Media Coverage Books

Al-Jazeera is the all-Arabic TV news channel which burst on to the international scene in the wake of September 11 and the war in Afghanistan. Its unfettered access to that country during the war and its showing of the bin Laden tapes made it an automatic force on the world stage.Based in the Gulf state of Qatar, it came from the remnants of the BBC Arabic TV service. With the help of startup money from the Emir of Qatar, Al-Jazeera was to have complete editorial independence.In a part of the world where the press is usually government controlled, Al-Jazeera is not afraid to get specific and name names. At one time or another, it has been criticized or condemned by seemingly every government in the Arab world, for broadcasting things that the local government would prefer not be broadcast. Every local editorial of condemnation and every denial of press credentials to Al-Jazeera reporters just increases its audience all over the world by satellite.One of the things that Al-Jazeera is most known for is its talk shows, especially a nightly, two-hour show called The Opposite Direction. Two guests appear on the show, with totally opposite opinions on a certain issue, and with help from live phone calls, the sparks fly. Even by American TV standards, things get pretty loud and lively. Arab governments have noticed, and have begun imitating the format on their tame and boring government TV channels.Even though Al-Jazeera is an Arab TV channel, it has tried very hard to be impartial, hosting members of the Bush Administration, after September 11, and government officials from Israel.For those who want to decide for themselves if Al-Jazeera is a legitimate news broadcaster or a terrorist mouthpiece, this book is highly recommended. It's comprehensive, clearly written and is quite enlightening.

All the reviews I've read for this book have been unequivocally complimentary. One newspaper said it should be required reading for Bush's entire cabinet! Quite bold, but rightly so. After reading this book, I came to the realization that everything Al-Jazeera is courageous enough to air, my own country's media is petrified of. I wonder why our government is so afraid of a democratic Arab world? While the dozens of titles coming out on the Middle East are regurgitating the same history and concepts, this book is a refreshing new look at a MODERN Middle East, not a primitive and orientalized one.

This is a great book and I highly recommend it for everyone striving to know about the Arab media from an objective perspective. The book will inform you about the Arabs' struggle for freedom of speech through an unbiased Arab network that is not subject to the control of any government. The authors have succesfully portrayed the true picture of the Arab media scene through Arab eyes.

Al Jazeera is giving us a vivid and moving picture of a New Arab World in the making. There is no way to go back in times. This media channel is succeeding to keep one step ahead of many others advancing, foreign or local, TVs.
Live transmissions are notably courageous in their way struggling so hard to persuade local (and influential) governments to let them work into the `heart' of the stories being anchored, against the background of petty local political bickering and futility.
It is not easy, but the beauty about it is that it is also challenging, and a source of pride to millions of Arabs

Collaboratively written by Egyptian born Middle East journalist Mohammed El-Nawawy and Middle East media expert Adel Iskandar, Al-Jazeera: How The Free Arab News Network Scooped The World And Changed The Middle East is a fascinating and informed history. This is a superbly presented account of Al-Jazeera, a modern, independent, entirely Arab television news network based in Qatar, which since the September 11 attacks, gained high profile prominence through daily exposure on CNN. This is also the compelling story of Al-Jazeera's struggle to keep its independence as an international news network, beholden to none. Overall, Al-Jazeera is an engaging, unique, detailed study of the origin of the Al-Jazeera network, its broadcasts, its effect on Arab viewers, and its struggle for a free press. Al-Jazeera is very highly recommended for Journalism Studies and Mideast Studies supplemental reading lists and academic reference collections.

A great insight into the world of the 'forgotten superheros', the people who deliver the news of the tragedies that occur. This is very interesting, giving lots of different points of view from across the affected area. It could have done with more pictures and photos, but the stories of the pressure-filled newsrooms paint a good enough picture to keep you interested throughout this book.

The authors do an amazing job of letting the stories stand on their own in providing readers with a rare and engaging look at how the press responded to a national tragedy. Even just one year later, Running towards Danger, is already an important piece of American history.

The photographs and the reporters' accounts of their September 11th experiences are a piercing and necessary reminder to all Americans of why the war on terrorism must be won.

