Glenn Greenwald showed the lack of coverage surrounding the release of John Yoo's Torture Memos. Do his numbers check out?
Glenn Greenwald, in an April 5 post commented on the media's extensive coverage of Barack Obama's bowling episode. This despite the declassification of memos written by former Justice Department attorney John Yoo on torture. Yoo says in these memos that the powers of the executive branch to protect the nation allow harming an "enemy combatant" in a way that would violated criminal prohibitions and that those laws interfere with the President's role as commander in chief.
Yoo, who is now an associated professor of law at the University of California Berkley, also says in the memo that the US has a "choice of evils" being either torture or a terrorist attack. He has written elsewhere that "enemy combatants" need not be given Geneva Convention protections and that the President, as commander in chief, has no obligation to obey any law with reguard to torturing someone.
The memo was made available to the public on April 2nd. Greenwald uses these numbers to demonstrate his case that the media did not pay enough attention to this story and instead concentrated on less important issues such as Barack Obama's bowling mistake and his controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Searching from March 5 2008 to April 5 2008, Greenwald searched LEXIS NEXIS for all news articles about these subjects:
"Yoo and torture" - 102
"Mukasey and 9/11" -- 73
"Yoo and Fourth Amendment" -- 16
"Obama and bowling" -- 1,043
"Obama and Wright" -- More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
"Obama and patriotism" - 1,607
"Clinton and Lewinsky" -- 1,079
However, searching from the time the memo was declassified (April 2nd) to April 5 (the date of Greenwald's article) reveals something else:
Yoo and Torture: 70
Mukasey and 9/11: 13
Yoo and Fourth Amendment: 18
Obama and Bowling: 501
Obama and Wright: 654
Obama and patriotism: 35
Clinton and Lewinsky: 126
Greenwald's search of the previous month obviously had more articles concerning Jeremiah Wright, since his controversial comments came up during March, as did Obama's speech about race which many saw as a response to the controversy. This incident also brought up questions of Obama's patriotism in which people rehashed stories about his not-wearing-a-flag-lapel and not putting his hand on his heart during the National Anthem (which, by the way, is not required).
The coverage in the revised analysis is still troubling, and the media is worthy of the criticism Greenwald gives. Yoo's memo should have gotten more coverage, but the lack of coverage in this limited time frame allows it to be placed in an appropriate context, and not allow unrelated events to throw off the totals.
Besides, given that the Yoo memo came out so late in the month within Greenwald's search, of course it would have recieved less coverage.
