Media euphemism and elite framing shifted public acceptance of torture after Abu Ghraib.

Evidence

It turns out the news media itself may have aided this growing acceptance of torture, or at least of some of its manifestations. Brigitte L. Nacos and Oscar Torres-Reyna write, “An ironic consequence of the Abu Ghraib revelations was the drastic decline of the use of the T-word in pertinent news accounts. Instead, anchors, correspondents, and reporters themselves preferred terms like ‘abuse,’ ‘alleged abuse,’ ‘mistreatment,’ and ‘wrongdoing.’” Government officials and journalists came to distinguish between “hard-core torture,” “torture lite,” and “coercion.” Nacos and Torres- Reyna note that after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, “Americans were less inclined to agree with the statement that torture is “never justified” as a means to force suspected terrorists to reveal important information. By December 2004, more than seven months after the Abu Ghraib story broke, only 27 percent of the public rejected the torture of terrorist suspects categorically, while 69 percent found it justified to varying degrees.” The operating cultural logic shifted from one in which torture was considered illegal and morally wrong to an exceptionalist logic in which torture was considered wrong but necessary and effective in moments of national crisis. — Evelyn Alsultany, Arabs and Muslims in the Media, 301

Categorization

• DEFINE: Demonstrates how word choice (‘abuse’ vs ‘torture’) actively constructs a category distinction that changed public moral assessment — useful as a case study in how euphemism does political work.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ piece’s theme of language policing as political signaling, and more broadly to framing theory in communications studies.
• CANDY: The 27% vs 69% split after Abu Ghraib — that only a quarter of Americans categorically rejected torture seven months later — is a striking, quotable figure.