LET US COMPARE MYTHOLOGIES

The Journal was the only one with the balls to lay out the most significant fact and what it means, so that the reader understands, in the very first sentence, the decision's importance without having to be a legal expert. Neither the Times nor the Post were as bold or clear.

This was the Journal lede:

The Bush administration failed to comply with a Supreme Court decision giving Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prisoners the right to challenge their detention, a federal judge in Washington ruled.

Notice that the regime's flouting of the court is the focus of sentence. Here's the Times lede:

A federal judge ruled against the Bush administration on Monday, declaring that detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were clearly entitled to have federal courts examine whether they have been lawfully detained.

Notice that the judge is the focus and the "prisoners" are mere "detainees." Then contrast the economy of words: the Journal's "right to challenge their detention" vs. the Times's "clearly entitled to have federal courts examine whether they have been lawfully detained."

Here's The Post lede:

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Bush administration must allow prisoners at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to contest their detention in U.S. courts, concluding that special military reviews established by the Pentagon as an alternative are illegal.

Again, the judge is the focus. The economy of words "to contest their detention" is similar to the Journal's, but there's an unnecessary phrase: "in U.S. courts." (Where else?) And then in the attempt to add more information, which is not a bad idea in itself, there's an error (only grammatical, admittedly, but committed so often that most wouldn't notice), i.e., the dangling clause (a k a the misplaced participle) of "concluding that special military reviews established by the Pentagon as an alternative are illegal." (I'm not going to explain why it's wrong. Go look it up.)

On to the Journal's second graf:

District Judge Joyce Hens Green ruled that the system of military hearings the Defense Department set up after the high court's ruling in June was unconstitutional because it denied prisoners access to evidence against them and to legal assistance in making their cases. If upheld on appeal, Judge Green's decision renders moot the hearings the Pentagon convened at the offshore prison after the high court's ruling. Of 330 cases whose results have been made public, all but three prisoners were found to be "enemy combatants."

That tells us a lot, and all in layman's language. And it gives specific information that 330 cases would be ruled unconstitutional. Here's the Times's second graf:

The judge, Joyce Hens Green of Federal District Court in Washington, rejected the argument that federal courts could not issue writs of habeas corpus for Guantánamo that would require the government to justify the detentions before a judge.

Boy! What a mess. It doesn't advance the narrative very much, does it? And it resorts to legal terminology, as it will throughout the rest of the story -- jargon, if you will -- as though written for lawyers instead of a general readership.

The Post does better than the Times. Avoiding jargon, the second graf speaks as clearly as the Journal and also gives specific information about those whom the ruling may effect.

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green said that the approximately 550 men held as "enemy combatants" are entitled to the advice of lawyers and to confront the evidence against them in those proceedings. But, she found, the Defense Department has largely denied them these "most basic fundamental rights" during the reviews conducted at Guantanamo Bay, in the name of protecting the United States from terrorism.

The Journal, however, went further and shows a better grasp of the subject by indicating the actual number of known hearings and, in only a few more words, gives the telling detail that "all but three prisoners were found to be 'enemy combatants'." Why telling? Because, without actually making the claim that the military hearings are kangaroo courts, it presents evidence that they are.

Then in its third graf, the Journal narrative expands by alerting the reader to the broader context of the judge's ruling in relation to key events, policies and players that have led up to it.

The 75-page opinion specifically rejects legal theories advanced by Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel whom President Bush nominated for attorney general. On Mr. Gonzales's advice, the president in 2002 issued a blanket ruling that no suspected Taliban or al Qaeda prisoners were protected by the Geneva Conventions, which normally require that captives receive prisoner-of-war status unless stripped of it by a "competent tribunal." POW status includes certain protections, such as freedom from coercive interrogations and access to delegations of the International Red Cross.

The Times, in its third graf, goes lame:

Judge Green said that although the Guantánamo base was in Cuba, the Supreme Court definitively ruled in June that it was not out of the reach of American law as administration officials have argued.

The Post simply changes direction without developing the thrust of the narrative it led off with:

Green's ruling directly conflicts with one issued by another federal court judge in Washington two weeks ago. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who heard the case of a smaller group of detainees, wrote that their bid for freedom is supported by "no viable legal theory." Green went beyond the question of whether detainees had rights and found the "combatant status review tribunals" illegal.

That's an option, of course, and the Post story elaborates on potential appeals and legal battles in its fourth graf. A 75-page judicial opinion (only the Journal tells us its size) leaves much to the reporter's judgment in terms of emphasis and priority of information, of course. But I think I can hear a Post news editor demanding that the reporter insert so-called balance before the reader gets the "wrong" idea that the story has just one side. Hell, we're not even into the fourth graf.

So again, the Journal is the only one to lay down a narrative that follows a clear line from the beginning. In its fourth graf, it drives home the point of the lede by quoting a dramatic passage directly from the written opinion, which addresses precisely why the judge ruled as she did.

"Nothing ... authorizes the president of the United States to rule by fiat that an entire group of fighters covered by the Third Geneva Convention falls outside the treaty's definitions of 'prisoners-of-war,'" Judge Green wrote. Another federal judge in Washington, James Robertson, reached a similar conclusion in November, when he struck down a system of military commissions [hearings] the administration established to prosecute a subset of Guantanamo prisoners for war crimes. The government has appealed that decision.

I could go on, but I won't. The ultimate point is that both the Times and Post reports read, under close examination, as unintended apologies for the administration through dullness, jargon and the obfuscation of a wobbly narrative in the service of so-called balance, while the Journal gives the facts in plain, strong terms, makes no apologies and does not ignore the required balance of reporting Leon's contrary ruling, which is placed lower down in the story, where I'd say it belongs. (After all, his ruling is in the minority, and it may be more significant that two other federal judges specifically rejected Gonzales's theory about the Geneva Conventions, a point worth making while he's in the news.)

Judge for yourselves. Here's the Times's story and here's the Post's. Unfortunately, I can't link to the Journal's. But believe me, it's sharper and tighter -- 540 or so words vs. the Times's 967 and the Post's 936 -- as well as more enlightening.