From WNYKYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone.

Wartime wounds were reopened last month in two countries.

In the United States, former Senator Bob Kerry acknowledged his role in what may or may not have been a Vietnam War atrocity four decades ago.

Coverage here was marked by a striking sympathy,

or at least empathy for Kerry's feelings now, then, and in between.

In France, there was another grisly revelation, a book by a retired army general describing

in detail systematic torture and killings by French troops against suspected Algerian revolutionaries

40 years ago. But unlike America, where the horrors of Vietnam have long since been exposed,

France's dirty secrets from the Algeria war have seldom penetrated the public consciousness.

So suddenly the French media are in high dudgeon. Joining us now is

Sylvie Kaufman, New York Bureau Chief, with the newspaper Le Monde. Ms. Kaufman, welcome to

the media. Hello. You can't judge a man until you've walked in his shoes. This has been the

phrase we have heard over and over again since Bob Carey's story broke.

Are the press saying anything remotely like that about General Alceres and his

revelations about torture in Algeria?

Basically in France, this is new. Everybody sort of knew or assumed that they had been

torture used as a policy, in fact, in the Algerian

war. But nobody had ever really so openly admitted it. I think the American public has been

confronted with the atrocities in Vietnam much more openly than we have in France been

confronted with Algeria.

So how have the media treated General Osiris?

...