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CBS offered a brief follow-up to Friday's CIA torture story, deciding that Chip Reid's main assignment from the White House should be the paltriness of the budget cuts instead. ABC and NBC treated Barack Obama's trip to Langley to deliver a pep talk to his spies as more significant. Both White House correspondents, Jake Tapper and Savannah Guthrie, were given their newscast's lead.
Yet, as important as the story was, for some reason both reporters had an attack of almost identical mealy-mouthedness: "harshest interrogation tactics, which some call torture"--NBC's Guthrie; "severe interrogation methods that some consider torture"--ABC's Tapper.
Some? What is this some? Why not many? Or why not turn the phrase around? Surely "interrogation methods that some deny are torture" is a more accurate way of avoiding a direct declaration of the T-word? Is this a journalistic decision not to call a spade a spade? Or do we perceive the hand of lawyers afraid of a Dick Cheney's libel lawsuit? The Attorney General calls waterboarding torture. Surely Eric Holder carries more weight than a timid some?
The networks' anchors should give us an explanation. If their house style prohibits them from calling torture by its name, a brief outline of their reasoning would clear the air.
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