The early report at the Washington Post website about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of CIA torture is gripping, well-documented and sickening. But one thing jumps out: The paper doesn’t use the word “torture” to describe the CIA’s torture program. And that’s not an accident.

The piece by Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Julie Tate (12/9/14) says the report documents “levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish.”

The Post reports that “agency employees subjected detainees to ‘rectal rehydration’ and other painful procedures that were never approved.” It provides considerable detail about the torture of one prisoner, Abu Zubaida. In addition to being “waterboarded 83 times and kept in cramped boxes for nearly 300 hours,” he was subjected to

a round-the-clock interrogation assault — slamming Zubaida against walls, stuffing him into a coffin-sized box and waterboarding him until he coughed, vomited and had “involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities.”

But the Post only uses the ‘t-word’ once:

The report’s central conclusion is that harsh interrogation measures, deemed torture by program critics including President Obama, didn’t work.

As we noted earlier this year (FAIR Blog, 4/2/14), when the Post presented a sneak peek of the Senate report it also declined to call the torture program torture, preferring an array of euphemisms:

Readers learn about a “brutal interrogation program,” “harsh techniques,” “excruciating interrogation methods,” “brutal measures,” “harsh interrogation techniques,” “coercive techniques,” “previously undisclosed cases of abuse,” “harsh treatment” and “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

It turns out this is a policy decision. The Post‘s Philip Bump has a piece (12/9/14) about the “old debate” over torture terminology. In the wake of a 2010 Harvard study about how media outlets use the term, some prominent outlets–including the Washington Post–wrestled with how to craft coherent policies:

Most media outlets have tried to figure out where to draw the line. NPR‘s ombudsman addressed it in 2009, outlining the six ways in which use of “torture” was considered by the agency. After the Harvard report was released, media reporter Brian Stelter reached out to Cameron Barr, then The Post‘s national security editor (He’s now the national editor). “After the use of the term ‘torture’ became contentious,” Barr said, “we decided that we wouldn’t use it in our voice to describe waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques authorized by the Bush administration. But we often cited others describing waterboarding as torture in stories that mentioned the technique.” That continues to be The Post‘s policy; Tuesday’s story about the report’s release doesn’t refer to it as torture — except when citing President Obama.

So the Washington Post will not call something by its name if using that word is thought to be “contentious.” By that standard, the paper in the nation’s capital will never call it torture when the US government does it.