John Conroy: A Torture Story Without End; Waterboarding and Torture; Neal Desai: Newspapers and "Waterboarding"

On the Media (NPR)

For Reporter John Conroy, A Torture Story Without End

[In July], former police commander Jon Burge was convicted after 30 years of accusations that he’d tortured dozens of suspects on Chicago’s South Side. It should have been the satisfying culmination of decades of single-minded investigative reporting on the story by longtime Chicago reporter John Conroy. But as Conroy explains, not all is as it appears to be.

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Waterboarding and Torture

On the Media has discussed the semantic, political and ethical debate over torture and waterboarding since 9/11/2001. Brooke returns to some of the voices we've heard from on the subject and appraises where we stand in 2010.

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Newspapers and "Waterboarding"

When details emerged during the Bush Administration about so-called "harsh interrogation techniques," news organizations debated whether they should classify waterboarding as torture. A recent study from the Shorenstein Center at Harvard took a look back at the coverage and found that four of the largest newspapers did not classify it as torture after 2004, even though for the previous century they had. Neal Desai, the main author of the paper, explains how they found this dramatic shift.

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Democracy Now: Jury Convicts Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge of Lying About Torture

Jury Convicts Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge of Lying About Torture
Democracy Now

Decades after torture allegations were first leveled against former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, a federal jury has found him guilty of lying about torturing prisoners into making confessions. Burge has long been accused of overseeing the systematic torture of more than 100 African American men. Two years ago federal prosecutors finally brought charges against Burge—not for torture, but for lying about it. On Monday afternoon, after a five-week trial, Jon Burge was found guilty on all counts of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying about the abuse. He could face up to forty-five years in prison.

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Democracy Now: Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men

Trial Begins for Ex-Chicago Police Lt. Accused of Torturing More than 100 African American Men
Democracy Now

A former police commander accused of overseeing the torture of more than 100 African American men goes on trial today in Chicago. Former Lieutenant Jon Burge is accused of lying when he denied in a civil lawsuit that he and other detectives had tortured anyone. He faces a maximum of forty-five years in prison if convicted of all charges. The accusations of torture date back forty years, but Burge has avoided prosecution until now. For nearly two decades, beginning in 1971, Burge was at the epicenter of what has been described as the systematic torture of dozens of black men to coerce confessions. In total, more than 100 people in Chicago say they were subjected to abuse, including having guns forced into their mouths, suffocation with bags placed over their heads, and electric shocks inflicted to their genitals. We speak to attorney Flint Taylor and torture victim Darrell Cannon.

Guests:

Flint Taylor, attorney with the People’s Law Office in Chicago. He has represented many of the torture victims and was directly involved in spearheading the special prosecutor’s investigation.

Darrell Cannon, one of dozens of men to come forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the Chicago police. Darrell says police tortured him in 1983 and forced him to confess to a murder he didn’t commit. He spent more than twenty years in prison, but after a hearing on his tortured confession, prosecutors dismissed his case in 2004. He was released three years later.

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