NPR Offers Program “Is Waterboarding Torture?”

Lord, save us from the idiots that are still unsure about this. I have an idea: how about any person that hasn’t yet figured this out line up to experience it? I’m pretty sure once you’ve got up close and personal with a near-drowning, it won’t be too hard to come down one way or the other on the issue.

MediaBloodhound:

A recent segment on WNYC, New York’s flagship National Public Radio (NPR) station, underscored not only the level to which public broadcasting standards have degraded during the Bush years, increasingly adopting the same intellectually dishonest frames and “fair and balanced” debate as those aired on commercial media networks, but also how, simultaneously, public broadcasting deceptively benefits from, and is protected by, its vaunted and entrenched reputation for providing quality information.

WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show hosted the segment “Is Waterboarding Torture?” preceding Judge Michael Mukasey’s controversial confirmation for U.S. Attorney General. On its face, of course, this frame is straight out of the worst of network news and commercial talk radio.

“Lots of questions abound. Just what is waterboarding? Does it work? Is it torture? And waterboarding figures heavily in today’s news….Do you agree that there are degrees of waterboarding? And so, you know, again in Mukasey’s defense, he may not know to what degree this technique is actually used, how close to drowning somebody in the drowning experience, in actually filling their lungs with water, as our previous guest was describing, they actually go. Which also makes it difficult for him to take a position on whether the administration is using a torture technique.” — host Brian Lehrer

You know, I expect this kind of stuff from the Fox Networks, but man, how can you not grieve for NPR?