Journalist and professor Mark Danner spoke yesterday about "Torture, the Press and Human Rights After Abu Ghraib" in a lecture hosted by the Wilson School. He discussed journalism's role in uncovering the truth and how the use of torture during interrogation contradicts the values of the United States.
Introduced by Wilson School professor Gary Bass as "one of the most distinguished foreign policy journalists in the United States, if not in the world," Danner is the author of "Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib and the War on Terror" and a professor of human rights and journalism at Bard College. He is also a staff writer at The New Yorker and a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, and has covered stories in Central America, Haiti, the Balkans and Iraq, among other locations.
Speaking to a full audience, Danner noted that information about human rights violations has been available to the public through the press for about 20 months.
He said the reason "we are talking about these things now has to do not with what has been revealed, but a change in what we are willing to accept," referring to how the U.S. public, which became more tolerant of the use of torture after 9/11, has now shifted back to its previous disapproval of it.
Danner spoke on the conflict within branches of government concerning the acceptability of certain interrogation tactics and challenged the audience to think about who leaks information to the press about torture and other human rights violations.
Danner said the purpose of journalists is to reveal the truth and "construct a revelation for society" before "handing things off to other institutions." He said people assume that "wrongdoers are punished, the institutional problems are corrected, and society returns to a state of grace," yet this process "has not gone on over these past four years."
Danner was careful to make the point that "the people that are making these policies believe they are protecting the wellbeing of the country."
He spoke about an amendment, sponsored in part by Senator John McCain — the only senator to have experienced torture — to a defense appropriations bill that would compel the United States to honor the Geneva conventions it has already pledged to uphold. Despite having passed in the Senate with a 90-9 majority, the bill still faces opposition from the executive branch.
Danner closed by saying we should denounce torture not because it doesn't work — suggesting it sometimes might — but rather because it undermines the message of the United States.
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