EU: I think that following the chain is one of the things that I struggled most with. I didn’t want to overstate it. On the other hand, you get the feeling it kind of turned into almost a stale story without ever becoming a big story. I think that part of the story receives significantly less attention. Is it because it’s an uncomfortable thing to suggest that the administration is doing things that are illegal under the Geneva Conventions, or according to the Supreme Court, is engaging in things that would violate the War Crimes Act? What if the facts are hard to delineate but there is a whole lot of data pointing in that direction? I think it’s easier to kind of downplay it. If you look at the news today, the only paper that has a front-page piece about the fact that the administration has said that evidence obtained through coercion should be allowed is the Los Angeles Times.


PM: The Washington Post ran a couple pieces on the president’s speech and the administration’s requests …


EU: The Post typically does a very good job. They ran three pieces about it today, one is a overview, which says “Bush Says Detainees Will Be Tried” — what does that tell you that you don’t already know? The second one has a political angle, which I think is a real story, and the third one is the Defense Department saying that they’re not going to use abusive interrogation methods. Well, that’s important except for the fact that it should be pointed out that the administration is pushing for the CIA to be allowed to use abusive techniques.


PM: You’ve been covering this story for some time now — have you seen any sort of attitude change among reporters in how they’re approaching this story since it first broke back in late 2002 and early 2003?


EU: There is a difference between the pre-Abu Ghraib stories and the post-Abu Ghraib coverage. Every now and again it becomes the story of the month, and you can see that the whole pack is after it, and after a while you can see when the pack kind of moves away, but in terms in attitude, yeah, I think that there is certainly more skepticism than there was in the early days. I still find some of the coverage frustrating though, but if people don’t think it’s important, I can’t do anything — but I think it is, and I suspect that a lot of people would agree.

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