The American perspective:
For me it's not really about who's torture is worse or even more explainable. Torture, despite Alan Dershowitz's arguments, is torture and should be condemned -no matter what the justification. The argument is really about American media coverage of atrocities. Which torture, ours or theirs, is more news-worthy?
Is what the Times covered yesterday more important than what's happening to other hostages and other prisoners only because Americans are the perpetrators? Granted, the Times is an American paper and this is an American story. But that raises the question of what it means to be an American paper covering the world in a time of war.
Al Jazeera, who routinely report and display hostages and beheadings for their propaganda value seem to get all this. Despite their history of airing beheading videos, they refused to show photos of Saddam in his underwear, according to the Globe, for "professional and moral reasons."
I don't think the Times should have sat on the torture story (although I do think Newsweek didn't have enough of a story to run with) but it's also important that we don't fall into the trap of seeing atrocities committed by others as 'dog bites man' and those committed by us 'man bites dog.'
Comments
Once again, John, that's spot-on.
For my part, I think we should ban Al-Jazeera from the U.S. I recognize that it's nearly impossible to stop the signal (though we could probably take out a satellite or two), but there's no reason we should allow them press access to U.S. events, or even allow them to rent property here. They function as a propaganda tool of our enemies, as you know well.
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