Now They Tell Us ─ The American Press and Iraq

Michael Massing describes the war in Iraq as "the unseen war," an ironic reference given the number of reporters in Iraq and in Doha, Qatar, where the Coalition Media Center dispensed little real information as the fighting went on. A combination of self-censorship, boosterism, the limitations of "embedding" reporters with military forces, and the small number of US journalists fluent in Arabic deprived the American public of dependable information during the war and after.
Once Iraq was occupied and no WMD's were found, the press was quick to report on the flaws of pre-war intelligence. But as Massing's analysis demonstrates, pre-war journalism was also flawed, as too many reporters failed to independently evaluate administration claims about Iraq's weapons programs. The press's postwar "feistiness" stands in sharp contrast to its "submissiveness" and "meekness" before the war - when it might have made a difference - and few news organizations have truly faced up to what went wrong.

Michael Massing is a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and a MacArthur Fellow.