Last week, an article in the Washington Post explained how decisions of the Bush administration with regard to detention policies have been overturned by the Supreme Court. The tone of the article is interesting. It's title is "White House Dismissed Legal Advice On Detainees".*Hammond zeroes in on what this language means - and what is wrong with it:
The "advice" in question came from lawyers who "repeatedly warned the White House that it was risking judicial scrutiny of its detention policies in Guantanamo Bay if it did not pursue a more pragmatic legal strategy that considered the likely reaction of the Supreme Court." This is the advice that was "ignored".
The only problem with the policy decisions, then, was that they risked being overturned in court. In other words, that they would be illegal.In fairness to the administration - being concerned that your actions will not pass judicial muster isn't quite the same thing as willfully seeking to break the law, but I think Hammond has isolated a key problem in the habitual deference of political reporting.
When your reporting of an issue uncritically accepts the language of a given point of view - you can be steered away from key points of debate.
Sure, take what they say down - put it in your paper. But don't miss the underlying question: What are they not saying?
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