The politics of 24

I started watching 24 this season for the firs time ever. This year at least, it’s a phenomenally dramatic show that manages to hit a lot of the “privacy vs safety” debate dead on.

But it’s interesting to read about how television has changed in recent years.

From The New Yorker:

Since September 11th, depictions of torture have become much more common on American television. Before the attacks, fewer than four acts of torture appeared on prime-time television each year, according to Human Rights First, a nonprofit organization. Now there are more than a hundred, and, as David Danzig, a project director at Human Rights First, noted, “the torturers have changed. It used to be almost exclusively the villains who tortured. Today, torture is often perpetrated by the heroes.”