Not content with whining and sniveling about the torture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, years after it happened, now leftists are upset that U.S. newspapers apparently adopted more neutral language in cases involving America.
Here's Adam Serwer at American Prospect.
Glenn Greenwald points to a study from the Joan Shorenstein Center at Harvard showing that news outlets referred to waterboarding as "torture" in stories in which other countries used the technique but not in stories when the U.S. government used it
He's upset that U.S. news sources actually recognized that that the practice was controversial, and that there were arguments each way.
As soon as Republicans started quibbling over the definition of torture, traditional media outlets felt compelled to treat the issue as a "controversial" matter, and in order to appear as though they weren't taking a side, media outlets treated the issue as unsettled, rather than confronting a blatant falsehood.
That's because the issue was and is still unsettled. There is no clear, widely accepted definition of torture. But like many leftists, Serwer typically views his own opinions as facts.
this attempt at "neutrality" was, in and of itself, taking a side, if inadvertently. It was taking the side of people who supported torture, opposed investigating it as a crime, and wanted to protect those who implemented the policy from any kind of legal accountability.
If only it were true that these major news sources actually supported intelligence efforts meant to defend the U.S. But Serwer is spouting obvious nonsense. The referenced outlets such as the New York Times and LA Times were & are anything but bastions of support for Republican positions, on waterboarding or pretty much anything else.
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