'Actual journalists' as government spokespeople

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

Time's Joe Klein, in a post this week he entitled "How Actual Journalism Works":

Third, look at the record. Tell me where I've been misled by my sources.

Joe Klein, The Guardian, February 4, 2002 (via LEXIS):

The noted Anglican hostage mediation expert Terry Waite wrote recently in the Guardian that: "I can recognise the conditions prisoners are being kept in at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay because I have been there. Not to Cuba's Camp X-Ray, but to the darkened cell in Beirut that I occupied for five years. I was chained to a wall by my hands and feet, beaten on the soles of my feet with cable, denied all human rights and contact with my family for five years... Because I was kept in very similar conditions, I am appalled by the way we -- countries that call ourselves civilised -- are treating these captives."

Total rubbish, of course. The Camp X-Ray Yankophobe fiesta has died down in the past week as it has become clear that the prisoners -- I see no need to use euphemisms here -- are not being treated badly at all. The Red Cross has been in. Doctors are caring for them. They receive three square meals a day. They pray (and we provide arrows to point them the way). There's no air conditioning, but the winter heat in Cuba isn't exactly devastating. The cells are eight feet square; not the Ritz, but not quite inhumane, either. They were shackled and goggled when they were being transported, but no longer. They wear orange jump suits, which are probably an improvement over their Afghan cave-wear (I would actually prefer they be dressed in pink tutus, to give them an appreciation of the freedoms accorded western ballerinas). They are not being tortured, Terry. They are being interrogated.

(Continued here.)