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Torture capped a heavy day of news. No less than four stories were deemed newsworthy enough to receive triple coverage--the assignment of a correspondent on all three network newscasts. All three brought us the arraignment of a medical student in Boston in the infamous Craigslist killing; all showed us the Somali teenager accused of piracy on the high seas brought into federal court in New York City; all told us about the Arizona teenager whose protest at being stripped by her school nurse and searched ended up at the Supreme Court. But the lead item on all three newscasts was the potential prosecution of Bush Administration lawyers for giving a green light to torture. President Barack Obama announced that he would let Attorney General Eric Holder decide whether or not to go to trial.

As the torture story inches forward, euphemism is slowly being stripped away. Thumbs up to CBS anchor Katie Couric for being forthright. "We begin tonight with the topic of torture," she declared. NBC anchor Brian Williams too called the abuse of prisoners by its name, although indirectly, as in the following sentence: "The White House says there will be no more torture on their watch and a while back, from the President on down, they seemed to close the book on going back and charging people in the Bush Administration who approved it." The it that they approved cannot refer to anything except torture. Charles Gibson remains the holdout on ABC: "harsh interrogation" was the form of words he used twice and would go no further.

The networks' correspondents were less plainspoken than their anchors. NBC's Andrea Mitchell did show progress compared with her colleague Savannah Guthrie on Monday. Guthrie referred to the "harshest interrogation tactics, which some call torture." Mitchell has shifted to the preferable "harsh interrogations that many people call torture." CBS' Bob Orr called the Justice Department's lawyering "so-called torture memos" and the demand by Senate Democrats for an investigation a "so-called Truth Commission." He chose some rather than many--as in "interrogations that some have labeled torture." On ABC, Jake Tapper, like his anchor, used "harsh interrogation."

CBS' Jeff Greenfield (at the tail of the Orr videostream) takes the cake. He called the possibility that the Bush Administration committed war crimes a "policy difference"--as in "it is so unusual to even think about one administration prosecuting a past administration for what Eric Holder called 'a policy difference.' I mean--bribery, sure; even Watergate was flat out obstruction of justice…" To Greenfield, torture is a milder offense than bribery or obstruction.

All three newscasts used the same Fox News Channel soundbite from former Vice President Dick Cheney complaining that the CIA had failed to declassify documents that justified criminal means by intelligence ends: "They did not put out the memos that showed the success of the effort." So will there be a prosecution? Or a Truth Commission? Or will former lawyer, now federal judge, Jay Bybee be impeached? From the White House, NBC's Chuck Todd foresaw action in the Senate: the President "is not going to stand in the way of Congress if they choose to do something."


Andrew Tyndall 4/22/09 11:40:18 pm

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