From Library Journal Reviews ; October 1, 2002 Tuesday By Audrey Snowden
The Newseum, an interactive museum of news located in Arlington, VA, was operating as usual on September 11, 2001. After seeing smoke billowing from the ravaged Pentagon, its staff members immediately closed the museum and worked through the night assembling an exhibit of wire service photos from around the world. This book is the outgrowth of that initial exhibit. What sets it apart from the plethora of books on 9/11 is its focus. Told chronologically through 100 first-person vignettes and 75 powerful color and black-and-white photographs, the book covers the varied experiences of members of the press. Big-name anchors weigh in, but the stage belongs to the reporters and photographers who usually work behind the scenes. Authors Trost, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, and Shepard, award-winning media critic, provide a firsthand - and very human - look at the process behind the coverage, revealing how the immediacy of ongoing television and Internet coverage helped journalists, photojournalists, and anchors shape a nation's perception of a tragically unique day. A valuable addition, especially to school libraries. - Audrey Snowden, formerly with Clark Univ., Worcester, MA
Newseum with Cathy Trost & Alicia C. Shepard. Rowman & Littlefield. 2002. c.256p. photog. ISBN 0-7425-2316-0.

This is a round of fraternal applause for American journalists, who earned everyone's sincere respect on September 11th. Journalists from all levels of the profession who were on the story are interviewed. Their tales are then spliced up and laid out in chronological order, from onset to post-traumatic jitters. The professionalism on display here is absolutely superb. Most people have some idea of how hectic the job of getting the news produced each day is. Here we have the spectacle of these brave professionals getting the job done minus most of their familiar tools and surroundings, and plus a soul-sucking fear that they or their colleagues are about to die. No smirks, no condescension, no "women and minorities hardest hit" credentializing.

So is this book an adequate tribute to them? Yes. Can't go wrong. The text is punchy and hot-off-the-presses, and the photos really crackle. There is a problem, though.

The book seems to discriminate against Foxnews. Apart from a screenshot of Shepard Smith and a photo of a correspondent at the Pentagon, Foxnews is excluded from this collection. This is very strange, since Foxnews is based in New York and is the number four American news network, behind the networks and ahead of CNN. Could it be that the Newseum staff who edited this book don't consider those eeeevillll conservatives to be *real* journalists? That's a nasty thought, but what other explanation could there be? Even a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, in town for a fashion show and caught up in events, is quoted multiple times. To be sure, staff from the Wall Street Journal are quoted extensively, as their offices were hardest hit.

Apart from that, the book is gripping. The journos' professional instincts snapped into action. Taking to bicycling when traffic congeals, giving the cordon police the slip, phoning Mom to relay a report second hand, the ingenuity and dedication is impressive. There's also a seldom-reported sensitivity. Some reporters pitch in with relief efforts. Some cry along with the sobbing victims they are interviewing. There's only one case of a reporter getting the bum's rush, from some firemen who were trying to catch their breath.

We get all meat in this book. The actual TV broadcasts that day were teeming with hastily miked-up guests experts, helping the gabbling anchors fill air time until actual news got into their earpieces. But ever the pro, Peter Jennings signaled for silence on the set when the towers came down. No comment was necessary.

It might have been nice to include a story or two from a West Coast news outlet. When the attacks happened, I couldn't get into any of the national news websites. I finally connected to the Sacramento Bee's site. The webmaster was frantically posting up wire photos and rolling copy through, with what must have been a small, sleepy crew.

And then in a few weeks things were back to normal. NPR's Loren Jenkins blurted in an interview that he would "smoke out" and disclose the location of any U. S. troops on a secret mission, if it meant getting the story. The TV news people harrumphed at Fox for wearing lapel flags, fearing that the sight of the national flag on the set would signify support for the Bush administration and not the country as a whole. Reuters insisted on calling Arab terrorists "militants", and putting "terrorism" in skepticism-implying quotation marks. The liberal pundits covered the Afghan war like children in the back seat whining "Are we there yet?" New York Times editorial page editor Howell Raines concluded that the war on terror was Vietnam II, and used his page of that august newspaper to try to block further retaliation. But even with all its faults, the American press is mano-a-mano the greatest in the world. It's inspiring to see this record of how great it was on a day when it laid its faults aside.

As I have watched the news on TV or read about it in the morning papers I have often felt that you really have no idea what's going on behind the fancy hair-dos and the giggling laughter. It's only when you read the books some years later that you begin to understand what really went on.

I had presumed that this was a fairly recent phenomena -- I was clearly wrong.

