In the wake of the “compromise” on torture between the White House and Senate Republicans, the media coverage has been a bit of a mixed bag. The WaPo and the NYT ran helpful, illuminating op-eds that everyone should read, but a lot of the coverage has been, sadly, more about the politics than the policy. We’re getting a lot about who “won” the negotiations and how this will affect the midterm elections.
Dan Froomkin noted, accurately, that part of the problem lies in the fact that political reporters had paid almost no attention to the story until the intra-party rift added drama to the question of whether we’ll continue to torture detainees. With the president having struck a deal with the Three Stooges, Froomkin predicts that “most reporters’ tendencies will be to cover the issue mostly from the angle of its effectiveness as a political cudgel in the mid-term elections.”
Froomkin makes a great case that it’s up to reporters to flesh out the details and offer the public “a full and open debate on this important moral issue.” In fact, he has a few suggestions of questions that need answers.
Step one would be some actual reporting into the CIA interrogation program, including aggressive truth-squadding of the assertions coming from the White House. President Bush, for instance, yesterday called the program the “most potent tool we have in protecting America and foiling terrorist attacks.”
Can he back that up? What little investigative reporting I’ve seen on the program thus far, by Ron Suskind among others, suggests that Bush’s assertion is exaggerated or just plain wrong — and that in fact the use of torture or near-torture has produced little or no valuable information. It’s imperative that the media give the public a better sense of whether Bush is credible on this issue.
Here’s a question reporters should be asking: If, as Suskind has alleged, the administration is aware that those harsh CIA interrogation tactics don’t really work — and no one is currently in CIA detention anyway — then why is this such an important issue for the White House? One possible answer: That this has nothing to do with the future; that it’s about giving them cover for their actions in the past.
Here’s another question reporters should be asking: Have the senators been assured that Vice President Cheney won’t get Bush to attach a “signing statement” to this bill, asserting his inherent powers, as he did the last time he signed torture legislation?
Great questions, all. I don’t imagine we’ll get much in the way of answers — indeed, I suspect most of these questions won’t really be asked — but in a reality-based world….