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

Kristina Borjesson (Editor)

Book Description

Release date: October 1, 2005

In Into the Buzzsaw, the award-winning exposé of investigative journalism, Kristina Borgesson shattered the silence about efforts to quash the public's right to know the truth. In Feet to the Fire, she breaks new ground by offering candid, often alarming conversations with America's most distinguished journalists and news executives, revealing what they really think about the companies they work for and each other, the Bush administration, their pre-Iraq war and war coverage, and much more.
Focusing on the post 9/11 crisis period, Borjesson has interviewed ABC’s Ted Koppel, Hearst Newspaper’s Helen Thomas, Paul Krugman of the New York Times, Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Associated Press President/CEO Tom Curley, Harpers publisher John MacArthur, and many others. This collection of masterful interviews unveils a journalistic environment that rivals any long-running soap opera on television. Filled with astonishing personal stories, conflict, and drama, Feet to the Fire gives readers the rare opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of this nation’s most powerful journalists and news executives and experience their highly stressful environments.
With each new and revealing interview, Borjesson gathers devastating details from national security and intelligence reporters, White House journalists, Middle East experts, war correspondents, and others. Like pieces of a terrible puzzle, these conversations combine to provide a hair-raising view of the mechanisms by which the truth has been manufactured post 9/11.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Borjesson, an award-winning investigative reporter turned media critic, gathers an impressive list of journalists in what purports to be "an oral account of the current era of crisis," but the author is less interested in her group's answers than whether they agree with her premises: the Bush administration is evil, the American media are largely complicit, and the American public is idiotic. Throughout, Borjesson focuses on botched coverage leading up to the war in Iraq. Her "questions," some amounting to an entire paragraph, others more statement than inquiry, rankle some subjects and motivate others. Ted Koppel bristles at Borjesson's sweeping judgments, while New York Times writer-economist Paul Krugman follows the author's lead almost to the edge of reason. Other times, Borjesson doesn't even listen to her subjects' answers; upon hearing Washington Post special projects reporter Barton Gellman give a thoughtful argument for reconstruction stories ("journalism after the fact") as a valuable way to explain how things happened, including the Bush administration's successful campaign for war, Borjesson smugly rejects the notion: "But you understand how presenting this evidence after the war instead of while the case for war is being made is totally moot." Flawed, yes. Totally moot, no. And Gellman, for anyone who cares to pay attention, impressively explains the difference. In fact, this book is full of such insightful commentary. Just skip the questions.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

American media has garnered severe criticism, particularly abroad, for failing to more vigorously question the Bush administration's insistence on going to war against Iraq. In this collection of interviews with 21 journalists, Borjesson offers a penetrating look at how top reporters regard the efforts by themselves and their colleagues to cover the war and the efforts of the administration to conceal or obfuscate their policy on Iraq. Ted Koppel, anchor of Nightline, known for asking tough questions, asserts that he has never been censored, while White House correspondent Helen Thomas laments the pressure on reporters not to appear unpatriotic by questioning the motives for the war and how she has become persona non grata with the administration. Among others interviewed are author Ron Suskind, Washington Post reporter Anthony Shadid, historian-blogger Juan Cole, former New York Times correspondent Christopher Hedges, NPR's Deborah Amos, and Knight Ridder correspondent Hannah Allam. Editor of the highly acclaimedInto the Buzzsaw (2002), Borjesson once again shines a penetrating light on the failures and virtues of American journalists at this crucial time. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 575 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (October 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1591023432
• ISBN-13: 978-1591023432
• Product Dimensions: 1.5 x 6.3 x 9.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,310,541 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting peek behind the curtain November 30, 2005

By C. Watson

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Whatever your political views, if you ever wonder why what is reported in the news media doesn't seem to track with reality, this is an interesting book on the subject. As one reviewer noted, the questions are pretty leading (even obnoxious) at times, and the editor's biases are unquestionable. However, in fairness some of the "answers" dodge fairly straightforward and important questions. The insights as to how journalists cover major events are worth these minor complaints. How information is gathered and presented is a vital element of our society, and this book is an important contribution to understanding what is flawed in that process.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very demanding, but read it nonetheless September 20, 2006

By Stefan Isaksson

Format:Hardcover

Quite frankly, I don' think I've ever read a books as important as Feet to the Fire. At least not while trying to make sense of the contemporary conflict between the West (i.e. North America) and the Middle East with its numerous Muslim countries and inhabitants.