This book shows that it existed at least as far back as the Civil War. In reading news stories from both northern and southern papers you sometimes have to wonder if the two papers are talking about the same events. It is further interesting in that in most conflicts we don't have access to both sides. What, for instance, were the North Vietnamese papers saying?

An absolutely fascinating book. I'd recommend that anyone thinking of journalism as a career read it. But that probably wouldn't do any good, you'd have to get their managers to read it and they only think about ratings, i.e. 'if it bleeds it leads.'

But the world has changed. I think I'll go see what al Jazeera is saying today.

This book is both beautifully written and illustrated, with a fascinating selection of newspaper articles linked elegantly by Coopersmith's crisp and informative prose.

I was really impressed with this book. I think it will appeal to a broad range of people; those with general curiosity about war, and those "history buffs" who want to delve even deeper into fascinating documents they probably have never seen before. Not only are the illustrations interesting and unique, but they are beautifully presented. As a middle school teacher, I would encourage students to use Dr. Coopersmith's book as a resource mostly because it is timely, complete and compelling. Moreover, his coverage of both the Union and of Confederacy is thorough and accurate. An excellent book, indeed.

This book is indispensable for understanding the Civil War. Fortunately, it is also a joy to read. It helps demonstrate how battlefield and home front blended in the nation's most transformative conflict: what happened at home influenced what happened in the field and vice versa, and this book helps readers understand exactly how the two touched each other. Moreover, the book offers readers a glimpse of what it was like to live through the war. What would it be like to have a loved one in the Army and scan newspaper pages anxiously for any word of his regiment? What would it be like to be a soldier in camp, desperate to know what is going on outside the often chaotic confines of army life? More than any other, this book offers insight into those questions. It also helps show how the conflict changed over time. Students respond beautifully to the book. Scholars learn from it. General readers enjoy it. For any audience, this book is a real gem.

Andrew Coopersmith's Fighting Words is an eminent work of exquisite scholarship. The book is beautifully presented and a welcome addition to my personal library. I recommend it to the general reader for its unique approach to difficult subject. There are many books on the market which tell the story of the Civil War over and over again. They tend to look alike. This book is like no other in the field. The average reader will enjoy the read far more than he may have expected and will quite simply be amazed at the presentation and encouraged toward further reading and understanding of the conflict.

Serious students of the Civil War will find ample material for their own research. History Departments at all levels will find it an excellent text. My highest recommendation, however, is that every School of Journalism should incorporate Fighting Words as a prime text in the study of the impact of journalism on society. The NEWSEUM should look into a presentation of Fighting Words when it opens its new headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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I just finished this book in the last couple of days. Excellent all the way through. Carefully crafted examples of what was right and WRONG with the media coverage of the Tet 68 Offensive during the Vietnam war, and the war overall, show the problems with the reporting: in some glaring cases, the bias. I specifically could relate to recent conflicts the comments made about the speed of a story from the start of an event to publication and how that sometimes led to the wrong analysis and conclusion.
The perceptions set forth by the media, either deliberately or by editing mistakes, to the population were in cases wrong and led people in a path to make decisions based on faulty information. For a long time I wondered if my opinions and own analysis of the Vietnam conflict were ill conceived. This book put those concerns in their proper place: even though it was a terrible event, maybe the US could have been done with it sooner and with a better result for all had the true facts, as the media could gather, come to light for the general population instead of an inherently flawed approach with a lot of bias added.
Given that the book was written by a Journalist in the middle of it all gives great validity to the book: yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

How could LBJ forget the blunders of a limited war established by the mistakes of Harry Truman in Korea in less than 12 years? The author outlines all of the questions that cannot be easily answered. How do you end a war once it started? How do you justify the costs in blood and money? And How do you define victory? The writer seems to say, Limited War is like Marriage, easy to get into and hard to exit. The book will enlighten every reader and all American politician responsible for foreign policy should read it. A Superb book for students, professors and men and women in power so it won't happen again.

