Was US press an enabler of the Iraq invasion?

There was plenty of scepticism and many more who advocated caution and further investigation by the UN inspectors. The inspectors found very little. The press was fed by cherry picked intelligence much of it from suspect sources who had axes to grind with Hussein and told interrogators what they wanted to hear. The whole episode shows how any argument to "expert authority" and supposedly reliable sources should be viewed with considerable caution especially when it is known that a certain policy is favored. The Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq and overthrow Hussein long before the war.


May 30, 2008 / New York TIMES.Was Press a War 'Enabler'? 2 Offer a Nod From InsideBy BRIAN STELTERIn his new memoir, "What Happened," Scott McClellan, the former WhiteHouse press secretary, said the national news media neglected theirwatchdog role in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, calling reporters"complicit enablers" of the Bush administration's push for war.Surprisingly, some prominent journalists have agreed.Katie Couric, the anchor of "CBS Evening News," said on Wednesday thatshe had felt pressure from government officials and corporateexecutives to cast the war in a positive light.Speaking on "The Early Show" on CBS, Ms. Couric said the lack ofskepticism shown by journalists about the Bush administration's casefor war amounted to "one of the most embarrassing chapters in Americanjournalism." She also said she sensed pressure from "the corporationswho own where we work and from the government itself to really squashany kind of dissent or any kind of questioning of it." At the time,Ms. Couric was a host of "Today" on NBC.Another broadcast journalist also weighed in. Jessica Yellin, whoworked for MSNBC in 2003 and now reports for CNN, said on Wednesdaythat journalists had been "under enormous pressure from corporateexecutives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in away that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation."On Thursday, she clarified her comments in a blog post, writing thather producers at MSNBC had wanted their coverage to reflect thepatriotic mood of the country.A spokeswoman for General Electric, which owns NBC and MSNBC throughits division NBC Universal, declined to speak about the specifics ofthe comments but said, "General Electric has never, and will never,interfere in the editorial process at NBC News."http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/washington/30press.html