In this thorough 627 pages long book, Kristina Borjesson interviews the key players in the North American journalism and media scene. And she does so using straight-forward and honest questions. Except the current war against Iraq, which dominates the greater part of the book, other things such as the Bush administration, news reporting in the aftermath of 9/11, censorship in the media, and much, MUCH more. She's never afraid to ask both controversial and troubling questions, in other words those very questions that many people have been thinking about but never given an answer to. And luckily for us, the interviewees are willing to answer.

Of the book's more than 600 pages, most contains paragraph after paragraph of useful information. It goes without saying that a complete summary of a book with a scale as massive as this one can never be accomplished in a short book review, but one thing is certain: in case you do manage to read the entire thing you'll get a new and sometimes very troubling look at the state of world politics and warfare. Forget the impersonal images you've seen in the news and never mind the stale reporting coming out of most newspapers: here you'll hear from the people who've actually been there, who've been in the heat of gruesome battle; the people who'll tell you just how tragic this reality really is.

I could spend the rest of the night talking about all the big names and all the important stories found in the book, but then this review would probably never come to an end.... Instead, I must emphasize the importance of Borjesson's work.

Because that's really what's so great about this book. Both Americans and Europeans (and, of course, the people in the Middle East) will learn things from reading it, but they will learn DIFFERENT things. Americans will learn how much of what they're being told by their own media often is just incorrect, but not only that, they'll also come closer to an understanding as to why people all over the world tend to hate them as much as they really do. It's a tough thing to learn, but reality is seldom beautiful, and it won't get a whole lot better with ignorance.

It's well-known that a great deal of the European population (along with the rest of the world) look at Americans as a whole as arrogant, fanatically patriotic, and extremely close-minded (even though all of us who've visited that country know this is not the case with every single American), and Feet of the Fire will help explain why these twisted images have become so prevalent.

You won't finish this book in an afternoon while relaxing under the sun at your local beach. It's a very demanding book that you'll have to devote a lot of hours to, but please, don't let this scare you from buying it and reading it. It's much too important to miss. Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Valiant Effort June 17, 2008

By Mark Watterson

Format:Hardcover

I must say, I had higher expectations when I read this book. Nevertheless, we can't blame editor Kristina Borjesson. The book consists of a number of chapters divided by individual interviews of 21 "most distinguished" journalists. The questions, centered around the media drumbeat for the Iraq War, are all asked by KB, and while they are fairly tough enough, the responses are, quite frankly, lame. These journalists have no iota of a notion of holding themselves accountable for one of the biggest atrocities that mankind is capable of committing-War! KB probes and probes, but most of these shills just don't get it. I was particularly disgusted at the raw naivety of Ted Koppel. This guy is NOT looking out for America. He's looking out for his paycheck. There were a few journalists who gave some good genuine answers like James Bamford and the Harper's reporter, John MacArthur. But more importantly, there is a lesson here, and that lesson is that YOU, American citizen, have to use your OWN critical thinking and ask the tough questions because the mainstream media has profits to make and they don't maximize those pathological profits in an era of peacetime status quo...Now, take a look back in history and notice the same irresponsible journalism surrounding WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, etc...infinity...hundreds of thousands of American soldier deaths (and civilian)...for nothing...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Journalists reporting on themselves January 4, 2010

By R. Baker

Format:Hardcover

You might well assume that a 2005 collection of interviews with journalists would be irrelevant in 2010, given how much has changed in the interim. But reading Feet to the Fire, I was struck by how many really important and timeless themes come out from these surprisingly candid assessments of the craft by some of its top practitioners. Kristina Borjesson interviewed figures such as Ted Koppel, Helen Thomas, and Ron Suskind at a time when journalists were coming to terms with the full scope of the lawlessness and deceit that characterized the George W. Bush administration--and with the failures of the media to do its job in bringing the truth of the situation to the American people.

Sometimes, the observations from the featured journalists are self-serving, but the bulk of what they have to say--about everything from the influence of sophisticated propaganda in shaping public opinion to the proper role of the media during wartime--will surprise and sometimes astound. It's especially compelling where reporters take their own employers to task for contributing to the mess, as does Washington Post national security correspondent Walter Pincus. Or when a Ted Koppel is willing to put some of the blame where it belongs--on an incurious and lazy audience.

Feet to the Fire should be standard issue in classrooms, but, more, it is something that will enlighten all thinking people. Anyone interested in finding new and better ways to explain our times would do well to read this book.

[Russ Baker is author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years]