{"id":1023,"date":"2005-02-03T12:03:52","date_gmt":"2005-02-03T20:03:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2005\/02\/let_us_compare_mythologies\/"},"modified":"2005-02-03T12:03:52","modified_gmt":"2005-02-03T20:03:52","slug":"let_us_compare_mythologies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2005\/02\/let_us_compare_mythologies.html","title":{"rendered":"LET US COMPARE MYTHOLOGIES"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t even want to think about the state of our banana
\nnation<\/B><\/STRONG><\/FONT><\/A>, so with apologies to Leonard Cohen for borrowing the
\ntitle of his first book of poetry, here’s a comparison of three news stories that appeared earlier this
\nweek in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post about a U.S.
\njudicial decision that went against the U.S. government.
\n

<\/P>
\n

The Journal was the only one with the balls to lay out the most significant fact and what it
\nmeans, so that the reader understands, in the very first sentence, the decision’s importance without
\nhaving to be a legal expert. Neither the Times nor the Post were as bold or clear.<\/P>
\n

This was the Journal lede:<\/P>
\n


\n

The Bush administration failed to comply with a Supreme Court decision
\ngiving Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prisoners the right to challenge their detention, a federal judge in
\nWashington ruled.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

Notice that the regime’s flouting of the court is the focus of sentence. Here’s the Times
\nlede:<\/P>
\n


\n

A federal judge ruled against the Bush administration on Monday, declaring
\nthat detainees at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Cuba, were clearly entitled to have federal courts examine
\nwhether they have been lawfully detained.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

Notice that the judge is the focus and the “prisoners” are mere “detainees.” Then contrast the
\neconomy of words: the Journal’s “right to challenge their detention” vs. the Times’s “clearly
\nentitled to have federal courts examine whether they have been lawfully detained.”<\/P>
\n

Here’s The Post lede:<\/P>
\n


\n

A federal judge ruled yesterday that the Bush administration must allow
\nprisoners at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to contest their detention in U.S.
\ncourts, concluding that special military reviews established by the Pentagon as an alternative are
\nillegal.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

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

On to the Journal’s second graf:<\/P>
\n


\n

District Judge Joyce Hens Green ruled that the system of military hearings the
\nDefense Department set up after the high court’s ruling in June was unconstitutional because it
\ndenied prisoners access to evidence against them and to legal assistance in making their cases. If
\nupheld on appeal, Judge Green’s decision renders moot the hearings the Pentagon convened at the
\noffshore prison after the high court’s ruling. Of 330 cases whose results have been made public, all
\nbut three prisoners were found to be “enemy combatants.”<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

That tells us a lot, and all in layman’s language. And it gives specific information that 330
\ncases would be ruled unconstitutional. Here’s the Times’s second graf:<\/P>
\n


\n

The judge, Joyce Hens Green of Federal District Court in Washington,
\nrejected the argument that federal courts could not issue writs of habeas corpus for Guant\u00e1namo
\nthat would require the government to justify the detentions before a judge.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

Boy! What a mess. It doesn’t advance the narrative very much, does it? And it resorts to legal
\nterminology, as it will throughout the rest of the story — jargon, if you will — as though written
\nfor lawyers instead of a general readership.<\/P>
\n

The Post does better than the Times. Avoiding jargon, the second graf speaks as clearly as the
\nJournal and also gives specific information about those whom the ruling may effect.<\/P>
\n


\n

U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green said that the approximately 550 men
\nheld as “enemy combatants” are entitled to the advice of lawyers and to confront the evidence
\nagainst them in those proceedings. But, she found, the Defense Department has largely denied
\nthem these “most basic fundamental rights” during the reviews conducted at Guantanamo Bay, in
\nthe name of protecting the United States from terrorism.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

The Journal, however, went further and shows a better grasp of the subject by indicating the
\nactual number of known hearings and, in only a few more words, gives the telling detail that “all
\nbut three prisoners were found to be ‘enemy combatants’.” Why telling? Because, without actually
\nmaking the claim that the military hearings are kangaroo courts, it presents evidence that they
\nare.<\/P>
\n

Then in its third graf, the Journal narrative expands by alerting the reader to the broader
\ncontext of the judge’s ruling in relation to key events, policies and players that have led up to
\nit.<\/P>
\n


\n

The 75-page opinion specifically rejects legal theories advanced by Alberto
\nGonzales, the White House counsel whom President Bush nominated for attorney general. On
\nMr. Gonzales’s advice, the president in 2002 issued a blanket ruling that no suspected Taliban or
\nal Qaeda prisoners were protected by the Geneva Conventions, which normally require that
\ncaptives receive prisoner-of-war status unless stripped of it by a “competent tribunal.” POW
\nstatus includes certain protections, such as freedom from coercive interrogations and access to
\ndelegations of the International Red Cross.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

The Times, in its third graf, goes lame:<\/P>
\n


\n

Judge Green said that although the Guant\u00e1namo base was in Cuba, the
\nSupreme Court definitively ruled in June that it was not out of the reach of American law as
\nadministration officials have argued.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

The Post simply changes direction without developing the thrust of the narrative it led off
\nwith:<\/P>
\n


\n

Green’s ruling directly conflicts with one issued by another federal court judge
\nin Washington two weeks ago. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon, who heard the case of a
\nsmaller group of detainees, wrote that their bid for freedom is supported by “no viable legal
\ntheory.” Green went beyond the question of whether detainees had rights and found the
\n“combatant status review tribunals” illegal.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

That’s an option, of course, and the Post story elaborates on potential appeals and legal
\nbattles in its fourth graf. A 75-page judicial opinion (only the Journal tells us its size) leaves much
\nto the reporter’s judgment in terms of emphasis and priority of information, of course. But I think
\nI can hear a Post news editor demanding that the reporter insert so-called balance before the
\nreader gets the “wrong” idea that the story has just one side. Hell, we’re not even into the fourth
\ngraf.<\/P>
\n

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


\n

“Nothing … authorizes the president of the United States to rule by fiat that an
\nentire group of fighters covered by the Third Geneva Convention falls outside the treaty’s
\ndefinitions of ‘prisoners-of-war,'” Judge Green wrote. Another federal judge in Washington, James
\nRobertson, reached a similar conclusion in November, when he struck down a system of military
\ncommissions [hearings] the administration established to prosecute a subset of Guantanamo
\nprisoners for war crimes. The government has appealed that decision.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n

<\/P>
\n

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

Judge for yourselves. Here’s the Times’s story<\/FONT><\/B><\/A> and here’s the Post’s<\/FONT>.<\/B><\/A> Unfortunately, I can’t
\nlink to the Journal’s. But believe me, it’s sharper and tighter — 540 or so words vs. the Times’s
\n967 and the Post’s 936 — as well as more enlightening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t even want to think about the state of our banana nation, so with apologies to Leonard Cohen for borrowing the title of his first book of poetry, here’s a comparison of three news stories that appeared earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The Washington Post about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1023","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-gv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}