One trial, two conflicting news accounts. They report. Can you decide?

1) Washington Post headline: Witness: Graner Ordered to Beat Prisoners

Intro:

FORT HOOD, Tex., Jan. 12 — A former inmate at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison testified Wednesday that Army Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., a former guard and the alleged ringleader of the abuse there that spawned an international scandal, was ordered by military intelligence officers to beat and torture inmates.

In videotaped testimony played at Graner’s court-martial, prisoner Walid Mohanden Juma recounted an incident at the prison near Baghdad with a female intelligence officer and Graner in a second-floor bathroom.

“Graner was the one who beated me,” Juma testified.

One of Graner’s attorneys asked if the intelligence officer told Graner to beat Juma. “Yeah, this took place,” Juma said…

2) Associated Press headline: Witness: Graner Often Disobeyed Orders

Intro:

An Iraqi detainee, repeatedly questioned about whether the alleged ringleader in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse case was just following orders to beat the prisoner, admitted he simply could not be sure…

Juma’s spotty memory fit a frustrating pattern for the defense in its effort to lay blame for the abuses on ruthless intelligence officers who controlled that section of the prison and its guards.

Witnesses called in Graner’s defense tended to offer less-than-certain testimony about who was in charge of what at Abu Ghraib. On occasion, their testimony became fodder for prosecutors…

Read both stories all the way through. The Post completely ignored Juma’s equivocations reported by AP and buried testimony about Graner’s rogue behavior at the bottom of its article.

Bias, what bias?

comments (0)   trackbacks (3)