Archive for June, 2010

Your terrorist is my freedom fighter. Your patriot is my traitor. Your enhanced interrogation is my torture. That’s because we as individuals see stuff from different perspectives, via different frames. Why? As Francis Bacon pointed out centuries ago in the Novum Organum, it’s partly nature and partly nurture.

That’s us as individuals, and (provided we’re civil, rational, reliably informed, etc.) that’s OK. By confronting one another we can grow in understanding and strength. [Think of this intellectual/emotional process as like its physical analogue: strength training. No resistance? No growth.]

But when the nation’s most widely circulated newspapers deliberately, consciously, by editorial/managerial fiat switch from one frame or terminology to its opposite? That’s a betrayal of public trust and of the role of journalism to serve as a “fourth estate.” When they deliberately present one side via a positive frame, perspective, terminology … and the other side via a different, negative frame, perspective, terminology? And when they swing like weathervanes in their presentation? That’s beyond betrayal. That merits a place in the 9th circle of Dante’s Inferno.

My intro wasn’t just idle ruminating. It was inspired by documented reality. A team at Harvard University researched the way U.S. newspapers with the widest circulation identified waterboarding, literally or by strong implication. Here’s the abstract of their study:

The current debate over waterboarding has spawned hundreds of newspaper articles in the last two years alone. However, waterboarding has been the subject of press attention for over a century. 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. In addition, the newspapers are much more likely to call waterboarding torture if a country other than the United States is the perpetrator. In The New York Times, 85.8% of articles (28 of 33) that dealt with a country other than the United States using waterboarding called it torture or implied it was torture while only 7.69% (16 of 208) did so when the United States was responsible. The Los Angeles Times characterized the practice as torture in 91.3% of articles (21 of 23) when another country was the violator, but in only 11.4% of articles (9 of 79) when the United States was the perpetrator.