[lbo-talk] "torture" vs. "abuse"

[Doug Henwood]

[I recently emailed NYT ombudsman/public editor Daniel Okrent to ask 
why the paper described U.S. treatment of prisoners in Iraq as 
"abuse" rather than "torture." Evidently I wasn't the only one. 
Here's his response.]

<http://forums.nytimes.com/top/opinion/readersopinions/forums/thepubliceditor/danielokrent/index.html?offset=31>

dokrent - 3:09 PM ET June 1, 2004 (#30 of 30)
'Torture' vs. 'Abuse' In The Times's Coverage of Iraq Prisons

As aggressive as Times reporting can sometimes be, it doesn't always 
find a parallel in the paper's use of language. The Iraq prison story 
is an excellent example, as many readers have noted: articles over 
the last few weeks have established the extent of the scandal, and 
have included many pieces of first-person testimony from former 
prisoners. But the language used in news articles to characterize 
what went on at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere remains, at least in 
headlines, comparatively delicate.

The specific issue is the use of "abuse" rather than "torture" to 
describe certain actions of American military personnel, intelligence 
officers, and private subcontractors. I asked assistant managing 
editors Craig Whitney and Allan M. Siegal for comment as they are, 
respectively, in charge of the news desk (where front page headlines 
get written) and all matters of language and style. Both were 
surprised when I raised the issue; both noted some substantive 
definitional distinctions between "abuse" and "torture"; both 
asserted that there is no Times policy one way or another; and both 
acknowledged that readers may be right.

Wrote Whitney in an e-mail message, "Now that you tell me people are 
reading things into our not using 'torture' in headlines, I'll pay 
closer attention."

Personally, I was torn - until a conversation I had last week with a 
reader from Germany. Absent any clear definition, I felt, it seemed 
reasonable to use "abuse" if it helped keep temperatures down, much 
as the use of "militant" instead of "terrorist" in the 
Palestine-Israel conflict suggests a sometimes misplaced wish neither 
to take sides nor to be inflammatory (many supporters of Israel feel 
very differently about this, and I expect to address the specific 
issue in a future column).

But just as a terrorist is sometimes, in fact, a terrorist, torture 
is inescapably torture. The reader who moved me out of the muddled 
center on this did it with a simple question: "If the same things 
[that happened at Abu Ghraib] had been done to American prisoners by 
Iraqi authorities, would The Times have hesitated to use 'torture' 
over and over again?"

Over the past five years, the paper has used the word to describe the 
actions of authorities in Iraq, China, Mexico, Turkey, Chad and 
elsewhere, including a precinct house in Brooklyn, in the Abner 
Louima case. In each case, I believe, there was a sense that the 
torturers were characterized, in part, by their otherness - other 
nationalities, other political systems, or in the Louima instance 
other, depraved moral codes.

In Iraq, the perpetrators of the prison horrors were our 
representatives - ordinary Americans whose behavior may have been 
altered by circumstances, but who in their origins and histories are 
as familiar to us as our neighbors and co-workers.

Siegal, who notes that The Times has no policy on the use of 
"torture," cautioned me in an e-mail that his sense of the word (and 
of "abuse") was "impressionistic rather than researched," but I buy 
what he ended up with: "torture occurs when a prisoner is physically 
or psychologically maltreated during the process of interrogation, or 
as punishment for some activity or political position. Abuse occurs 
when the prisoner's jailers maltreat her or him separately from the 
interrogation process."

Siegal also acknowledges that there's a continuum that has to be 
measured. If, for instance, a man is kept hooded for an hour, is that 
in itself torture? What about five hours? What about 24? If the 
headline language has in fact been delicate, maybe that's because the 
distinctions are delicate. But as good reporting brings us greater 
knowledge of what has gone in prisons and detention centers in Iraq 
and Afghanistan, the distinctions become firm enough to be 
indisputable.

Note the description the paper used on Monday, May 31, in a chart 
explaining the deaths of various detainees in Iraq prisons: "Cause of 
death was a blow to the head and 'compromised respiration.' Died 
during an interrogation process by Navy Seals and C.I.A. employees."

If that's not torture, then The Times might just as well call it a game of tag.