Now They Tell Us: The American Press and Iraq (Paperback)

~ (Author), Orville Schell (Preface) "THE COALITION MEDIA CENTER, at the Saliyah military base in Doha, Qatar, seems designed to be as annoying and inconvenient as possible for reporters..." (more)
Key Phrases: aluminum tubes, nuclear program, Saddam Hussein, The Washington Post, Knight Ridder (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Over 500 reporters were embedded with military units to produce news coverage of the war in Iraq for American media outlets. As Michael Massing explains, this did nothing to prevent the coverage from being dependent on sources sympathetic to the White House. The embedded journalists saw only a small part of the war, while their colleagues back home refused to report on the ample evidence showing the pre-emptive war to be misrepresented by the Bush administration. Meanwhile, reporters at the Coalition Media Center were afraid to challenge the information (or more accurately the non-information) they received at the military's press briefings because of the threat of not being called on in the future. The result was American coverage of the war that seemed to show "a war of liberation without victims." Since the end of the war, however, it has been a different story. The media as a group has begun to ask difficult questions about the evidence on which the war was based and on how that evidence was used. Massing highlights how the "contrast between the press's feistiness since the end of the war and its meekness before it" points to entrenched and disturbing features of American journalism.

About the Author

Michael Massing, a contributing editor of the Columbia Journalism Review, writes frequently on the press and foreign affairs.

Product Details

• Paperback: 91 pages
• Publisher: New York Review Books (August 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590171292
• ISBN-13: 978-1590171295
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #312,843 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "No one wanted to be proved wrong.", February 5, 2005

By	anomie - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)

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The title of Michael Massing's slim collection of essays, "Now They Tell Us" refers to the idea that American journalists failed to adequately present the facts about Iraq's alleged possession of the now-legendary Weapons of Mass Destruction. These facts, Massing argues, were available prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 3/03, but the facts were obfuscated, ignored, downplayed or buried.

The first essay, "The Unseen War" sets the stage for understanding exactly how most information about the war is delivered to the press. The essay begins with a description of the Coalition Media Centre in Qatar, and it's here that General Brooks delivers his press announcements. When "Now They Tell Us" was written, Jim Wilkinson ran the Coalition Media Centre. Wilkinson was also a spokesman for Rumsfeld during the 2000 elections, and he is currently Bush's deputy national security advisor for communications reporting to C. Rice. Massing describes how many reporters are reluctant to ask piercing questions (about civilian casualties, for example), as they are well aware that their names can be--as Wilkinson delicately phrased it--"put on a list." In other words, tough questions may result in not being called to ask questions at all. Massing also details some facts about al-Jazeera's coverage of the war and its emphasis on the civilian victims, and explains that even "live feed was being put on five-second delay" in order to allow MSNBC to edit out "disturbing" footage.

The second essay, "Now They Tell Us" focuses on intelligence used before the war to justify the invasion of Iraq. Massing discusses the controversy over the notorious centrifuge tubes, the debates within the intelligence community, and the conflicting reports regarding the flimsy al-Qaeda-Iraq connection. Massing particularly skewers the journalist, Judith Miller and the reliability of her sources. Ms Miller's gallant protestations that it's "not my job to assess the government's information" just doesn't hold much weight. That excuse might work for a gossip columnist, but after all, she is supposed to be an investigative reporter, and one would assume that means checking out one's sources. In the instance of the centrifuge tubes, Miller was contacted directly with doubts and concerns.

In the final essay, "Unfit to Print" Massing details the storm in a teacup occurring in the journalistic community as they examine, explain and justify their lack of accurate reporting prior to 3/03. I particularly enjoyed Massing's timeline illustrating the delay before some major U.S papers picked up the story about the Abu Ghraib scandal. Finally, Massing questions the notion that even embedded reporters are capable of reporting accurately about the war, and he illustrates this with a poignant example of a reporter who thinks she hears "the indecipherable chanting of muezzins, filling the air with a soft cacophony of Koranic verse." What the reporter heard and lyrically interpreted was actually cries "for ambulances and calls on the local population to rise up and fight the Americans."

Massing raises some vital questions regarding journalistic ethics, but at the same time, journalists are under tremendous pressure to keep their jobs, and get a story. As John Walcott from Knight Ridder explains, Bush's "management of information is far greater than that of any administration." According to Walcott, information management takes two forms (1) positive--"rewarding sympathetic reporters with leaks, background interviews and seats on official flights" and (2) negative--"freezing out reporters who didn't play along." Do journalists serve as mouthpieces for government policy or do they possess the ethics to stand apart and present fair, informative stories? Ultimately, with the internet available, everyone should seek out the news from multiple, international sources. Anyone interested in the subject of journalistic ethics should find this volume of essays a dry, but thought provoking, read--displacedhuman

5.0 out of 5 stars What They Didn't Tell Us, October 4, 2006

By	Eyes Wide Open "M" (New York) - See all my reviews

This collection of updated clips running in the New York Times Book Review 2003-2004 offers a detailed log of the American press and their coverage of the days leading up to and during the Iraqi war. Massing sharply points out significant miscues, misinterpretations, and just plain ignorance on behalf of news organizations' editors that have played a key role in promoting and supporting the Bush administration into a war. The silencing of dissenting voices in the administration, the news organizations, and even the democratic opposition only exaggerated the political climate in our nation deferential to the Bush administration. Fresh off the pains of 9/11, Bush had the support and patriotism of the American people and no one was going to challenge that. No reporter was going to run articles critical of the administration. Massing shows how significant a role NY Times reporters Judith Miller and Michael Gordon played in the days leading up to the war. It goes to show how much power the media can flex when the atmosphere is ripe. Read this for yourself and you decide.

7 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Curious who this book is directed to.. , January 19, 2005

By	Edward (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews

This is an excellent read detailing the failure of the US media to truly report the situation in Iraq. Mr Massing details many stories from independent reporters who have seen first hand the devastation that is happening daily which is never reported in the US.

Although I enjoyed this book, I am curious as to who it is aimed at... those who are truly interested in world news never watch mainstream US media anyway. They know that if you want to know what is happening in the world, any US news media is the last place to go... Those people who do watch the US news media, probably do not care to know any more than what is already reported.