NPR Ombudsman Says No to Greenwald Interview on Torture

One of the continuing topics of discussion at Glenn Greenwald’s Salon blog is the use, by many news organizations, of euphemisms like “harsh [or "enhanced"] interrogation techniques” when writing about the interrogation practices sanctioned and used by the Bush administration — even when these same organizations use the word “torture” to characterize similar or identical techniques used by countries other than the United States.

National Public Radio has been flooded with emails over this issue — so much so that the NPR ombudsman, Alicia Shepard, devoted one of her columns to defending the policy. Here is part of what she writes:

How should NPR describe the tactics used to coerce information out of terrorism suspects?

Ted Koppel, the former ABC Nightline host and commentator on Talk of the Nation, said in May that the U.S. should “define it [torture] as being any technique or practice which, when applied to an American prisoner in some other country or captured by some other entity, that we would object to. If we object to it being done to an American, then I think it’s torture.”

That seems clear enough, but the problem is that the word torture is loaded with political and social implications for several reasons, including the fact that torture is illegal under U.S. law and international treaties the United States has signed. Both Presidents Bush and Obama have insisted that the United States does not use torture. Officials during the Bush administration acknowledged the use of what they called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Also, not all interrogation could be classified as torture. Sleep deprivation, nudity and facial slaps are different from, say, pouring water on a cloth over someone’s face for 20 to 40 seconds to create the sensation of drowning — a practice known as waterboarding.

[...]

It’s a no-win case for journalists. If journalists use the words “harsh interrogation techniques,” they can be seen as siding with the White House and the language that some U.S. officials, particularly in the Bush administration, prefer. If journalists use the word “torture,” then they can be accused of siding with those who are particularly and visibly still angry at the previous administration.

[...]

I recognize that it’s frustrating for some listeners to have NPR not use the word torture to describe certain practices that seem barbaric. But the role of a news organization is not to choose sides in this or any debate. People have different definitions of torture and different feelings about what constitutes torture. NPR’s job is to give listeners all perspectives, and present the news as detailed as possible and put it in context.

The day after this apologia appeared, Glenn responded:

Anyone who believes that NPR is a “liberal” media outlet — and anyone who wants to understand the decay of American journalism — should read this column by NPR’s Ombudsman, Alicia C. Shepard, as she explains and justifies why NPR bars the use of the word “torture” to describe what the Bush administration did.  Responding to what she calls ”a slew of emails challenging NPR’s policy of using the words ‘harsh interrogation tactics’ or ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ to describe the treatment of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration,” Shepard hauls out every trite and misleading bit of journalistic conventional wisdom to dismiss listeners’ concerns and defend NPR’s Orwellian practice (as I noted recently when writing about The New York Times’ refusal to use the word “torture,” NPR’s compulsive use of Bush euphemisms has been a constant complaint of the excellent blog NPR Check).

He then proceeded to rebut each of her points in turn.

He also contacted Shepard and invited her onto his Salon radio show for an interview about the issues raised by the NPR policy, listeners’ responses to the policy, and new or still unanswered questions coming out of her column in defense of the policy. Here is what happened next, per Simon Owens at Bloggasm:

… [Glenn] asked a Salon intern to reach out to Shepard to see if she would speak to him for his online radio show. According to Greenwald, an NPR spokesperson said that the ombud was out for the week and would get back to him Monday. Salon’s intern said that when she spoke to Shepard on Monday she refused to go on the show because she didn’t “want to get into a shouting match.”

In a June 30 post, Glenn wrote this:

Yesterday, we received Shepard’s response:   no.  According to the Salon intern who tenaciously pursued Shepard all week and spoke with her yesterday:

I just got off the phone with Alicia Shepard.  She declined to have an interview, or to go on Salon Radio.  To quote, she thought “misleading things” were written about her on Salon, and said “I don’t want to get into a shouting match.” As for what the “misleading” statements were, she didn’t clarify.

