New Book Holds Media's 'Feet to the Fire' on Iraq, Middle East Reporting

By: Miki Johnson In her latest book, author Kristina Borjesson goes straight to the sources -- 21 of war journalism's heavy hitters. "Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11," published Nov. 8 by Prometheus Books, is an exhaustive collective critique -- by the likes of Walter Pincus, Ted Koppel, Ron Suskind, Anthony Shadid, and Chris Hedges -- of the way American media covered recent U.S. involvement in the Middle East.

In her introduction, Borjesson, author of the earlier "Into the Buzzsaw," laments that "there is less hard news and real information on television than ever" and hopes her book will persuade people to turn their attention back to the hard-working journalists in other news formats. Her defense of the journalism community is tempered, however, by hard looks at where and why it failed, especially in covering military actions precipitated by the Sept. 11 attacks. Each Q&A is introduced by a description and summary of the interview, which, along with biographies, endnotes and a detailed index, make this hefty tome feel all the more like a text book.

While the subtitle suggests Sept. 11 as a watershed moment, Borjesson's questions more often center on the Iraq war and continuing Middle East conflicts. And although she can't help occasionally asking the media figures to reiterate specific facts that were downplayed when originally unearthed, she constantly refocuses her inquiries toward uncovering the paradigm shifts in media that have proven undeniable in recent years.

As Borjesson travels her narrative trajectory from executives such as Associated Press President and Chief Executive Officer Thomas Curley to reporters in the trenches (such as veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett), she teases out the tangled historical and social roots of today's major journalistic dilemmas. Is the idea of news as a public service still relevant? How can journalists deal with an increasingly secretive yet media-savvy government? Where does the most responsibility lie for journalists' perceived failures before and during the Iraq War?

For Pincus, a Washington Post national security affairs reporter, the problem with information about the war stemmed from its source, rather than what media did with it.

"Now, it's the PR that counts, not he policy," Pincus says in his interview. "They can make any policy seem to be the right thing or the wrong thing, depending on what information they put out. They understand how we in the media work much better than we understand how they in the government work."

James Bamford, an independent national security and intelligence reporter, takes a slightly less diplomatic stance. "With few exceptions, both print and television provided very poor (post-9/11) coverage," his interview starts, singling out Knight Ridder and Pincus as the too-few exceptions. Bamford targets editors like those that put Pincus' stories questioning the administration's validity "on page seventeen and Judy Miller's very unsubstantiated and extremely poor reporting for The New York Times ... on the front page."

The debate heats up as interviewees such as New York Times Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman refuse to let reporters off the hook. "Nobody does the homework," he complains, especially economic reporters. Because news organizations fear writers with expertise will be difficult for laymen to understand, "a lot of economic reporters don't know the stuff."

Six hundred twenty-seven pages later, few questions have been resolved, but considerable solace can be taken from the fact they were asked in the first place.