee deaths; the use of that term by a leading Bush official to describe what was done at Guantanamo; and the fact that media outlets frequently use the word "torture" to describe the exact same methods when used by other countries -- reveals much about how the modern journalist thinks. These are their governing principles:
There are two sides and only two sides to every "debate" -- the Beltway Democratic establishment and the Beltway Republican establishment. If those two sides agree on X, then X is deemed true, no matter how false it actually is. If one side disputes X, then X cannot be asserted as fact, no matter how indisputably true it is. The mere fact that another country's behavior is described as X doesn't mean that this is how identical behavior by the U.S. should be described. They do everything except investigate and state what is true. In their view, that -- stating what is and is not true -- is not their role.
The whole world knows that the U.S. tortured detainees in the "War on Terror." Yet American newspapers refuse to say so.That derision is also as pure an expression of how Alicia Shepard and NPR think as one can imagine. And it's not just Shepard, but American journalists generally. From a 2006 interview Jim Lehrer gave to Columbia Journalism Review:Stewart: Here's what puzzles me most, Rob. John Kerry's record in Vietnam is pretty much right there in the official records of the U.S. military, and hasn't been disputed for 35 years.
Corddry: That's right, Jon, and that's certainly the spin you'll be hearing coming from the Kerry campaign over the next few days.
Stewart: That's not a spin thing, that's a fact. That's established.
Corddry: Exactly, Jon, and that established, incontrovertible fact is one side of the story.
Stewart: But isn't that the end of the story? I mean, you've seen the records, haven't you? What's your opinion?
Corddry: I'm sorry, "my opinion"? I don't have opinions. I'm a reporter, Jon, and my job is to spend half the time repeating what one side says, and half the time repeating the other. Little thing called "objectivity" -- �might want to look it up some day.
Stewart: Doesn't objectivity mean objectively weighing the evidence, and calling out what's credible and what isn't?
Corddry: Whoa-ho! Sounds like someone wants the media to act as a filter! Listen, buddy: Not my job to stand between the people talking to me and the people listening to me.But remember: don't ever call them "stenographers." That's insulting and offensive. Rather, what they do is called "reporting," by which they mean: "We call people in power and write down what they say really accurately and then we faithfully repeat what 'each side says' without commenting on it or judging it (except where it's our Government's claims against some foreign country, in which case we state our Government's claims as fact)."CJR: At CJR Daily, we spent a lot of time during the 2004 presidential campaign criticizing just the sort of story that it seems [Ben] Bradlee is describing - stories that "highlight the controversy," report this claim versus these competing claims, rather than providing facts for the reader and helping them navigate toward the truth. What are your thoughts on this? How do you approach reporting what a public official has said something that is blatantly untrue?
Lehrer: I don't deal in terms like "blatantly untrue." That's for other people to decide when something's "blatantly untrue." There's always a germ of truth in just about everything . . . My part of journalism is to present what various people say about it the best we can find out [by] reporting and let others - meaning commentators, readers, viewers, bloggers or whatever . . .
* * * * *
What makes this practice particularly destructive in the torture context is that the central enabling deceit of the Bush administration was that there are no objective, verifiable standards for what "torture" is. Instead, it's just all in the eye of the beholder, easily re-defined to include or exclude anything we want, dependent upon who is doing it, devoid of any authoritative sources on what it means, and, ultimately, entirely subjective. It is that rotted premise -- that there is no fixed, known understanding of "torture" -- that outlets like NPR are not just accepting, but actively promoting, by refusing to use the term on the ground that "there are two sides to the question" (see ABC News' Jake Tapper for an imperfect though still commendable exception: tactics used by CIA "qualify under international law as torture").
It is vital to keep in mind -- as I noted last week in arguing why it's so vital that torture photos be released -- that there is still very much an active, vibrant debate over torture in this country. That debate encompasses not only the question of whether we should punish those who did it, but whether or not it is right and just for us to use it. In fact, as reported just recently by Harper's Luke Mitchell, Jeremy Scahill, and Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, there is ample evidence that very serious abuse is still occurring in America's detention facilities, including at Guantanamo (all of which confirmed similar reports from earlier this year). Whether the U.S. should torture people is a matter of opinion about which reporters need not take a position. But that is plainly not the case for the proposition that these tactics are "torture." There are not two sides to that question, and media outlets that suggest otherwise are actively deceiving their audience.
UPDATE: I neglected to mention this strange email exchange I had with Anna Christopher, NPR's "Senior Manager, Media Relations," who contacted me on Tuesday after I wrote about Shepard's refusal to be interviewed. In posting the exchange, I'm editing out one sentence from my reply which references an insignificant fact about why Shepard was out of the office last week that the Salon intern who spoke with Shepard's office (on my behalf) agreed to keep off-the-record (an agreement I therefore feel compelled to respect).
UPDATE II: In comments, Paul Daniel Ash points out the glaring dishonesty in Shepard's central defense of NPR's policy.
UPDATE III: On a not unrelated note, long-time journalist Charles Kaiser (Newsweek, NYT, WSJ) notes that The Washington Post has been caught selling lobbyist access to their reporters and political officials; declares the Post dead; and writes its obituary.
E-mail from Anna Christopher to GG:
Glenn,
I just saw your most recent column, criticizing Lisa [sic] Shepard for declining your interview request. Could you please give me a call when you have a chance?
