Media Nation » Guardian

Ron Paul’s racist ties get another airing

Dan Kennedy — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:00:07 +0000

It’s good to see that Ron Paul’s dalliance with racists and anti-Semites is getting another airing. The Weekly Standard is recycling James Kirchick’s splendid New Republic article of four years ago, in which we learned that newsletters with names like Ron Paul’s Freedom Report and the Ron Paul Political Report were filled with gems such as a reference to Martin Luther King Day as “Hate Whitey Day.”

Paul, naturally, claimed to know nothing.

The New York Times gives the charges an airing today. For what it’s worth, here’s what I wrote for the Guardian in early 2008.

Intellectual property department, simian division

Dan Kennedy — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 18:12:09 +0000

Today’s Boston Globe has a brief item on a group of Indonesian monkeys who grabbed wildlife photographer David Slater’s camera and started taking pictures of themselves. The print edition includes a wonderful self-portrait. Unfortunately, the online version is text-only. What struck my funnybone, though, was the photo credit: “David J. Slater.” Well, uh, not exactly.

I see that the Guardian carried the same story last Monday, and made the same questionable decision. The full caption reads: “A monkey takes an image of photographer David Slater. Photograph: David J Slater/Caters News Agency.” I guess intellectual-property disputes are cast in a different light when the photographer can’t speak up for himself.

The Globe item cites the Daily Mail, whose very first picture is the self-portrait I refer to above. The Mail shows better sense than the Globe or the Guardian, crediting Caters News Agency but not Slater himself.

The Times’ tortured relationship with the “T”-word

Dan Kennedy — Wed, 04 May 2011 13:30:00 +0000

The New York Times’ tortured relationship with the “T”-word takes an interesting turn today. The paper’s print and online editions diverge, and the Times manages to report on a debate over torture without quite acknowledging that the Bush administration, uh, tortured terrorism suspects.

The Times online

First, the headline. On the front page of the print edition you’ll find this: “Harsh Methods of Questioning Debated Again.” Online, though, is the considerably more frank “Bin Laden Raid Revives Debate on Value of Torture.” Below the headline is a story summary that says, “The raid that led to Bin Laden’s death has raised anew the issue of using torture to gain intelligence.”

On the face of it, that seems like a straightforward acknowledgement that some suspects were tortured, which would be something of a landmark for the Times. Two years ago, then-public editor Clark Hoyt wrote that Times editors had decided not to describe waterboarding and other brutal interrogation tactics as “torture,” although it would quote critics as saying so. Indeed, Hoyt added, the Times had come under some criticism even for adopting the word “brutal” to describe those methods.

The Times in print

When you read today’s story, by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage, you learn that the “T”-word rule is still in effect. Here’s how it begins:

Did brutal interrogations produce the crucial intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden?

As intelligence officials disclosed the trail of evidence that led to the compound in Pakistan where Bin Laden was hiding, a chorus of Bush administration officials claimed vindication for their policy of “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding.

The “T”-word appears repeatedly in the story, but not as a description of what actually took place. Rather, it is in the context of “a national debate about torture,” Barack Obama’s past statements that waterboarding and other harsh methods were “torture,” efforts to avoid “a partisan battle over torture” and the like.

Among those quoted as claiming torture (OK, enhanced interrogation techniques) worked are Bush-era torture apologist John Yoo and U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., last seen subjecting Muslim-Americans to psychological torture at his Star Chamber hearings on Capitol Hill.

Now, let’s be clear. There is no evidence that waterboarding and other forms of torture had anything to do with producing the intelligence needed to track down Osama bin Laden. Indeed, it’s been reported that the worst of the Guantánamo terrorists, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, tried to divert interrogators away from bin Laden’s courier despite having been tortured repeatedly. In a withering takedown of the pro-torture argument, CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen writes at the Atlantic:

It is entirely possible that some valuable intelligence information about bin Laden’s couriers was gleaned from long-ago waterboarding. And it is possible that some of this information was part of what Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday called a “mosaic” of information that led to bin Laden’s demise. But it is beyond doubt that the United States was able to track and then kill its arch enemy in Abbottabad based upon regular old gumshoe detective work, both traditional and innovative, that occurred years and years after the detainees in question were reportedly tortured. How exactly does that suffice to restore credibility to the pro-torture argument?

And just in case you’re not convinced that waterboarding is torture, consider the historical evidence, which I laid out in a piece for the Guardian last year. The Times frankly referred to waterboarding as torture in 1945 in reporting on its use against American prisoners of war who were held by the Japanese. No less an authority than U.S. Sen. John McCain has noted that some Japanese officers were executed for waterboarding prisoners. And Harvard’s Shorenstein Center last year produced a study showing that waterboarding was routinely described as torture until the Bush White House started using it against terrorism suspects.

The Times, as our leading news organization, has harmed the public discourse by refusing to call torture by its proper name. Today’s story is just another example of how it has tied itself into knots in its ongoing attempt to avoid saying the obvious.

More: This commentary has now been posted at the Guardian.

Turmoil at NPR finally reaches the top (II)

Dan Kennedy — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 23:40:23 +0000

I’ve expanded on my earlier thoughts regarding Vivian Schiller’s forced resignation from NPR in a piece for the Guardian.

Obama’s solid State of the Union address

Dan Kennedy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 11:35:29 +0000

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that President Obama’s State of the Union address was aimed at the public rather than the pundits — and that early returns suggest that he succeeded by emphasizing what keeps middle-class families awake at night.

WikiLeaks and the First Amendment

Dan Kennedy — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:10:57 +0000

President Obama’s emerging strategy to prosecute WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, over the leaked State Department cables amounts to a potentially dangerous assault on freedom of the press. Or so I argue in the Guardian.

Keeping the “public” in public radio

Dan Kennedy — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 18:49:17 +0000

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that NPR and public radio stations shouldn’t walk away from government funding, even if they don’t need it. For one thing, it would hand the right a victory in the culture wars. For another, it would set a dangerous precedent for public television, which is far more dependent on public money.

What Obama can learn from Patrick’s win

Dan Kennedy — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 10:54:35 +0000

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at what lessons President Obama can draw from Gov. Deval Patrick’s unlikely political comeback.

My iPad lust runneth over

Dan Kennedy — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 20:17:53 +0000

In my latest for the Guardian, I finally admit that I get a thrill up my leg every time I visit the Apple store and hold an iPad.

A fishy tale about science and political muscle

Dan Kennedy — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:08:44 +0000

In my latest for the Guardian, I argue that the FDA’s decision to give preliminary approval to genetically modified salmon is potentially dangerous — not just to human health, but to the very idea of what is food.