Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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...

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.

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]

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.

Kristina Borjesson's "Feet to the Fire" is essential reading for anyone who cares about how we as Americans get our information and what top journalist have to say about the process. As we enter a new decade in 2010, we can look back upon the previous decade as one full of misinformation, propogandized and devisive with disasterous effects resulting in two costly, and apparently endless wars, bankrupting our coffers and the errosion of the Rule of Law that allows for honest justice. The undermining of our media was in no small part responsible for the mess President Obama has inherited. To best understand where we are today, we must look to the events of the past decade and the perceptions of top journatists who were closest to these events. This book is a must-read in that understanding. Kristina has amassed about a dozen interviews of journalists such Koppel, Arnett, Suskind, Krugman, Lasseter and others of importance reporting on the war on terrorism. We face great challenges bringing the destructive era during the Bush Administration to an end. The architects of misinformation are still in operation.

Feet to the Fire: The Media after 9/11 stands as an extraordinarily well-documented warning about what happens to a citizenry when its press has been intimidated, bullied, or silenced due to war hysteria. We find CBS's Dan Rather admitting that fear of seeming unpatriotic afflicted some of the nation's top journalists, including himself, and prevented them from asking the tough questions that were needed during the buildup of war in Iraq. Then there's veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas, who did ask probing questions of President Bush only to be made persona non-grata, effectively removing her from the only scene where a president can be questioned: at a White House press conference. And God-forbid if a reporter uses the word "liar" to refer to the Commander in Chief, as Paul Krugman ruefully reveals. These and the many other lessons emerging from Feet to the Fire should be read, re-read and widely discussed as a new administration escalates the war in Afghanistan. When the press suffers, so does the ability of citizens to make informed decisions about their leaders. For this reason alone, Feet to the Fire should be required reading in every college journalism department across this country.
Charlotte Dennett, lawyer and investigative journalist

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.

These interviews with top journalists about the conditions they work(ed) under in Viet Nam, Afghanistan, and Iraq are enlightening. It becomes clear that corporate concerns do bias the news we are allowed to see. That is why a variety of viewpoints is essential. A good introduction to the practice of journalism when the country is at war.