Was US Press in "Coma" During Drive to Ear with Iraq? : New Book Asks
"'With few exceptions, both print and television provided very poor coverage,' said independent intelligence expert and reporter James Bamford, in the book, exempting the Washington Post's Pincus and the Knight Ridder operation which feeds regional US papers.
'The problem was, these people were fighting an entrenched mind-set that was accepting the Bush administration's rationales for going to war, when they should have been doubting.'
Helen Thomas, grande dame of the White House press corps, argues in the book the media was cowed by the fallout from the September 11 strikes in 2001.
'From 9/11, the American press suddenly had to be the superpatriots,' she said. 'The press went into a coma.'
As the administration began to argue for war with Iraq, the country was still wallowing in wounded patriotism.
But that was no excuse for journalists not to ask awkward questions about the expansion of the 'war on terror' to Iraq, said John MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper's Magazine.
'It was just pathetic, it was the worst it's been since before Vietnam,' Borjesson quotes him as saying."
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