Here's how I see the NPR/Shepard position:

• By rights, we really should call it torture.

• But we'll be damned if we'll let anyone else tell us that we have to call it torture.

• So now we're not going to call it torture!

• So there!

Andy Alexander / Ombudsman Blog:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/07/wps_salon_plan_a_public_relati.html

The Post's 'Salon' Plan: A Public Relations Disaster

[...]

Post spokeswoman Kris Coratti issued a statement describing the flier as a "draft."

The “draft” is a single-page solicitation, printed in full color on glossy paper, which was distributed to potential underwriters for a gathering on health care. It reads: “Underwrite and participate in this intimate and exclusive Washington Post Salon, an off-the-record dinner and discussion at the home of CEO and Publisher Katharine Weymouth” on July 21.

[...]

UPDATE, 3:42 p.m.: Weymouth, who is out of town, sent a staff note this afternoon saying [...]

[...] "Sponsorship of events, like advertising in the newspaper, must be at arm's length and cannot imply control over the content or access to our journalists."

Beyond canceling the July 21 gathering, Weymouth said "we will not hold salon dinners involving the newsroom."

By Andy Alexander | July 2, 2009

__________

You have captured the true essence of it in all it's petulant and intransigent glory.

Oh, did I mention 'nutshells'? ;-}

The Politico article indicates that the $25,000 fee is for a single "salon", whereas for $250,000 one can attend a series of 11. Buy ten reporters, get one free.

from the article...

"The flier came out of the office Charles Pelton, who joined The Post recently to find ways to generate business through conferences and events. The Post, like many struggling newspapers, is desperately seeking new sources of revenue.

“There’s no intention to influence or peddle,” Pelton said this morning. “There’s no intention to have a Lincoln Bedroom situation,” referring to charges that President Clinton used invitations to stay at the White House as a way of luring political backing."

When do you think reporters will find out that Clinton wasn't doing anything any differently than his predecessors? I can recall Limbaugh bragging that he got to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom when George the 1st was President. The bed has never been the same since.

Pelton is a fucking liar.

That's known as a reporters dozen.

I can recall Limbaugh bragging that he got to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom when George the 1st was President. The bed has never been the same since.

Now occupants have to keep a ladder handy so that they can clamber out of the ginormous crater he left in the center of the mattress after having passed a restful night crammed together at the very bottom of the pit.

was very telling. Ew. What different faces these people show from the ones we see on PBS asking us for money and cooking comfort foods.

She can't argue on the merits so she tells Glenn that he was out of line for not going through the correct channels?? And then accuses him of something he didn't do. What a load of shit.

Can't say anything more intelligent about this column than what's being said...go Glenn!

I actually listen to a lot of NPR, and even/especially given the overall deplorable state of MSM in reporting that you've addressed so well, consider its news coverage ON THE WHOLE more informative and insightful than what we can get from other US media outlets...which makes it bug me even more when they resort to the same lame non-stances as the rest of their inferior compatriots. Every time I listened to an interview where the issues around torture were being debated, it grated on me to hear Alicia and others use the administration's euphemisms, as if this made them more "fair and balanced". So I'm REALLY glad they are being called on it...by our award winning journalist columnist, GG.

Signed, a longtime NPR subscriber

You are so right. Emphasizing the parts of the interrogation program that were torture over the parts that were NOT torture is really unfair.

Consider the following interrogation scenario:

Interrogator asks detainee his name. Not torture.

Interrogator asks detainee if he knows any terrorists. Not torture.

Interrogator insults detainee's mother. Not nice, but not torture.

Interrogator squats over a copy of the Koran and shits on it in front of detainee (who is a devout Muslim). Disgusting and wrong, but probably not torture.

Interrogator castrates detainee with a rusty butter knife. Torture!

Now, some narrow-minded people might call this a "torture session" in an effort to advance a political agenda. But this interrogator did four things that were not torture, and only one thing that was torture, so a politicized label like "torture session" would be totally unfair.

Thank God for clear thinkers like you.

Real Clear Politics, Lara Jakes, July 2, 2009 (see sig)

President Barack Obama said Thursday he's uneasy about his own proposal to indefinitely imprison some of the most dangerous terror suspects being held now at Guantanamo Bay. He called it "one of the biggest challenges of my administration."

The president stopped short of abandoning his tentative idea of continuing to hold a small number of detainees in other prisons after Guantanamo closes, which is expected to happen early next year.

But Obama said he has strong reservations about detaining people without bringing them to trial — a legal quagmire that dogged former President George W. Bush.

"It gives me huge pause," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press. "And that's why we're going to proceed very carefully on this front. And it may turn out that after looking at all the dimensions of this that I don't feel comfortable with the proposals that surface on how to deal with this issue."

[…]

"How we deal with those situations is going to be one of the biggest challenges of my administration," Obama said.

If he goes ahead with indefinite detentions, Obama said he would ask Congress to approve it by law — and not do it himself through an executive order, as some administration officials have privately suggested. It's unclear where such detainees would be kept, but many in Congress oppose the detainees being brought into the U.S.

"It is very important that the American people and Congress, in conjunction with my administration, come up with a structure that is not only legitimate in the eyes of our constitutional traditions, but also in the eyes of the international community," he said.

[...]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/news/ap/politics/2009/Jul/02/obama_uneasy_over_indefinite_gitmo_detentions.html