If you or your interns want to make a request to interview NPR staff, that goes through me. I would have been able to tell your intern - who so tenaciously pursued her last week - that Lisa was on vacation and unreachable until Thursday. She didn't ignore your request. And the last time I checked, requests are just that - requests. Not demands. Able to be accepted or declined.
Thank you,
Anna
Anna Christopher Senior Manager, Media Relations
* * * * *
Reply from GG to Anna Christopher:
Anna - You apparently didn't read the column very carefully. We were told by someone from NPR -- Anna Tauzin -- that Alicia Shepard was [out of the office] last week and would therefore respond to the interview request by Monday. That's exactly what I wrote today. Tauzin did authorize us to say: "We were told by NPR that the Ombudsman is out of the office this week and her office will get back to us by Monday with a response." That's exactly what I wrote.
I didn't say she ignored my request, so why would you deny that she did? In fact, I said the opposite: that she responded to the request by refusing to be interviewed.
If there are internal NPR structures about who has what responsibilities, that's up to NPR to make clear. Tauzin never once said it was you who had to be contacted for the interview request. She was more than willing to convey the request to Shepard, and the Salon intern then spoke with Shepard herself yesterday.
I didn't suggest that Shepard broke the law by refusing to be interviewed by me -- only that people like her who opine pedantically on controversial matters have an ethical obligation to engage critics of their views.
If you'd still like to talk, let me know and I'll give you a call -
Glenn Greenwald
* * * * *
No further reply received from NPR.
I'm disturbed that I live in a country where saying we shouldn't torture people is considered a radical left-wing position.Finally, I was on an NPR station yesterday in Seattle to discuss NPR's ban on the use of the word "torture" to describe Bush administration interrogation tactics. I originally understood that I would be on with NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard, but alas, it turns out that she agreed only to be on the show before me, so as not to engage or otherwise interact with me, so I was forced to listen to her for 15 minutes and wait until she hung up before being able to speak. The segment can be heard here, beginning at the 14:00 mark (though the quality of the recording is poor in places).
The most noteworthy point was her explicit statement (at 17:50) that "the role of a news organization is to lay out the debate"; rarely is the stenographic model of "journalism" -- "we just repeat what each side says and leave it at that" -- so expressly advocated (and see Jon Stewart's perfect mockery of that view). She also said -- when the host asked about the recent example I cited of NPR's calling what was done to a reporter in Gambia "torture" (at the 20:20 mark) -- that NPR will use the word "torture" to describe what other governments do because they do it merely to sadistically inflict pain on people while the U.S. did it for a noble reason: to obtain information about Terrorist attacks. That's really what she said: that when the U.S. did it (as opposed to Evil countries), it was for a good reason. Leaving aside the factual falsity of her claim about American motives, Shepard actually thinks that "torture" is determined by the motive with which the suffering is inflicted. The connection between the Government's ability to get away with these things and the media's warped view of its role really cannot be overstated.
UPDATE III: When Kevin Drum read the above summary I wrote of how Alicia Shepard justified NPR's using "torture" to describe the acts of Gambia but not the U.S., he said he assumed I was exaggerating, because nobody could actually believe the explanation I attributed to Shepard -- that they do it for bad reasons and it's therefore "torture," while we do it for noble reasons and therefore it's not. But then he listened to the show and transcribed Shepard's statement. Kevin then wrote:Along those same lines, Jesse Levine, a long-time reader who is a government lawyer, emailed this to me today:Wow. She really did say that, didn't she? When other people do it for other reasons, it's torture. When we do it for our reasons, it's not.
You don't usually find people willing to say this quite so baldly. Congratulations, Alicia Shepard.I've been going back and forth on whether Shepard's deficiency is primarily one of intellect or whether she's just a hard-core Cheneyite. I'm now convinced -- after her statements yesterday on that show I did with after her -- that it's both.I just had the most bizarre conversation with Alicia Shepard. I called and told her I had been following the contretemps over NPR's use of the word torture and wanted to confirm that she had said what you had reported about her view of sadism vs. intelligence gathering as defining torture. She said she did and that it was a political question because it is torture on one hand and "tactics" on the other. I said I understood there was a political debate about whether torture was justified in certain circumstances, but again asked if an act itself was torture; specifically asking, "if you cut off someone's hand is it not torture whether motivated by sadism or intelligence gathering?" She said it was and then quickly shifted back to the torture vs. tactics meme. I gave up.
Anyone who can say that what we do is not "torture" because we do it for the right reasons -- whereas it's "torture" when those other countries do it because they're sadistic and bad -- is someone who is devoid of both basic reasoning skills and good motives. This Saturday, at 2:30 p.m., in Washington, DC, Shepard will be appearing at this event to talk about "the role of the Ombudsman." It's open to the public. I don't know if there will be opportunity for questions, though one can always create that opportunity if one is so inclined.
UPDATE V: Just compare Alicia Shepard's justification for why NPR calls Gambia's tactics "torture" but not America's -- they do it to inflict pain whereas we (supposedly) did it to extract information -- to the definition of "torture" in the Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. has been a siganatory since 1988:The entire civilized world has long defined "torture" to include tactics used to obtain information. By virtue of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, that definition is binding law ("supreme law") in the U.S. But to NPR's Ombdusman, it's not "torture" if they are simply -- as she put it -- "tactics used to get information." Those are the depths to which NPR is willing to sink in order to twist language and protect the Bush administration and the U.S. Government.Part I, Article I: For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