I’ve conducted close to 100 interviews since we launched Salon Radio in July of last year — including numerous interviews with people expressing views I criticized rather harshly (one of whom was NPR’s Tom Gjelten) – and not a single one could be characterized as a “shouting match.”  In fact, I don’t think any of them entail anyone raising their voices at all.  That’s a rather lame excuse to avoid facing challenges to one’s arguments.  And if it’s really true that I made “misleading” statements about her column (despite my excerpting large portions of what she wrote), that would be all the more reason to clarify what she believes.

That brings us up to current. Yesterday, Glenn published a follow-up, which absolutely has to be read in its entirety to fully appreciate. I just want to spotlight two of the sources Glenn cites in this piece. First, there is this interview of Shepard by Bob Garfield, in which Garfield questions her about the uproar created by her response to, in turn, the uproar created by NPR’s policy on use of the word “torture.” It’s very tempting to quote the entire interview, because Shepard’s comments are so extraordinarily revealing, but I will content myself with this, and then you all go read the whole thing:

BOB GARFIELD: The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights says that waterboarding is torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross have called what the U.S. did “torture.” Waterboarding is unambiguously in violation of the International Convention on Torture, which has been ratified by 140-some countries.

It seems to me that the only people who think it’s a debate are the Bush Administration, who are the culprits. So how does that constituent a debate?

ALICIA SHEPARD: Well, there are two sides to the issue. And I’m not sure, why is it so important to call something torture?

Shepard comes back to this “two sides to the issue” theme in a second NPR column in which she tells NPR’s listeners “Your voices have been heard” and then proceeds to renew her defense of NPR’s word choice policy:

But no matter how many distinguished groups — the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners — say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters obviously believed that waterboarding terrorism suspects was necessary to protect the nation’s security.

One can disagree strongly with those beliefs and their actions. But they are due some respect for their views, which are shared by a portion of the American public. So, it is not an open-and-shut case that everyone believes waterboarding to be torture. Many in NPR’s audience obviously believe it is, but others do not.

It seems to me that just by saying that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their supporters and former staff are “responsible” people whose views on the definition of torture “are due some respect,” Shepard is demonstrating that (a) she does have a point of view herself, and is <b>not</b> being objective; and that (b) she does not understand what journalism is supposed to be about.

Shepard says that Bush and Cheney are “responsible people” as if that in itself were incontrovertible fact. It is not. It is an opinion, and one susceptible to very rigorous dispute. Who is Shepard to take sides and make judgments about whether anyone is “responsible” based solely on their position in society? Just because Cheney was vice-president and Bush was president does not in and of itself mean they were or are responsible people.

What Shepard is essentially saying is that journalists should give equal weight to “both sides” of any given issue, as long as the people on both sides are “responsible people.” Or, if there are strong opposing views on a given issue or event, a journalist does not have to go out and research and interview and investigate to discover what is true, because that would be disrespectful of the fact that “reasonable people can differ.” There IS no such thing as verifiable fact, because there are always two sides to every issue that are equally valid and true and deserving of respect.

The only thing I don’t understand, is why one would need “almost 30 years of experience in journalism” if that’s what journalism is. If all journalism is, is asking all the people on one side, and then all the people on the other side, of an issue what they think is true, and then writing down what the two sides said, being sure to get their words right, then anyone could go out and do that today, with no experience at all. Have tape recorder, pencil, and steno pad, will do journalism.

But this is not journalism. Journalism is about verifiable fact. Yes, you have to give everyone involved in a story the chance to say what they think is true, but then you don’t just leave it at that, and “let the readers decide.” That’s not reporting; that’s an abdication of professional responsibility. If you were a reporter interviewing a Holocaust survivor and a Holocaust denier, you would not just write down both sides’ views and then hit the Publish button. You would look for the verifiable facts, which may or may not align with what your two sides told you. Obviously, this is an extreme example, but that’s because it’s so much easier to grasp the larger point when you are looking at an example that is black and white. That larger point is the same no matter what the story is. There is always Side A, Side B (and often Sides C and D, or more), and verifiable fact.

That Alicia Shepard, and so many others in the news industry, think that responsible journalism is about identifying two sides and giving each side equal weight and ignoring verifiable fact, is why the Fourth Estate is on the auction block.