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UPDATE: Well the ball is continuing to roll with press coverage/responses from washington post and NYT!!
Here is the yahoo! news article with the NYT statement:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20100701/ts_ynews/ynews_ts3004_5
and here is a Washington Post article criticizing the NYT response:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/times_excuse_for_not_calling_w.html
By now you've heard about that surprising new Harvard study finding that news orgs that routinely called waterboarding "torture" for many years suddenly shifted away from the term after it became public that the Bush administration had sanctioned it.
From the 1930s to 1999 the New York Times described waterboarding as torture 81% of the time; from 2002 to 08, 1.4%
A newly released study from students at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government provides the latest evidence of how thoroughly devoted the American establishment media is to amplifying and serving (rather than checking) government officials.
BRIEF:
My younger brother released a research report about 2 months ago on the way the media regards water boarding throughout history and up until the present day. It recieved very little fanfair back then but now it seems a lot of blogs, and even Salon.com have picked up on their (it was a team of students) results.
The fresh coverage:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Study-Examines-Why-the-Media-Doesnt-Call-Waterboarding-Torture-4189
The report:
(pdf) http://jr.ly/znv7
reddit.com submission.
http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ckpjj/harvard_study_from_1930s2004_ny_times_called/
Examining the four newspapers with the highest daily circulation in the country, we found a significant and sudden shift in how newspapers characterized waterboarding. From the early 1930s until the modern story broke in 2004, the newspapers that covered waterboarding almost uniformly called the practice torture or implied it was torture: The New York Times characterized it thus in 81.5% (44 of 54) of articles on the subject and The Los Angeles Times did so in 96.3% of articles (26 of 27).
By contrast, from 2002‐2008, the studied newspapers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture. The New York Times called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture in just 2 of 143 articles (1.4%). The Los Angeles Times did so in 4.8% of articles (3 of 63). The Wall Street Journal characterized the practice as torture in just 1 of 63 articles (1.6%). USA Today never called waterboarding torture or implied it was torture.
So good on him, and I think the discovery is quite disturbing as well.
edit: I thought I would share this in a congratulatory fashion  As well as get some of you nimrods to read it.
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Christopher Hitchens got waterboarded
Christopher Hitchens got esophagus cancer
Coincidence? I think not.
(I'm kidding)
Anyway it's obviously torture.
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Clearly torture. There was a huge thread on this and basically everyone with a brain realizes its torture. The debate was really if torture is ever justifiable.
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On July 02 2010 03:52 Pawsom wrote:
Clearly torture. There was a huge thread on this and basically everyone with a brain realizes its torture. The debate was really if torture is ever justifiable.
I'll upate the OP with this. Man I'm lazy with my initial OP, it takes like 3 edits to get it into shape lol.
From the 1930s to 1999 the New York Times described waterboarding as torture 81% of the time; from 2002 to 08, 1.4% (pdf) http://jr.ly/znv7
The study is on how it's portrayed through the main stream media, where as prior to 9/11 it was referred to with a heavy handed, and normally called torture. However after 9/11 the treatment of the subject became much "softer" as if all it takes is one attack to justify torture on innocent men (until proven guilty, if they are ever taken to a judge that is). I'm talking about Guantanamo.
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I'm not an expert, but I have enough newspaper experience to feel confident saying there's no major newspaper that's unbiased. Newspapers have great shaping abilities where they report the news, but in their own light, thus always altering the perception of the situation. The hints are everywhere, and even when trying to remain neutral it's very hard to avoid.
In the case of the waterboarding topic, it's pretty depressing that the "purest" form of news shows off such imbalanced statistics when regarding waterboarding as torture. Good job on your brother's part. It's always good to watch the media's voice to see where their subtle spins take place.
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This is extremely interesting, fantastic work from your brother .
Either a case of the military/ government putting pressure on free media to report waterboarding in a lighter stance; or a case that people generally came to think of waterboarding as less than torture as part of a cultural climate and that the news just picked up on that.
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On July 02 2010 04:17 sc4k wrote:This is extremely interesting, fantastic work from your brother . Either a case of the military/ government putting pressure on free media to report waterboarding in a lighter stance; or a case that people generally came to think of waterboarding as less than torture as part of a cultural climate and that the news just picked up on that.
A lot of it seems like self-censorship, IMO. If a news station called it torture repeatedly, they would probably lose contact and interviews with nearly every politician\military official (so in a non-direct way it is pressure) who voted for it and continued to support it, lose the views of people who want to, "Kill all those damn ragheads", that sort of thing. Hell, they might even lose their "Neutrality" by telling the truth.
tl;dr saying America is a mass torturer isn't good for mass marketing a product to a nationalistic population and established political and military power.
