|
NY Times uses "abuse" instead of
"torture"
Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting
June 10, 2004
New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent posted a response
to FAIR's May 14 Action Alert that criticized the paper's May 14
report about CIA and Justice Department interrogation methods of
Al Qaeda suspects. Though the techniques described in the article
clearly seem to meet the legal definition of torture, the Times
presented administration denials that these methods constituted
torture, appeared to accept in its own reporters' voice that they
were not torture, and failed to include and legal or human rights
experts who might disagree with official claims that these
practices merely "simulate torture."
Okrent's response, posted on the Times website and emailed to
FAIR activists, is printed below, followed by comments from
FAIR.
'Torture' vs. 'Abuse' In The Times's Coverage of Iraq
Prisons
As aggressive as Times reporting can sometimes be, it doesn't
always find a parallel in the paper's use of language. The Iraq
prison story is an excellent example, as many readers have noted:
articles over the last few weeks have established the extent of
the scandal, and have included many pieces of first-person
testimony from former prisoners. But the language used in news
articles to characterize what went on at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere
remains, at least in headlines, comparatively delicate.
The specific issue is the use of "abuse" rather than "torture"
to describe certain actions of American military personnel,
intelligence officers, and private subcontractors. I asked
assistant managing editors Craig Whitney and Allan M. Siegal for
comment as they are, respectively, in charge of the news desk
(where front page headlines get written) and all matters of
language and style. Both were surprised when I raised the issue;
both noted some substantive definitional distinctions between
"abuse" and "torture"; both asserted that there is no Times
policy one way or another; and both acknowledged that readers may
be right.
Wrote Whitney in an e-mail message, "Now that you tell me
people are reading things into our not using 'torture' in
headlines, I'll pay closer attention."
Personally, I was torn until a conversation I had last week
with a reader from Germany. Absent any clear definition, I felt,
it seemed reasonable to use "abuse" if it helped keep
temperatures down, much as the use of 'militant' instead of
"terrorist" in the Palestine-Israel conflict suggests a sometimes
misplaced wish neither to take sides nor to be inflammatory (many
supporters of Israel feel very differently about this, and I
expect to address the specific issue in a future column).
But just as a terrorist is sometimes, in fact, a terrorist,
torture is inescapably torture. The reader who moved me out of
the muddled center on this did it with a simple question: "If the
same things [that happened at Abu Ghraib] had been done to
American prisoners by Iraqi authorities, would The Times have
hesitated to use 'torture' over and over again?"
Over the past five years, the paper has used the word to
describe the actions of authorities in Iraq, China, Mexico,
Turkey, Chad and elsewhere, including a precinct house in
Brooklyn, in the Abner Louima case. In each case, I believe,
there was a sense that the torturers were characterized, in part,
by their otherness, other nationalities, other political systems,
or in the Louima instance other, depraved moral codes.
In Iraq, the perpetrators of the prison horrors were our
representatives ordinary Americans whose behavior may have been
altered by circumstances, but who in their origins and histories
are as familiar to us as our neighbors and co-workers.
Siegal, who notes that The Times has no policy on the use of
"torture," cautioned me in an e-mail that his sense of the word
(and of "abuse") was "impressionistic rather than researched,"
but I buy what he ended up with: "torture occurs when a prisoner
is physically or psychologically maltreated during the process of
interrogation, or as punishment for some activity or political
position. Abuse occurs when the prisoner's jailers maltreat her
or him separately from the interrogation process."
Siegal also acknowledges that there's a continuum that has to
be measured. If, for instance, a man is kept hooded for an hour,
is that in itself torture? What about five hours? What about 24?
If the headline language has in fact been delicate, maybe that's
because the distinctions are delicate. But as good reporting
brings us greater knowledge of what has gone in prisons and
detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the distinctions
become firm enough to be indisputable.
Note the description the paper used on Monday, May 31, in a
chart explaining the deaths of various detainees in Iraq prisons:
"Cause of death was a blow to the head and 'compromised
respiration.' Died during an interrogation process by Navy Seals
and C.I.A. employees."
If that's not torture, then The Times might just as well call
it a game of tag.
FAIR is encouraged that Okrent took the question of how
prisoner abuse is reported seriously, and his starting a
conversation with Times staffers about it can only be positive.
However, his response failed to address the specific article that
the Action Alert referred to, which raised issues quite separate
from those he addressed in his alert.
Okrent includes the opinion of Times assistant managing editor
Allan Siegal, who explains the distinction he makes between
torture and abuse: Torture "occurs when a prisoner is physically
or psychologically maltreated during the process of
interrogation," while the term "abuse" is relevant when
mistreatment occurs outside of the interrogation process.
Okrent could have pointed out to readers, as the FAIR alert
did, that there is a legal definition of torture under the 1984
Convention Against Torture, to which the U.S. is a signatory.
While the infliction of physical or psychological pain for the
purposes of interrogation or punishment are covered, the term
also includes pain inflicted for the purpose of ''intimidating or
coercing'' a prisoner, or ''for any reason based on
discrimination of any kind''--much broader than Siegal's
definition.
In any case, Siegal's definition does not explain anything
about the article FAIR cited, because the CIA methods under
discussion there were explicitly connected to interrogation. And
FAIR's complaint was not simply that the Times did not use the
word ''torture'' describe these interrogation methods (such as
prolonged submersion), but that it quoted without rebuttal
adminstration assertions that this was not torture, and seemed to
echo these assertions in the reporters' own voice. FAIR
wrote:
The article took pains to explain why, according to U.S.
officials, such techniques do not constitute torture: "Defenders
of the operation said the methods stopped short of torture, did
not violate American anti-torture statutes, and were necessary to
fight a war against a nebulous enemy whose strength and
intentions could only be gleaned by extracting information from
often uncooperative detainees."
The article seemed to accept that the techniques described are
something other than torture: "The tactics simulate torture, but
officials say they are supposed to stop short of serious
injury."
We agree with Okrent that it is journalistically responsible
to use the word "torture" to describe treatment that would merit
that description if it were being done to rather than by
Americans. We hope that he'll keep an eye on future coverage to
see if terminology is being applied evenhandedly.
Read Okrent's post at:
http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/danielokrent/index.html?offset=31
You can comment on Okrent's response here:
http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/danielokrentscolumnswebjournal/index.html
Read FAIR's Action Alert:
http://www.fair.org/activism/times-torture.html
|
