“Under pressure from reporters and editors, the New York Times’ leadership has decided to use the word “torture” with regard to the CIA’s treatment of prisoners in the years following September 11.

Executive editor Dean Baquet published a statement on Thursday announcing the change in style, explaining that since we now know many more details of the CIA’s methods over the past decade – including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and caging prisoners in a box – the “plain-English” meaning of “torture” now outweighs the “specialized legal meaning” of the word.“* Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola (TYT University), Ben Mankiewicz (Turner Classic Movies) and Cara Santa Maria (Talk Nerdy Podcast) break it down.

*Read more here from Alan Yuhas / The Guardian:
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/07/new-york-times-torture-in-style-update