Editor’s Note: Tortured Coverage

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The play-by-play coverage promises to be as bloodless as recent memos unearthed at the Department of Justice: glib, equivocating documents that parse the Fifth Amendment and international law as if the fate of our nation’s integrity were a high school debate topic.

The pundits won’t bother with first-person accounts from victims of torture or detailed clinical analysis documenting the irreversible effects of sensory deprivation, sexual humiliation, and mock execution. We will not be asked to imagine our brothers, husbands, wives, and sisters stripped naked in the dark, in secret, without being charged—even though research shows that when a government allows its soldiers to violate the law, officials within its own borders are likely to follow suit.

Instead, we’ll watch as cable-friendly fascists fantasize about the sort of ticking-bomb scenarios that, even if they did happen outside the writer’s room at 24, would not be stopped by torture, which by all credible accounts does not yield reliable intelligence.

Worst of all, when culpable, highly influential political actors like Scalia smugly play pseudo-intellectual word games, the high-profile members of the press establishment who are granted access will lack the intellectual facility to challenge their illogic. Or, as in the case of Stahl, they will treat contemptible, indefensible statements as if they were an endearing personality quirk.

Buried deeper in our daily newspapers, down the dial on public TV and radio, and on the pages of independent blogs and alternative magazines, there’s laudable work that gives context to our country’s unprecedented fall and humanizes those who suffer systematic abuse or neglect. These stories of agony and injustice are upsetting. They are also essential for a healthy democracy, which is why, in the run-up to this pivotal election, we promise to showcase insightful torture coverage from around the globe at www.utne.com/torture.

It’s our sincere hope that the hearts and minds behind the sensational headlines will inspire you to demand that elected officials and political appointees be held account-able. Or, at the very least, face a few follow-up questions.

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