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Still wrong
NPR's Ombudsman, Alicia C. Shepard, responds to critics (including myself) about not calling American torture "torture," but instead "harsh" or "enhanced" interrogation techniques:
I can't wait until "responsible people" - of power - decide to say that the earth is flat, or the sun rises in the west, or up is down, or what the fuck ever. I can't wait for NPR's reporting on that one. Fact-based reporting isn't, apparently, for "reasonable people," as she describes herself and her colleagues - it's for suckers. So fuck you, NPR. My original letter stands: until you return to reporting reality rather than apologising for torturers, the donation window is closed.
But no matter how many distinguished groups -- the International Red Cross, the U.N. High Commissioners -- say waterboarding is torture, there are responsible people who say it is not. Former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, their staff and their supporters...The entire argument can be summed up as "because powerful people say it's not torture, we won't call it torture, no matter what else." The American government therefore owes an absolute assload of apologies to Nazis and other war criminals it prosecuted under whoops-I-guess-it's-not-torture-after-all laws against torture.
I can't wait until "responsible people" - of power - decide to say that the earth is flat, or the sun rises in the west, or up is down, or what the fuck ever. I can't wait for NPR's reporting on that one. Fact-based reporting isn't, apparently, for "reasonable people," as she describes herself and her colleagues - it's for suckers. So fuck you, NPR. My original letter stands: until you return to reporting reality rather than apologising for torturers, the donation window is closed.