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The media establishment is pathetic... seriously what the fuck. It's no better than state controlled media a-la soviet union.
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The reality is that most of Congress, both Democrat and Republican, stood behind waterboarding as well as our ventures into Afghanistan and Iraq (yes, Iraq too). It's bad for business if people know you're torturing people. So suddenly waterboarding is "not a form of a torture."
This wasn't made an issue in the 2004 elections because 9/11 was still too near too many people's hearts.
But now we've had almost a decade. Suddenly waterboarding is a major political issue because of increases in antiwar sentiments.
It's the same thing with wiretapping. Obama was a major critic of wiretapping during his election campaign, but since he's taken office, weiretapping has increased over 2008 levels and is now in fact at a record high.
Source: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/wiretapping/
Furthermore, the Obama administration has opened the door even further for illegal wiretapping.
Source: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/04/06/obama (see the DOJ brief highlighted at the bottom)
Basically, the US government continues to expand its ability to tread on human rights, justifying its actions by not calling things what they are. Is it any wonder why our allies are so unhappy with us?
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Quick question, if terrorists held your family hostage, and you could waterboard them to save your family's lives, would you do it?
Its not like they pick up random muslims off the streets, they usually have incriminating intelligence for these guys.
So would I torture an alleged terrorist every time, if it meant saving American lives? Absolutely.
BTW, the New York Times is like the most liberal news outlet in the United States, they have no benefit of not calling it torture.
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On July 02 2010 05:35 Mortality wrote:
It's the same thing with wiretapping. Obama was a major critic of wiretapping during his election campaign
no he wasn't, in fact he said during the campaign that he would grant retroactive legal immunity to companies that illegally wiretapped americans
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On July 02 2010 06:33 TheMaleficOne wrote:
Quick question, if terrorists held your family hostage, and you could waterboard them to save your family's lives, would you do it?
Its not like they pick up random muslims off the streets, they usually have incriminating intelligence for these guys.
So would I torture an alleged terrorist every time, if it meant saving American lives? Absolutely.
BTW, the New York Times is like the most liberal news outlet in the United States, they have no benefit of not calling it torture.
This argument would make sense if America was a family. But face it, an American is as close to 99.99% of America as he or she is to the rest of the world.
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On July 02 2010 06:33 TheMaleficOne wrote:
Quick question, if terrorists held your family hostage, and you could waterboard them to save your family's lives, would you do it?
Its not like they pick up random muslims off the streets, they usually have incriminating intelligence for these guys.
So would I torture an alleged terrorist every time, if it meant saving American lives? Absolutely.
BTW, the New York Times is like the most liberal news outlet in the United States, they have no benefit of not calling it torture.
The thing with torture is that sometimes it's not the right guy you're torturing. Also, the information given is not always right as the victim will sometimes say what they think the torturers want to hear and not the truth.
If we don't draw the line at water boarding, where will we draw it?
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On July 02 2010 06:33 TheMaleficOne wrote:
Quick question, if terrorists held your family hostage, and you could waterboard them to save your family's lives, would you do it?
Sure, on emotion. Do I want the government to? Certainly not, I can't trust them to do that properly. You can be sure that the US torturers are pretty messed up in the head in one way or another or they wouldn't be there doing that.
So would I torture an alleged terrorist every time, if it meant saving American lives? Absolutely.
How do you cope with torturing the occasional innocent person with a technique so terrible some people have trouble drinking water after the fact?
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I'm just saying, if your organization blows up airplanes into our buildings and blows up our soldiers with roadside bombs, waterboarding is a little too nice. Maybe disemboweling would be better?
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On July 02 2010 07:03 TheMaleficOne wrote:
I'm just saying, if your organization blows up airplanes into our buildings and blows up our soldiers with roadside bombs, waterboarding is a little too nice. Maybe disemboweling would be better?
You're too far on the right. We're not in a 3rd world civil war.
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Every liberal thinks every conservative is fringe. Go figure.
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Zurich15329 Posts
On July 02 2010 07:03 TheMaleficOne wrote:
I'm just saying, if your organization blows up airplanes into our buildings and blows up our soldiers with roadside bombs, waterboarding is a little too nice. Maybe disemboweling would be better?
Please do not destroy a valid thread with inflammatory statements like these.
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Valid based on ideology. I'm expressing my opinion. I got banned a few months ago for doing the same thing. I guess its against the rules for a bunch of closed-minded Euro-liberals.
It would be kind of like saying the Jews are mad at Germany because of the holocaust, and you saying it is inflammatory because you are from there.
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EPT
