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From WN.N.C. in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Brooke Gladstone. And I'm Bob Garfield.

Some believe our military and intelligence personnel involved in capturing and questioning terrorists

could now be at risk prosecution under the War Crimes Act, simply for doing their jobs in a thorough and professional way.

This is unacceptable.

On Wednesday, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the presence of secret CIA detention facilities, and he discussed in detail how the administration has been trying to effectively but legally interrogate terror suspects.

The torturing of suspects by the U.S. military was first reported in the New York Times during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan,

and we learned after the revelations about Abu Ghraib that the White House had crafted a new, narrower definition of torture,

specifically that a practice can be called torture only when it, quote, rises to the level of death, organ failure, or the

permanent impairment of a significant body function. A few reporters have done much to uncover

the realities of U.S. practice, but Eric U.Manski, who has written a history of post-9-11

torture reporting for the Columbia Journalism Review Review gives low marks to the media overall.

Eric, welcome back to the show.

Good to be here.

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