General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfter Cheney, Who is next? Charles Manson?
Why are torturers being given balance in the press?
By David Atkins
Why? Who's next? Charles Manson?
This stuff is obvious. And yet the TV shows and newspaper stories are full of balance given to the pro-torture side. Why? Despite objections to the contrary, journalists do not always give balance to both sides of an argument if the other side is deemed irrelevant or depraved. Whenever the deficit bugbear rolls to the forefront, almost no balance is given to the Keynesian point of view despite their predictions being consistently correct: the idea that one neednt actually cut the deficit during a recession is treated as so outre as to require no journalistic attention.
More pointedly, when journalists write about torture and depredations of current or former regimes, journalists dont feel the need to get the torturers side of the story. No one is rushing to ask Assads torturers in Syria if their tactics are necessary to keep terrorists in check. No one is asking North Korean guards if their treatment of their people is OK because some other country is worse. No one rushes to counterbalance the accounts of Holocaust victims with the justifications of Nazi guards. It simply isnt done, any more than we balance stories of child sexual abuse with a hot-take counterpoint from a member of NAMBLA. The reason we dont provide balance in these cases is that to do so would be to normalize those behaviors as part of legitimate discourse.
So why in the world are the torturers who subjected innocent people to anal feedings and dungeon ceiling hangings given the courtesy of balance in the press? Where is the line that separates issues that require balance from those that do not?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2014_12/why_are_torturers_being_provid053308.php
marym625
(17,997 posts)Especially with the current, obvious, destruction of property by KKK types in protest areas. Made me think about the Manson "logic"
The two things, the racist, brutilizing, killer cops and the torture by the US government are just two sides of the same coin
spanone
(135,831 posts)defending torture.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)malthaussen
(17,195 posts)Well, if somebody can "love" Manson, it's not so big a leap to think that Cheney has supporters. Doubt they'd marry him, though. Mrs Cheney might object.
-- Mal
Erose999
(5,624 posts)citizens held hostage abroad. They have no skin in that game. Americans abroad are just pawns to them.
Martin Eden
(12,867 posts)Providing "balance" by soliciting the opinion of Dick Cheney is like inviting members of the Flat Earth Society to speak at a convention of geologists.
tclambert
(11,085 posts)Journalists used to take the extra effort to determine if someone lied. Now they defend their craftsmanship by verifying that the person more or less said what they quoted them saying, and ignoring the truthfulness of the content of the statement.
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)They are stenographers and enablers of the propagandists, nothing more.
I think DicKKK would even scare Mister Charlie.
olegramps
(8,200 posts)They very same people who are shocked and sicken by the torture of American hostages in far too many cases are willing to not only approve of what Cheney and his henchmen did by praise it as an American value to be applauded. Even when it was obviously innocent victims and no intelligence of value they tortured them to make sure they could confirm their findings. These were some sick bastards.