Let’s see how many euphemisms for torture we can come up with
Today Torture President signed the bill legalizing torture (including rape) and rescinding habeas corpus.
Do you suppose this is being reported accurately in the national news? If you do, then is there room under that rock for me too? Here are the headline phrases used to describe this bill, piping hot and fresh from my Google news feed:
“Bill Setting Rules for Questioning Detainees” – New York Times
“Military Commissions Bill” — UPI
“Law on Terror Suspects” — ABC News
“Terror Detainee Bill” — CBS News
“Bill to Interrogate and Prosecute Suspected Terrorists” — USA Today
“Military Tribunal Law” — Wall Street Journal
“Law Creating Tribunals for Terror Suspects” — Bloomberg
“Law on Detainee Questioning” — Voice of America
No torture here, nope, none at all. No rapes. Nobody’s rights being denied. No revocation of that funny “haybee” thing that’s supposed to be important for some reason. Nope. The government just wants to detain some terrorists and ask ‘em a few questions, all nice and legal like. What’s wrong with that?
6 Responses to “Let’s see how many euphemisms for torture we can come up with”
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Timothy Shortell says:
This is evidence of the effectiveness of the decades of right-wing attacks on the media — the endless bleating about “liberal bias.” Mainstream media organizations have internalized the impulse to talk around the facts and ignore history.
Perhaps the best aspect of the blogosphere is restorative in this regard. The public sphere is healthy only because of the ability of private citizens to engage in real debate about public policy by way of these internet tubes.
For the majority, though, this political control of language in the mainstream media will undoubtedly have an effect. Both the MSM and the administration have a vested interest in keeping the fear level high.
October 17th, 2006 at 5:34 pm EST -
Violet says:
This kind of reporting is exactly why the average non-blog reading citizen has no idea what’s going on.
Some of this stuff is so egregiously disingenuous that I have to wonder if we’re really dealing with just internalized impulses. In addition to the examples in the post, I’ve now seen “anti-terror bill” and “terrorism bill” in the headlines.
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Pony says:
I counted numerous “harsh”, three “controversial”, one “memorial to 9/11″, one “vital tool”, four “prosecute”, five “victory” one “detainee rules” and two “quiz”.
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Timothy Shortell says:
I don’t think that journalists buy into the euphemisms but MSM organizations have internalized deference towards the official story. By letting the administration frame the issue, they avoid charges of bias. A truly independent press would be more concerned with stating the facts plainly than making nice with the administration.
This is also the purpose of the right-wing attacks on the academy. The right will never convince many scholars to buy into the Orwellian game, but they have been successful in scaring institutions into withdrawing from the public sphere, all in the name of “balance” and “fairness.”
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Infidel says:
“Detainee Interrogation Bill”
“Detainee Rights Bill”
“Terror Trial Bill”What gets me is “Detainee” as if you will be detained for a bit while we check your papers. How long are they usually detained? We’re going to have to detain you for a few years, I hope this won’t inconvenience you in any way.
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Txfeminist says:
I’ll buy a word for five thousand:
How about “dictatorship”?
