Torturadores justificando tortura ganham 50% do espaço na TV.
TV foca atenção nos pretextos, ao invés de condenar tortura.
The December 9 release of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture prompted substantial media coverage. But the network newscasts seemed to be guided by the need to apply something like an "equal time" rule for the torturers. On NBC Nightly News (12/9/14), though correspondent Andrea Mitchell misleadingly referred to "the harsh interrogations now seen as torture"--they were, of course, torture before yesterday--their lead segment adequately summarized the Senate findings.
But then NBC aired a long interview--nearly as long as the report on the Senate's findings--with former CIA (and NSA) director Michael Hayden, who even disputes that the tactics in the report were torture. Anchor Brian Williams told viewers that Hayden was "accused in today's report of providing misleading information in the past." That's a mild characterization; in fact, as the Washington Post (12/9/14) showed, Hayden's 2007 Senate testimony about CIA torture was revealed to be full of distortions and evasions--from the number of prisoners held by the CIA to his claims that "punches and kicks...have never been employed" and that the "most serious injury" was bruising. The exposure of Hayden's dishonesty seemed to play no role in NBC's questioning of him, in which he was given ample time to argue that most countries treat their prisoners worse than the CIA does.
After their opening segment describing the Senate findings, CBS Evening News presented a CIA rebuttal report from correspondent Bob Orr, which was a completely uncritical summary of the Agency's dubious claims. Orr goes through the cases where the CIA says torture "worked." He doesn't challenge the Agency's claims, which is an especially strange approach given the Senate report's documentation of how the CIA misled politicians and journalists about its torture program. But CBS wasn't done. The newscast also aired an interview with Michael Morell, a former CIA deputy director and current CBS News contributor. Pelley made clear that their analyst was "speaking in defense of the CIA." Morrell called the Senate report "deeply flawed." Instead of posing tough questions, Pelley asked him questions like this: "How are CIA officers reacting to this today?" Did we say "equal time"? Between the CIA rebuttal segment and the Morell interview, CBS Evening News devoted about 50 percent more time to excuses for torture than it did to the torture report itself.
