The New York Times has been schizophrenic on torture, and waterboarding in particular, with the Editorial Page justly calling it torture, but the news editors caving to Bush administration Newspeak, like "enhanced interrogation techniques" ("EITs").
Today, Arthur Brisbane, the Times Public Editor, takes a step in the right direction.
Brisbane notes that the paper's Editorial Board has no qualms about calling "EIT's" what they are: torture. For example, on May 4, 2011, the Editors wrote:
There are many arguments against torture. It is immoral and illegal and counterproductive. The Bush administration’s abuses — and ends justify the means arguments — did huge damage to this country’s standing and gave its enemies succor and comfort.
Executive Editor Bill Keller, however, requires reporters to write things like this:
As the hunt for Bin Laden continued, the spy agency was being buffeted on other fronts: the botched intelligence assessments about weapons of mass destruction leading up to the Iraq War, and the intense criticism for using waterboarding and other extreme interrogation methods that critics said amounted to torture.
That's because (as Brisbane notes), Keller states that the Times "is careful how we use" the word "torture" and should "avoid its use in contexts where it might appear The Times is taking sides."
I can barely express how much that sentence offends me. It means that a President can declare a controversy about anything, and the newspaper of record must equate both sides and forbear from using words always used until the "controversy" was declared.
Thus, in 2017, after President. Huckabee is sworn in, we will have Times articles about the correct origins of the species, or as some critics have called it "evolution." Or when President Rand Paul takes over, Times articles about separation of black and white, or as some critics have called it "racism."
Thus, Brisbane writes, "Times policy on this appears to be in a state of equipoise — holding steady right in the middle." That is archtypical "both sides" phony equivalency.
To his great credit, Brisbane rejects this (in somewhat softened language perhaps necessary to keep his job):
Is there a path out of this wilderness? I believe so. The Times should use the term “torture” more directly, using it on first reference when the discussion is about — and there’s no other word for it — torture. The debate was never whether Bin Laden was found because of brutal interrogations: it was whether he was found because of torture. More narrowly, the word is appropriate when describing techniques traditionally considered torture, waterboarding being the obvious example. Reasonable fairness can be achieved by adding caveats that acknowledge the Bush camp’s view of its narrow legal definition. This approach avoids the appearance of mincing words and is well grounded in Americans’ understanding of torture in the historical and moral sense.
I hope Keller listens to Brisbane's advice.
(Emphasis supplied in above quotes.)