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We wrote last month about the debate around whether "24," on Fox, is a conservative show. (Time: "Is 24 just a TV show or right-wing propaganda?" Newsweek: "Depending on your perspective, “24” is either a neocon sex fantasy or the collective id of our nation unleashed.")

Now comes a New Yorker profile of Joel Surnow, the man behind "24." And it's a doozy, so much so that it has Nikki Finke calling for a boycott of the show. Surnow is a Bush supporter who says "[p]eople in the Administration love the series, too. It’s a patriotic show. They should love it." The series' "show runner," however, is a self-described "Moderate Democrat" who believes "people can differentiate between a television show and reality.”

Much of Jane Meyer's story focuses on the regular use of torture on "24." In November, the dean of the United States Military Academy at West Point, U.S. Army Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, met with many of the minds behind the show. Writes Mayer:

Finnegan told the producers that “24,” by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by “24,” which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, “The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about “24”?’ ” He continued, “The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do.”

Finnegan also said in the meeting that DVDs of "24" circulate among soldiers in Iraq, who "then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen." When asked about the prevalence of torture on "24," Rush Limbaugh, a friend of Surnow's, said this: "Torture? It’s just a television show! Get a grip.”

Have you been watching Al Jazeera English? What about France 24?

Yeah, didn't think so.

The cable news networks, after all, are hard to track down here in the U.S.: The former is available to most of us only online, and the latter runs in only a few U.S. markets.

That's a shame, according to Newslab's Deborah Potter, who argues that the networks offer stories and perspectives one can't find in American media.

"Newscasts on Al Jazeera English are dominated by coverage of the Middle East and Muslims. AJE covers stories that others ignore, and gives the stories everyone else covers much more time," she writes. Potter cites packages on Muslim refugees in Bangladesh and women opposing the enforcement of Sharia law in Indonesia as examples.

As for France 24, which seeks to "convey the values of France throughout the world," Potter notes that it offers "more stories from Africa and lots of serious talk about issues like whether Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union." That's not stuff you see much on the U.S. news networks.

Concludes Potter: "Maybe no one much cares that neither Al Jazeera nor France 24 is widely available to a U.S. audience, but they should. It wasn't that long ago that many Americans woke up to the reality that much of the world doesn't like us very much. If we'd been watching the news through their eyes, maybe we wouldn't have been so surprised."

Conservative media critics have their knickers in a bunch over this latest trend among prime-time television critics: labeling Fox's "24" as a conservative show. Or, more specifically, that "[d]epending on your perspective, '24' is either a neocon sex fantasy or the collective id of our nation unleashed," as Newsweek put it recently.

In a review of the season's opener, critic Devin Gordon writes that as President Bush "is squeezing our civil liberties to fight a war on terror, the writers of '24' have come up with a story that asks whether something could ever happen here in America that makes civil liberties a luxury we can no longer afford."

Time's James Poniewozik posed this question to readers this week: "Is 24 just a TV show or right-wing propaganda? Or, to turn Jack Bauer's frequent refrain on him: Who are you working for?" After all, John McCain has done a cameo and Vice President Dick Cheney "is a big fan" of the show. And the show's stars were recently honored with an appearance by Rush Limbaugh and "softball questions" from an audience at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Eugene Kane of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who cites the Heritage Foundation event as well, writes that Cheney and Limbaugh's affinity for the show "suggests there may be something more than just television going on here."

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Let it never be said we don't learn as we go along here. In response to the many comments and complaints, we've extended our comment section to allow you to post a comment for 72 hours instead of just 24. While some feel that any limits flies in the face of blogosphere etiquette, we feel they are necessary as we try to keep discussions on-point and useful.



An update on other issues: We are working on getting the RSS feed up and running and are also in the process of expanding the comment limit above the current 500 characters allowed. But please be advised, the RSS feed may take time. We'll let you know as soon as it's available. As we've said many times, this is a work in progress and we're learning as we go. Your thoughts, suggestions and, yes, even complaints, are helping us so keep 'em coming.

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