Enhanced Misinformation Techniques
Torture supporters outnumbered opponents 2-to-1 on major news shows
When the Senate released its shocking report on CIA torture late last year, it renewed a debate from the Bush years about the merits of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Polls released afterward suggested that most Americans thought that torture was effective and, in some cases, justified. Yet the report was very clear: Torture produced virtually no valuable intelligence.
So why did so many people get the wrong idea? One possible explanation is that they heard it over and over again on TV.
In a new study, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting found that major news programs interviewed twice as many torture defenders as torture critics in their coverage of the Senate’s report.
The FAIR study reviewed the guests of several popular news shows in the week when the report was most prominently discussed. The surveyed programs included the five Sunday talk shows (NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, ABC’s This Week, Fox News Sunday, and CNN’s State of the Union) along with four weekday news shows (MSNBC’s Hardball, Fox’s Special Report, CNN’s Situation Room, and the PBS NewsHour).
In total, 104 guests appeared on these shows to discuss the topic, a little over half of whom expressed an opinion on torture.
Out of these, 35 – two-thirds of that group – took a position supportive of torture. (This number includes a few guests who claimed to be against “torture,” but defended waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation techniques” that are recognized as torture under U.S. and international law.)
Only 18 guests articulated clear opposition to the CIA’s torture practices. That’s just half the number who spoke up in support.
Moreover, with the exception of journalists covering the report, most of these guests were former and current government officials. Nine were from the CIA, seven of whom defended the torture program.
Many of these former officials are familiar faces who were involved in authorizing or implementing the program. They included George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove, as well as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former CIA officials Michael Hayden, Jose Rodriguez, and Bill Harlow.
Guantanamo prosecutor David Iglesias, who appeared on the PBS NewsHour, was the only former government official connected to the torture program to express opposition to it.
While the people who ordered, justified, and carried out torture were well represented in the debate over the report, advocates for the victims were rare. Joseph Margulies and Meg Satterthwaite, two lawyers representing men tortured by the CIA, were the exceptions, appearing respectively on Hardball and This Week.
Excluded entirely were representatives of human rights groups and experts on international law.
Of the politicians who were invited to appear, Republicans outnumbered Democrats 19-to-7. Sixteen of the Republicans defended torture, while just three spoke against it – including Senator James Risch. The Idaho Republican opposed releasing the report or prosecuting the torturers, but indicated that he would block the CIA from conducting similar interrogations as a member of the Intelligence Committee.
Of the seven Democrats who made appearances, four spoke against torture, while three voiced no clear opinion.
The Senate report presented a golden opportunity for the media to scrutinize the CIA’s torture practices. Instead, major outlets let torture apologists to dominate the discussion. By refusing to hold them accountable, the media has left the door open for these atrocious abuses to happen again.
Aldo Guerrero is an intern at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR.org).
Janet Weil is a military family member since January 2003 and a CODEPINK staffer. She is planning to livetweet the 2015 Academy Awards, and she is annoyed that David Oyelowo did not receive an Oscar nomination for Best Performance by an Actor for his portrayal of Martin Luther King in Selma.
This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and OtherWords. Reprinted with permission from Foreign Policy In Focus.
Joe Hill
February 5th, 2015 at 7:46 am
An essay on torture? That's so last week. Besides, us 'mericans love to inflict pain, suffering, and death. That's how we know we're Number One. We're the most efficient killers and torturers on the planet. We been doin' it since us superior white folks got here from Europe. Why would we stop now?
Carnaptious
February 5th, 2015 at 8:48 am
The point is well made in this article. But I'd guess that a single episode of the TV series "24" reached a larger TV audience than all the Sunday talk shows put together. It was a very popular show, based upon one of the torture advocates favorite "what-if" scenarios: would you use torture to stop a bomb going off in less than 24 hours?. It "proved" torture was effective almost every week.
Kratoklastes
February 5th, 2015 at 1:44 pm
That's an empirical question (whether '24' out-rates the Sunday blather-fests, combined). Although it would have good explanatory power if it was true, it isn't.
The highest-rated episode of '24' was the finale of the latest series, with 9.4 million viewers (and an additional 1 million 'predicted' through non-linear media); the four top Sunday blatherfests combined get about 13 million viewers.
I have no idea about their timetabling (and I can't be bothered looking it up), but I would imagine that there would be significant overlap if some or all of these blatherfests are not 'head to head' in the schedule. There are actually people who think that it makes them 'sophisticated' if they watch vast amounts of mainstream TV political commentary: I have no idea how anybody without a serious brain injury could think that… but they do (then again I also have no idea why anyone would willingly say the Pledge of Allegiance or stand for the national anthem).
The point you're making though, is valid: every 'spy-or-kinda-spy drama' (24, Homeland, NCIS – even Law&Order) shows committed, ardent, earnest .gov myrmidons who are willing to 'cross the line' in order to get the job done… rough up the suspect to find out where the pretty girl is being held hostage. And once you get to more obviously 'unreal' shows (Supernatural and such like) it's even more obvious.
So TV viewers are AWASH in 'entertainment' that is loaded with rhetorical cues telling them that torture is OK, but moreto the point that it works (Sam and Dean torture the bad guy, and find the pretty victim alive and well; Jack Bauer tortures the bristly dark chappie, who fesses up enabling Jack to save the day).
What I'm sneaking up on here, is not that one show 'tips the balance'; after all, the weekend blatherfests seldom mention torture, while shows like 24, Supernatural, CSI, Dexter, NCIS, Law & Order, Homeland and so forth present 'rougher than usual handling' as a routine (if largely unsanctioned) practice. So the inculcation of a set of values that support torture is happening over a long span of time, rather than through one series.
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February 8th, 2015 at 10:59 am
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