A little over a month ago, Andrew Sullivan had a fascinating piece on the evolution of the New York Times’ willingness, or lack thereof, to use the term "torture" to describe, well, torture (for definite lack of a better word). As Sullivan demonstrates, prior to the Bush administration, the Times repeatedly and reflexively referred to interrogation methods such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, hypothermia, stress positions and physical beatings as torture. No euphemism, no equivocation, no even-handed airing of the torturers’ rationale/argument and no concern for the associated political controversy. It was simply torture.
In recent years, however, the Times has begun to use euphemisms to describe those exact same techniques. What was torture was now "intense interrogation," "harsh interrogation and "detainee abuse" – though recently, and to much self-congratulation, the Times has mustered the courage to call what they once freely termed torture, a "brutal mode of..interrogation." Baby steps for a previously ambulatory being.
Not to single the Times out: other major media outlets such as NPR have embarked on the same self-censorship (NPR opting for phrases like "alleged abuse" and "harsh treatment"). The Washington Post referred to torture-produced evidence as "testimony allegedly acquired through coercion of witnesses." Allegedly coerced - so innocuous.
One of the problems that arises when our major media outlets (and political leaders) partake in this Orwellian exercise in lexical obfuscation is that there is an erosion of meaning across the board. The new linguistic conventions adopted to provide political cover for American policymakers that implemented a regime of torture become a form of political cover for all manner of torturers – foreign and domestic.
Consider, for example, the way the New York Times describes the despicable acts of torture inflicted on Iranian protesters by the Iranian regime in recent weeks: "prison abuse." Not even the new-found "brutal" qualifier. "Prison abuse" is the term used in the title of the article, and six times in the body – almost the only descriptor employed. The only exception is when the Times did go as far as to say that one detainee’s family "said he was being subjected to torture."
Apparently, these acts don’t arise to the level of torture:
Some prisoners say they watched fellow detainees being beaten to death by guards in overcrowded, stinking holding pens. Others say they had their fingernails ripped off or were forced to lick filthy toilet bowls. [...]
Although the government has played down the scale of the prison abuses, some detainees’ relatives have come forward recently to confirm them, mostly to opposition-linked Web sites that have provided credible information in the past, including roozonline.com and gooya.com.
Some deaths have been further documented with photographs or videotapes. Hospital officials have described receiving bodies of those killed in protests, with the total far in excess of 20, the government’s initial figure. It is difficult to confirm such reports independently, given the restrictions on reporting in Iran. [...]
“We were all standing so close to each other that no one could move,” he wrote in a narrative posted online. “The plainclothes guards came into the room and broke all the light bulbs, and in the pitch dark started beating us, whoever they could.” By morning, at least four detainees were dead, he added.
In another account posted online, a former detainee describes being made to lie facedown on the floor of a police station bathroom, where an officer would step on his neck and force him to lick the toilet bowl as the officer cursed reformist politicians.
A woman described having her hair pulled as interrogators demanded that she confess to having sex with political figures. When she was finally released, she was forced — like many others — to sign a paper saying she had never been mistreated.
To paraphrase the Times’ Public Editor, Clark Hoyt: In a polarized atmosphere in which many Iranians believe the nation betrayed its most fundamental ideals in the name of repressing political dissent and others believe extreme measures were necessary to save the very nature of the Islamic Revolution, The Times is displeasing some who think “prison abuse” is just a timid euphemism for torture and their opponents who think “prison abuse” is too loaded.
What’s a journalist to do in the post Bush/Cheney world?
(links via Bruce Etling)
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