US Press Was 'in Coma' in Run up to Iraq War(Pincus/Koppel/Arnett)

US Press Was 'in Coma' in Run up to Iraq War: Book


In the book, 21 reporters reflect on the Bush administration's case for the preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003.


WASHINGTON, November 22 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – US media organizations are now skewering President George W. Bush over his case for ousting Saddam Hussein, but few questioned the pro-war juggernaut in the run-up to battle.

Now, with the White House's once feared public relations machine misfiring, Bush's approval ratings plumbing their lowest depths, US troops still dying in foreign fields and suddenly bold Democratic rivals trade bilious charges over Iraq with Republicans, a new book demands an accounting from the media on its own pre-war errors, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

"Feet to the Fire, the Media after 9/11," by award winning journalist Kristina Borjesson, features a roll-call of Washington reporters and war correspondents, including veterans Peter Arnett, Walter Pincus, and ABC News correspondent Ted Koppel.

It prompts questions over whether the US media was duped by the White House, was negligent or complicit in the rush to war, and whether senior reporters were too close to government sources.

In the book, 21 reporters reflect on the Bush administration's case for the preemptive invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the grounds Saddam could offer weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

http://www.islamonline.org/English/News/2005-11/22/article05.shtml

The issue is a HUGE mistake was allowed to happen. NOW LETS FIX IT!

TRY THE CRIMINALS FOR WAR CRIMES!

than when they were beating their drums for war, shouting from the rooftops that "Saddam is coming, Saddam is coming! 9/11 Changes everything!"

The only event in recent memory that comes close to this level of excitement seen in the national press corps was the very, very important, historically imperative, gravely serious and entirely necessary matter of impeaching Bill Clinton for having consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky.

I'm with you: the press is very much to blame for the rise the Bush terror state. WHo owns and controls the press should be the subject of an investigation and some good example setting disciplinary actions.

For NYT building, CNN headquarters, NBC at Rockefeller Center, and that bitch Andrea Mitchell's house.

snip...

"The bottom line is that in this era of twenty-four hour cable news, there is less hard news and real information than ever on television about what is going on in this nation's arena of power and around the world," Borjesson writes.

"There is propaganda and fake news masquerading as real news courtesy of the US government," she wrote of a media establishment in which many luminaries seemed as keen to wage war as anyone in the White House.

War = ratings. Ratings = money.

By law a corporation must put profit motive ahead of all other legal considerations. The result of this was obvious by watching the corporate run media before the war, often times connected to war industries by their parent companies (who will always push for war, it's good business for them).