Shame on Evan Perez and the headline writers at The Wall Street Journal.To report on appellate arguments yesterday in San Francisco, they spun the news as political backpedaling by the administration -- but backpedaling on the wrong thing. Here's the hed and two lede grafs:
Rendition Case Under Bush Gets Obama BackingThe Obama administration backed the Bush administration's arguments in a lawsuit involving the practice of seizing terror suspects abroad and sending them to third countries for questioning.The case involves five men who claim U.S. operatives abducted them and sent them to be tortured in other countries. The men are suing a unit of Boeing Co., which they say provided aircraft to the Central Intelligence Agency for the "extraordinary rendition" program. Boeing declined to comment on the case.
That all but says the administration has reversed course to be pro-rendition -- that a change in rendition policy is the result that's sought. Only by the third graf do readers learn that there may be something else at work here, but the language is dumbed down to the point that it still obscures the legal import of what happened. The administration told the Ninth Circuit that it "believes state secrets and national security would be put at risk if the court allows the suit to proceed," Perez wrote. Close, but no cigar. The argument, at least ostensibly, is about a principle, and a precedent that could affect other circumstances: that is, that the government is invoking a recognized (though controversial) privilege to protect state secrets as a matter of policy. While that may have the effect that Perez describes, it's not at all the same to say that the administration favors rendition, or that it only fears this alleged security breach. One could be anti-rendition and pro-privilege in this case, or generally. More reporting might tell us what is in fact going on here -- whether it's a sham argument cloaking a newfound love of rendition, or a product of indecision, or something else. But I don't see that in Perez's story. Instead, I see a writer (and headline writer) going overboard to put the facts in plain terms, and in the process mangling the point. Compare the Journal's approach to that of the Washington Post and reporter Peter Finn:
Justice Dept. Uses 'State Secrets' Defense: Obama Backs Bush Decision on Rendition LawsuitThe Obama administration invoked the same "state secrets" privilege as its predecessor in federal court in San Francisco yesterday in opposing the reinstatement of a lawsuit that alleges that a Boeing Co. unit flew people to countries where they were tortured as part of the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program.
Obama Backs Off a Reversal on SecretsIn a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration.
Those two approaches are much truer to the story's main point, and news hook. All the stories, to one extent or another, hit on the necessary political ingredient -- that the effect of the legal argument dismays certain folks, and cheers others -- but the lack of substance in the Journal's story is a disservice to that paper's readers.
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