Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11, Top Journalists Speak Out

This is quite an interesting book, comprised of in depth interviews with many of the leading reporters who have covered Iraq and other wars over the years. The focus is on the following: Why did nearly all the US media roll over liked whipped puppies and regurgitate the Bush administration's bulls**t in the run-up to the disastrous Iraq war? Not only that, why did so many of them behave like cheerleaders for the effort, going so far as to report the opening days of the war as if they were at a spectacular fireworks extravaganza? The 'answers' are few but the indications are many - commercial considerations, laziness, a pathological fear of being painted as 'liberal' or 'unpatriotic' - all of these things played a role. Having been played like a fiddle by the Bushies, the media predictably began to get its revenge in Bush's second term. And while Bush and the gang are unlikely to ever be able to manipulate the media at such a scale again, what's to prevent it from happening with future administrations? Unfortunately, this book does not have those answers.

As a broadcast journalist I read this book to understand how my colleagues could have been so laxed in reporting and investigating the issues, post 9/11, that led to war with Iraq. I came away not only with a greater understanding of those issues, but with insights both sobering and frightening about the profession I work in. This book is not just for journalists, but for anyone who believes in freedom of the press and for people who care to understand how things really get (or do not get) reported.

Author Borjesson strings together fascinating interviews. The words of David Martin(CBS) and Ted Koppel(ABC) go a long way to explain how most big media FAILED us in the march to war in Iraq. Conversely, John MacArthur of Harpers, Chris Hedges at the NY Times, Juan Cole and James Bamford (among many) give insightful perspectives on US reporting. Bamford is especially worthy of praise. His brutal honesty on the topic of Israeli misdeeds will irk some, but Bamford's words and his terrific piece of CURRENT reporting on efforts to start a war with Iran shows us that all is not yet lost when it comes to reporting what the public NEEDS to know.

In the interests of full disclosure, I worked as an editorial consultant on Feet to the Fire. Having said this, I can't begin to emphasize enough, how solidly reported, how thoroughly researched and how much care was taken with each and every interview in this book. I believe the book achieves an incisive and eye opening look at how the events of 9/11 affected 21 of the most renowned national security and war correspondents in the US. One of the things I like about the book is how you can pick it up, read any chapter, in any order, and you will be immediately drawn in to that individual journalists' mind set and point of view. In these days when greater transparency is a baseline requirement in journalism, Feet to the Fire really provides an important service and allows the American people to get inside the heads of the people who bring us the information without which the American democracy would not function.

A great reference book for anyone interested in the printed word and the betrayal of the Americam people by the popular media. First it confirmed a sense of outrage I had felt in the days leading upto the second attack on Iraq when the popular press (including the NYT)reports were mouthing the party line yet at variance with the real experts like Hans Blix, Scott Ritter and Dilip Hero. And then after I read in Borjesson's book the interviews with the likes of John MacArthur, Paul Krugman, Helen Thomas, James Bamford, Juan Cole and all the war correspondents, I felt that all was not lost. There was still room for hope. Of course the most poignant lines in the book are written by the author herself, in the second half of her last paragraph in the introduction when she suggests what may save this country. Ms. Borgesson's final vindication came recently long after her book was published when Knight Ridder papers, the only ones who consistently made the correct call and held the administration up to the light, winning no less than eighty four Pulitzer Prizes in the process, was fractionated and sold as they were not profitable enough. As for the question of bias someone mentions, it is as in Newtonian Physices where the pull away from the abyss has to be in an opposite direction.