“Before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the portrayal of torture on network television was a rarity. But the moment piqued interest in Hollywood and led to dozens of television and movie story lines in which American heroes deal with uncooperative antagonists who hold critical information about an imminent attack.
By 2003, the first year of the war in Iraq, there were 228 instances in which torture was portrayed on network TV, according to Human Rights First, a civil liberties group that advocates governments banning torture.
Human Rights First last year launched a campaign to push Hollywood writers and producers away from portrayals of torture as a useful interrogation technique.
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The group’s highest-profile target has been the Fox hit “24,” a thriller in which protagonist Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, used torture—from staging a mock execution of a detainee’s child to shocking a captive—at least 89 times in the show’s first six seasons.
Army officials have met with the show’s writers and producers to express concern that Bauer’s methods are sending the wrong messages to service members.
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‘The problem with the ticking time-bomb situation is that it’s not real,’ said David Danzig, the director of Human Rights First’s Primetime Torture project. “The problem with ’24,’ when we’re rooting for Jack Bauer torturing the bad guy or when Hollywood shows waterboarding producing the result of the bad guy giving up good information that saves the day, is that gathering good intelligence doesn’t work that way.” Read more from chicagotribune.com