New Frank Rich Book, Critical of Media, Draws Rave in 'NYT'

By: E&P Staff Reporters and editors at The New York Times have sometimes been disappointed to find their new books receiving lukewarm, or cold, reviews in the pages of their own newspaper. This decidedly is not the case for columnist Frank Rich in this Sunday's edition of The New York Times Book Review.

Ian Buruma, the well-known author, in a front-page review, offers enthusiastic praise both for the book and most of Rich's commentary, which is extremely critical of the media for shirking its watchdog role in the runup to the Iraq war. The Times itself gets hit by its own columnist

The book, published by Penguin, is titled, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold." Besides its focus on the media, the main "point of Rich?s fine polemic," Buruma writes, "is that the Bush administration has consistently lied about the reasons for going to war, about the way it was conducted and about the terrible consequences. Whatever the merits of removing a dictator, waging war under false pretenses is highly damaging to a democracy, especially when one of the ostensible aims is to spread democracy to others. If Rich is correct, which I think he is, the Bush administration has given hypocrisy a bad name....

"Yet ? and this is where Rich is particularly acute ? most serious papers published the White House claims on their front pages, and buried any doubts in small news items at the back.... Bob Woodward, the scourge of the Nixon administration, wrote 'Bush at War,' a book that seemed to take everything his White House sources told him at face value." A few less powerful operations -- such as Knight Ridder's Washington bureau -- took a mainly skeptical view.

"How could this have happened? How could some of the best, most fact-checked, most reputable news organizations in the English-speaking world have been so gullible? How can one explain the temporary paralysis of skepticism? This is perhaps the most painful question raised by Rich?s book, since his own newspaper was clearly implicated," Buruma writes.

"There may be one other reason for the fumbling: the conventional methods of American journalism, marked by an obsession with access and quotes. A good reporter for an American paper must get sources who sound authoritative and quotes that show both sides of a story. His or her own expertise is almost irrelevant. If the opinions of columnists count for too much in the American press, the intelligence of reporters is institutionally underused. The problem is that there are not always two sides to a story. Someone reporting on the persecution of Jews in Germany in 1938 would not have added 'balance' by quoting Joseph Goebbels. And besides, as Judith Miller found out, what is the good of quotes if they are based on false information?

"Bob Woodward, one of Rich?s chief b?tes noires, has more access in Washington than any journalist, but the weakness of his work is that he never seems to be better than his sources.... Fearing the loss of access at the top and overrating the importance of quotes from powerful people, as well as an unjustified terror of being accused of liberal bias, have crippled the press at a time when it is needed more than ever. Frank Rich is an excellent product of that press, and if it ever recovers its high reputation, it will be partly thanks to one man who couldn?t take it anymore."