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Triggered by the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US military prison guards at abu-Ghraib in 2004, the Pentagon launched an investigation into its penal policy throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. Its probe came up with a collection of photographs that is evidence of further abuse. That collection was ordered published under a Freedom of Information lawsuit. When President Barack Obama announced that he had decided to appeal, his about-face was newsworthy enough that it was the Story of the Day and the lead item on both ABC and CBS. NBC selected the second day of safety hearings into February's turboprop crash in Buffalo, which had been Tuesday's top story.

First, Obama's suppression of the photographs was headline grabbing because he had changed his mind. "Last month the President agreed to their release after federal courts ordered them made public," NBC's Pete Williams reminded us. ABC's Jake Tapper called it "a complete 180. The White House originally said releasing the photographs would not put US troops in harm's way. Today the President said the opposite." As CBS' Bill Plante put it: "Candidate Obama pushed for full disclosure; President Obama has decided that there are times when transparency is a tough call."

Second, there was confusion about the content of the photographs. Are they inflammatory or not? CBS' Plante quoted President Obama's dismissive description as "not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from abu-Ghrab." Both ABC's Tapper and NBC's Williams contradicted him: Tapper called them "more photographs like the infamous snapshots from abu-Ghraib;" Williams said they were "like those from abu-Ghraib that show prisoner abuse by military captors."

Third, there was the always tricky minefield of euphemism to describe guards abusing prisoners. ABC's Tapper proved to be a surprise given that his network is normally the most convoluted in using formulations that avoid the T-word. He called the American Civil Liberties Union "devastated" because it thought it had "an ally in the White House on issues of transparency about detainee abuse and torture."

Fourth, there were the domestic politics of the dispute. Here, ABC's Tapper overstated the case when he observed that the President "seems to have arrived at the same position" as the former Vice President in concluding that it is dangerous to make abuse public. The soundbite he used did not bear out that generalization. He quoted Dick Cheney as warning against "the risk to the American people of another attack." Whereas, according to Tapper, Obama was concerned about stirring up "anti-US sentiment" in Iraq and Afghanistan not triggering domestic attacks. ABC's George Stephanopoulos noted that a trio of generals--David Petraeus, Raymond Odierno, David McKiernan--"came in hard" lobbying to suppress the images: "Even if this does not succeed," he noted, "the President would have shown that as Commander-in-Chief he is going the extra mile for his troops."


Andrew Tyndall 5/15/09 9:28:33 pm

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