On Television, Torture Takes a Holiday. But a not-so-funny thing happened to the Graner case on its way to trial. Since the early bombshells from Abu Ghraib last year, the torture story has all but vanished from television, even as there have been continued revelations in the major newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair. If a story isn’t on TV in America, it doesn’t exist in our culture.

America’s descent into a political, tactical and moral swamp — our use and tacit approval of torture — will someday be seen as a stain on our national honor. (Never mind that it’s basically counterproductive.) Television news’ abandonment of this story will be seen as a stain on a once-serious part of the press.

It’s not as if this matter is closed. The show trials of people — who are plainly guilty — low on the command chain look as much like a coverup as an attempt to get to the truth. And the Bush administration is doing everything it can to keep its options wide open. In confirmation hearings, attorney general designate Alberto Gonzales disclaimed torture but remained infinitely vague about what kinds of interrogation are beyond the pale — and, of course, most of the spineless Democrats and who-cares Republicans refused to pin him down. This was in keeping with the administration’s ongoing strategy on this issue: Use methods that amount to torture, rationalize it with Orwellian language that calls it something else and then insist that torture is wrong.

Some newspapers and magazines have stayed on the story, as Rich notes, and they deserve great credit for sticking with an issue that obviously makes Americans uncomfortable, as it should. This is a situation that demands a swarm of blogging outrage as well.

Bloggers of various political persuasions have shown their ability to keep alive stories that the major media found insufficiently newsworthy. The right-wing bloggers are on the Bush administration’s side on this issue, for the most part. I’m sorry about that, because our practices should be anathema across the spectrum. (South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a former military lawyer, has been an exception (Frontline interview) to the lockstep fealty of Bush supporters.)

I hope bloggers in the center and on the left will stay on this. They need to be as relentless about a continuing scandal as the RatherGate folks were in exposing CBS News’ shoddy journalism. TV’s willful failures, once again, are the blogosphere’s opportunity.