Denouncing CIA watersports

Democrats have been calling on the new nominee for attorney general, Micheal Mukasey, to say that he doesn't support "waterboarding" (which, among other acts, are largely believed to be torture or at the least cruel and unusual punishment). All in all it's got nothing to do with boogie-boarding, which, by the way, democrats also are not really into.
The thing I found interesting about this NY Times article was the choices about what background to provide. There's been a huge amount of debate about this administrations tactics. Do you stick to the political opposition and the facts they cite? Or do you independently bring up NGO's like Amnesty International?

In this case the author, probably smartly, sticks to the political debate that is going on and the criticisms that have been made of the nominee. Maybe for an informed reader this is a good approach, and obviously the NY Times has some pretty informed readers. But would a smaller paper want to have so much dialog, so much Washington-ish in-fighting, maybe not. Or maybe they'd run a sideline summing up the struggle so far. Otherwise it seems like it might be incomplete.