NPR ombudsman Shepard responds

NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard has responded to my item of last week in which I criticized her for defending NPR's policy of refusing to refer to waterboarding as "torture." She writes:

Yes, President Obama and AG Eric Holder have said that waterboarding was torture. I'd personally call it torture. But if you were an editor at the Globe, would you say that someone tortured another person? Or would you want to use a direct or indirect quote, i.e., "John Smith said the guard tortured him"?

I'm not trying to say what is and is not torture, but is every abuse classified as torture now or are there degrees? When a police officer throws a suspect to the ground and handcuffs them, is that torture or simply abuse?

Would it be better to, say, describe the technique and then say some call it torture? I do not think enhanced interrogation techniques is acceptable either. That's why I come down on describing the technique and adding that some call it torture.

Shepard asks, so I'll attempt a few answers.

I'm not sure what Shepard thinks there is to gain by skiing down the slippery slope from waterboarding to getting rough with a suspect during an arrest. In my original item, I strictly limited my remarks to waterboarding, recognized as torture by just about everyone on the planet.

The opinions of Obama and Holder are entirely unnecessary to determining whether waterboarding is torture.

As John McCain and others have pointed out, the United States executed several Japanese military officers for waterboarding American prisoners of war after World War II. And as I wrote last week, if NPR really can't bring itself to use the T-word, perhaps it can describe waterboarding as "an interrogation technique once considered so heinous by the United States that it hanged Japanese officers for doing it to Americans."

So yes, if I were an editor at the Boston Globe, you're damn right I would refer to waterboarding as torture. That seems about as solid as referring to oil as a fossil fuel, or baseball as a sport. By eschewing the term "torture" to describe a practice that the entire international community regards as such, NPR is not being neutral. Rather, it is embracing a euphemism that places the network squarely on the side of the torturers and their enablers.

NPR should not use enhanced interrogation techniques on the English language.

Thursday update: I was not as precise as I wanted to be when I wrote about "everyone on the planet," as I was in a rush and had lousy Internet access. Last week, Bob Garfield of "On the Media" interviewed Shepard and made the point I was trying to make:

The U.N.'s High Commissioner for Human Rights says that waterboarding is torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross have called what the U.S. did "torture." Waterboarding is unambiguously in violation of the International Convention on Torture, which has been ratified by 140-some countries.

The United States is among those 140 countries, but, as the Associated Press reported in 2002, the Bush administration sought to block enforcement of the measure when inspectors wanted to visit Guantánamo.

Torture is not only a moral problem, but it has a precise legal meaning that most definitely encompasses waterboarding.

Calling torture torture

Alicia Shepard is as sharp a media observer as they come. A longtime writer for the American Journalism Review and the author of "Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate," she is a serious and respected voice.

That said, I'm scratching my head over how wrong Shepard gets it on NPR's refusal to use the term "torture" to describe the "enhanced interrogation techniques" practiced during the Bush years. Shepard, now NPR's ombudsman, writes:

I recognize that it's frustrating for some listeners to have NPR not use the word torture to describe certain practices that seem barbaric. But the role of a news organization is not to choose sides in this or any debate. People have different definitions of torture and different feelings about what constitutes torture. NPR's job is to give listeners all perspectives, and present the news as detailed as possible and put it in context.

Let's forget "certain practices" and focus on just one: waterboarding, long recognized as torture. In November 2007, Sen. John McCain pointed out that the United States executed Japanese officers after World War II for waterboarding American prisoners of war.

And when McCain was challenged, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Web site PolitiFact.com investigated McCain's assertion. Its conclusion: McCain was right — a number of Japanese officers were hanged, and others were sentenced to long prison terms, because they had engaged in waterboarding.

Shepard writes that rather than describing waterboarding as torture, it makes more sense just to say what happened: "To me, it makes more sense to describe the techniques and skip the characterization.... A basic rule of vivid writing is: 'Show, Don't Tell.'"

All right. Perhaps NPR can eschew the T-word and instead describe waterboarding as "an interrogation technique once considered so heinous by the United States that it hanged Japanese officers for doing it to Americans."

Cutbacks come to NPR

Like a number of media observers, I'm bullish about National Public Radio because (a) its distribution model — reaching people who are stuck in their cars — still works and (b) its nonprofit funding system removes many of the pressures facing for-profit media corporations.

Note that these are organic advantages, having nothing to do with the excellence of its content. Although it's pretty damn good.

But even non-profits need to make money. So it was inevitable that NPR would suffer cutbacks due to the economic downturn. According to Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, "Day to Day" has been axed, as has "News & Notes," a program I'm not familiar with that was aimed at African-American audiences. A number of journalists have been laid off as well.

Much as I don't like to see people lose their jobs, it strikes me that there may have been a little bit of mission creep — or mission bloat — going on here. By far the majority of NPR listeners tune in during drive time, which makes "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered" among the most-listened-to radio programs in the country.

As long as those franchises are safe, I'm not too concerned.

Locally, it's end-of-the-year fundraising time at WBUR (90.9 FM), as I'm sure you've noticed. Let's hope enough money rolls in so that its own franchise shows, "On Point," "Here and Now" and "Radio Boston," are able to thrive.

Listening in on two war stories

I want to call your attention to two astonishingly good stories I heard on WBUR (90.9 FM) this morning.

The first, from NPR, is about a former marine who married a young Iraqi woman and brought her back home to the Ozarks. It's a love story, but damned complicated, and no one's living happily ever after. Listen to it or read it — and click on the photo (or here) for an audio slideshow. The reporter is Ivan Watson and photographer is Paxton Winters.

The second, a local story, is tangentially related — a piece by Monica Brady-Meyerov on Stephen Fortunato, a young Beverly man who was killed in Afghanistan on Monday while
serving in the Army. The audio's not online yet, but you'll find it here later today.

Fortunato's death is receiving respectful and comprehensive coverage elsewhere. Paul Leighton has an outstanding story in the Salem News. In the Boston Globe, John Ellement does a nice job and includes a video. The Boston Herald has fine coverage from Laurel Sweet and Mark Garfinkel. I could go on.

But Brady-Meyerov paints a sound portrait of Fortunato's family that is worth hearing as a model for radio journalism.