One of the big problems with recent coverage of immigration was the portrayal of the state of Arizona as a remarkably violent place due to the flood of unauthorized immigrants. It was a stew of misinformation, and one of the most prevalent claims was that Phoenix was The Kidnapping Capital of the Country (and No. 2 in the entire world).

That story always looked  a little shaky, as this ThinkProgress review pointed out (7/9/10). Now it looks like there could be more problems. A brief item in the New York Times today (3/4/11) reported that Phoenix's public safety manager was suspended

while an audit is being conducted to determine whether he inflated kidnapping statistics to win federal grant money, officials said on Thursday. The police reported more than 350 kidnappings in 2008 and said that almost all of them were linked to border violence, prompting some to label Phoenix the kidnapping capital of the United States. The actual number might have been closer to 250, officials said.

ABC News led the way on this story--you can still see Brian Ross' 2009 report, "Kidnapping Capital of the USA," here. Will he be doing an update?

We noted recently that a New York Times story about the waterboarding of two Al-Qaeda detainees included a bit of media criticism. The Times mentioned that in 2007, ABC featured an interview with former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who claimed that "Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew." This would be hard to square with what we now know-- that Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

The Times pushed the story further on today's front page, with Brian Stelter putting the focus squarely on that 2007 ABC report and the effect it had on the public debate over torture--namely, to bolster the claims of pro-torture pundits:

"It works, is the bottom line,” Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the next day. “Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works.”

Perhaps most shameful is the reaction the Times got from ABC reporter Brian Ross:

Mr. Ross, who received a George Polk Award for a series on interrogation, expressed no regret about the Kiriakou interview and praised him for speaking publicly. He said ABC was preparing a story that would address the previous reporting.

“Kiriakou stepped up and helped shine some light on what has happening,” Mr. Ross said. “It wasn’t the huge spotlight that was needed, but it was some light.”

Really? A reporter learns that his only source for a major report that sought to vindicate government-sanctioned torture wasn't telling the truth, and his reaction is to praise that source?  Kirikaou didn't "shine some light" on anything, unless that phrase now means the opposite of what it's always meant.

The always-thorough Glenn Greenwald documents other missteps by Ross in his coverage of torture. And don't forget to listen to Greenwald on last week's CounterSpin, or read the transcript.

Today the New York Times is reporting that waterboarding was used far more often than we have been told--almost 300 times on two prisoners, including Abu Zubaydah. This stands in rather stark contrast to what we heard about the instant, positive effects of waterboarding--as the Times notes:

A former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

Of course, someone who relented in "35 seconds" would not need to be waterboarded 83 times. And as been several accounts discussed, the information Zubaydah offered was of debatable value.

Those ABC reports by Brian Ross stood out at the time because they seemed so eager to take this information at face value. Listeners to FAIR's radio show CounterSpin on December 21, 2007, heard this critique of ABC's reporting:

On December 7, the New York Times reported that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two high-ranking Al-Qaeda detainees. The tapes reportedly offered the most direct evidence of just exactly what types of interrogation techniques--including torture-- were employed during the 2002 sessions. The ensuing controversy has been big news. But three days after the story surfaced, ABC reporter Brian Ross offered up his version of a blockbuster exclusive-- a report that amounted to a defense of the CIA's torture.

Ross scored an exclusive interview with a former CIA field officer who was part of a team that waterboarded one detainee--Abu Zubaydah. His story must have been music to the White House's ears: Zubaydah wouldn't talk, but once they began torturing him he spilled the beans, and they disrupted dozens of attacks. But ABC's Ross never once raised the most basic question in all of this: Does torture actually produce reliable information? The consensus among law enforcement and military officials is that it does not. But that inconvenient bit of perspective could not find its way into Ross' breathless reporting.

The problems with Abu Zubaydah's interrogation have been well-covered by several other outlets, including Vanity Fair. There are serious doubts about whether any of the information he offered was of any value whatsoever-- facts that were laid out most recently by the Washington Post.

At the close of Brian Ross' report, anchor Charlie Gibson asked why this CIA source had come forward now to talk about torture. The answer would seem pretty clear: The administration's torture policies were once again under critical review, so that would make it a good time to present the argument that torture works. All that was needed was a credulous journalist to air this story. That's exactly what they found in ABC's Brian Ross.