Crossposted from jesselava.com.

The Obama administration revealed yesterday that detainees could be left in jail even if a court of law acquits them of wrongdoing. In other words, the trials are pretty much for show; if the Obama folks don't get the outcome they want, they ignore it; if they do, they get to take credit for giving detainees due process.

This is a big deal. It should be receiving wall-to-wall news coverage. We shouldn't hold our breath waiting for that, but might we at least hope the coverage that exists will report the issue honestly?

Our hope would be fulfilled if we read the Wall Street Journal, which reports straightforwardly about the revelation:

The Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.

Jeh Johnson, the Defense Department's chief lawyer, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that releasing a detainee who has been tried and found not guilty was a policy decision that officials would make based on their estimate of whether the prisoner posed a future threat.

Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration argues that the legal basis for indefinite detention of aliens it considers dangerous is separate from war-crimes prosecutions. Officials say that the laws of war allow indefinite detention to prevent aliens from committing warlike acts in future, while prosecution by military commission aims to punish them for war crimes committed in the past.

Our hopes would be dashed, however, if we relied on the New York Times, which somehow covered the same event and came away with an entirely different take:

Obama administration lawyers said Tuesday at a Senate hearing that detainees prosecuted by military commissions should have some of the same constitutional rights as American citizens tried in civilian criminal courts.

Republicans on the Armed Services Committee argued that foreigners now detained on terrorism charges at the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, did not deserve those constitutional protections.

"So you are saying that these people who are in Guantánamo, who were part of 9/11 or committed acts of war against the United States are entitled to constitutional rights of the Constitution of the United States?" Senator John McCain of Arizona, the senior Republican on the panel, asked administration officials at one point.

David Kris, the chief of the national security division at the Justice Department, said detainees would not be granted all the rights of American citizens, but added: "I think, within the framework I just described, the answer is yes. The due process clause guarantees and imposes some requirements. That's the way I think I would put it.

Later, Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon's top lawyer, was more explicit: "I would say it's our view that the detainees would not, whether in the United States or anyplace else, do not enjoy the full panoply of constitutional rights that an American citizen in this country would enjoy."

Indeed, the Times story never even mentions the hot news item: that Obama is reserving for himself the right to decide whether to accept courts' judgments when it comes to detainees.

All of this is assuming, of course, that someone reading the Journal or the Times would find these pieces, which is no small assumption. Neither is receiving prominent real estate at their respective papers' websites. Indeed, the Times story is almost impossible to find; one has to go to the "U.S." section and scroll down to the bottom. It's nowhere to be found on the home page.

Is yet another potentially earth-shattering story about the Obama administration's disregard for transparency and civil liberties about to be ignored?