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Closing Gitmo ain't easy? Who knew!

By Mark Obbie

Now NPR has made a substantial contribution to a rapidly growing body of work that we might call "The Gitmo Puzzle: Harder Than We Thought!" It joins Newsweek, the Times, and practically everyone else, it seems, in reporting on the messy details of what it means to shut down the Guantanamo detention operation. This is all good, of course. It's what reporters ought to do when the news is timely -- a new administration waits in the wings, after promising to pursue a new policy and lately cautioning that it won't happen overnight. But where were these reporters when Gitmo's future was hotly debated in the 2007-08 presidential campaign? Sure, some analysts such as Ben Wittes were digging into the complexities at the time. But my impression -- admittedly that's all this is -- is that mainstream reporters covering politics and law did not examine these questions in enough detail, or with enough prominence, when the debate was a factor in choosing a president. Some will ascribe that omission to a pro-Obama slant. I see a more depressing explanation: laziness or lack of time to drop out of the breathless pursuit of daily sound bites.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on January 15, 2009 (boomark / email).