NPR News and the Dreaded T-Word

If you missed it, I highly encourage you to listen to some of the better radio to happen in the last week.

The program was On The Media. On that program, host Bob Garfield took NPR Ombud Alicia Shepard to task over the radio network’s avoidance of the word “torture” in news coverage referencing treatment of terrorism suspects, and her defense of same.

“Took to task” may be a bit polite. Garfield should be applauded for confronting Shepard and not letting her off the hook for answers that were at least mildly disingenuous at several turns.

The interview could be distilled to several points:

• The Ombud is supposed to be the net’s link to listeners, not management’s mouthpiece, Garfield says, but sympathies for management seem clear. (Shepard’s reply, after a pregnant pause? “Sympathetic with good, solid journalism.”)

Not entirely convincing, especially after later saying she personally thought waterboarding was torture.

• The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, the Red Cross, international conventions against torture and many other authorities are clear on tactics like waterboarding being torture; and in fact the only ones who feel waterboarding as torture is a debate are its advocates from the Bush Administration. Garfield asks, “How does that constitute a debate?” Shepard says, “There are two sides to an issue.”

Yes, she really said that. Be happy NPR doesn’t apply this same standard to September 11 conspiracy theories, Holocaust denial, Obama Birthers and a host of other topics. Since, y’know, there are two sides to an issue.

• Garfield fires back that embracing a euphemism like enhanced interrogation instead of calling it what it is, torture, validates a political position. Shepard agrees.

Zing. Listening to the tape, Shepard sounds like she agrees because Garfield’s pointed retort surprised her and she is s scrambling for an answer, only to step into –

• “NPR doesn’t call murder ‘enhanced argumentation techniques,’” Garfield notes, so why take a position on the word torture? “Because it’s a hotly debated topic,” Shepard says, with only a touch of irony, then says NPR gets emails asking why NPR doesn’t call abortion doctors terrorists.

Huh?

Elsewhere in the interview, Shepard makes a few curious assertions, including claiming describing techniques essentially beats calling them torture. Of course, she fails to remind Garfield — and he misses calling her on it — that NPR won’t make such a blow-by-blow description a part of its shorthand reference now occupied by “enhanced interrogation tactics” in stories.

In addition to waterboarding, a  few techniques alleged to have been exercised include:

• Sexual humiliation and assault
• Sensory deprivation
• Painful so-called stress positions
• Forced nakedness
• Hypothermia induced by extreme cold

If Shepard says NPR plans to describe every technique in a story, as she implies, she does not say.

I wrote on my KPFT blog about the NPR E-Verify underwriting controversy during which Shepard defended NPR last year. I can’t say I especially admired her job then. Hearing her dazed lilt at the end of this interview  made me admire the job even less.

I recognize Shepard has a tough role. Personally, I’m not sure how I’d sleep for using journalism as a cover for being on the wrong side of history. Defending potentially inappropriate underwriting is one thing. Obfuscation related to despicable methods for extracting information from prisoners is quite another.

Hear the stream here.

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