NEW YORK — Executive Editor of The New York TimesDean Baquet announced Thursday that the publication will allow its reporters to use the word “torture” more freely.
The Times has recalibrated its language in an attempt to more accurately portray instances that it deems torture, such as the CIA’s brutal questioning of terrorism suspects and reading The Wall Street Journal.
Instead of adhering to the strict legal definition of torture, The Times will use the word “torture” to describe “the intentional infliction of pain to make someone talk,” as well as “the experience of reading articles that have not been published by The New York Times, namely articles that appear in The Wall Street Journal.”
When asked by ABC’s Diane Sawyer if Wall Street Journal articles are comparable to sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, the shackling of people’s bodies, and other CIA interrogation methods, Baquet answered, “Of course they aren’t comparable. Reading The Wall Street Journalis objectively worse than all of those combined. Perhaps the only thing worse than The Wall Street Journalis that film starring Tim Allen, ‘Shaggy Dog.’ ”
Baquet added, “As a trustworthy news outlet, it is our job to cover events with the utmost accuracy and to convince our subscribers that reading The Wall Street Journal is equivalent to being hung by one’s toes in the public square.”