Peter Braestup's book on the reporting of the Tet Offensive is a critically important book to read for those trying to understand the effect of reporters' all-too-human bias on what information the average citizen has available to him or her, as well as for those looking to find out not only what went wrong in Vietnam, but what the United States and its allies (including South Vietnam) did right - an aspect still all too overlooked.
Though it is critical of some particular newspeople, as well as some politicians and military spokemen of the Vietnam era, the book is highly constructive in tone. Many of the lessons pointed out by Braestrup two decades ago have clearly been taken by the media, judging by the general improvement in war reporting during the current (as of fall, 2001) events in Afghanistan.
It is also a must read for those who question the abilities of democratic states to defend what they believe in.Braestrup lays bare the notions of the time that the allied forces - from ARVN to the U.S. Marines, were not effective, or that they were a corrupt force for undesirable ends.
An added bonus is that Braestrup is a gifted writer; his prose is readable and engaging, and his research is thorough and well documented. This book deserves to be brought out in a new edition (though I did buy mine through the Amazon's used book marketplace, and received excellent service there).

A thorough critique of the press coverage of the Tet Offensive. Amazingly, the press almost universally got it wrong. The U.S. and the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) actually won the battle; the Viet Cong were decimated and never recovered as a fighting force (The regular North Vietnamese Army shouldered the major fighting from then on). It took the NVA (North Vietnamese Army) four years to build up enough strength for another major offensive (1972), which led to the Christmas bombings of Hanoi and the "peace accords."

Written by a journalist, this book is critical but not ideological; the press is not "the bad guy" here. There is plenty of blame to go around. The military misrepresented the strength of the Viet Cong, for its own reasons, and the press went on to misrepresent the battle for its own reasons. The real heresy of this book is revealing how the ARVN and U.S. forces aquitted themselves exceedingly well on the battlefield. Was the war "winnable" on the ground? It certainly wasn't "winnable" politically, but credit should be given to the servicepeople on the ground (and in the air) who did in fact win the battle tactically and strategically.

The original edition was published by Westview Press in 1977; Yale University Press issued an abidged version in 1983 and 1986; another edition was published by Presidio Press in 1994.

This book was a real eye-opener for me. As a Vietnam veteran who served in Vietnam in 1967-68-69-70 and 71, I had always held fast to the premise that media coverage of Tet 68 sabotaged the possible successful conclusion of the Vietnam war in our favour. I had always believed that the american press had deliberately skewed their war coverage towards the negative side.

Braestrup's well documented study of press coverage of the Tet 68 offensive made me re-think all my knee jerk attitudes towards the press.

He presents meticulous summaries of coverage by the major american newspapers and television networks. While some individual papers and networks might have had an anti-war bias most tried to give balanced coverage.

When Braestrup gets into the logistical details of the in media coverage of the war, he really enlightens us. It's easy in hindsight to assume that todays wall to wall coverage of world news was the norm in Vietnam. Braestrup shows us in great detail the limitations in personnel and technology that constrained media coverage of the Vietnam war

If you read his analysis, compiled from his own in-country experience with an in depth analysis of most major news outlets reporting from Vietnam during the war, you as a reader are enlightened and forced to rethink your own pre-conceived notions about the subject.

I found this work one of the most illuminating works of modern history that I have even read.

It's interesting just from Braestrups first hand retelling of his own part in history as a practicing journaslist. His analysis of journalistic coverage of the Vietnam War is incredibly stimulating and educational.

I highly recommend this work to war correspondents, editors and journalism students interested in getting war coverage just right.

John Reid

Excellent text for the communication specialist or media analyst in search of background on how the American public gets its news about breaking stories -- especially those in which the US Government has a clear policy interest. "Media Access and the Military," using the 1991 Gulf War as a case study, gets as close to "tell it like it is" as we are likely to get on this subject.

For someone who experienced the Gulf War on assignment in Israel and got the report of the Iraqi attack through CNN moments before hearing the first Scud missiles slam into Tel Aviv, "Media Access and the Military" by Judith Raine Baroody is a fascinating read. An extremely insightful, carefully researched analysis of the Gulf War, the study looks beyond the pyrotechnics and smart and not-so-smart bombs that captured public imagination at the time to the crucial role of the press and its interface with the warriors. It's a story not often told, but told here extremely well -- by a seasoned diplomat who is also a scholar and former TV anchor. It is clear that this book will be the definitive statement on the subject for years to come and an absolute must-read for the military and embassy professionals who are called upon to handle public affairs issues during our next war.

Readers in international affairs will greatly benefit from reading "Media Access and the Military." The first and last chapters offer a lively discussion of freedom of speech, of what is considered for public knowledge during a war and how this issue is resolved from the point of view of the press and also from the military point of view.

Journalists and researchers will find the appendix very useful, as it includes the research questionnaire and the list of interviewed persons.

The book also offers a concise history of the Gulf War. Scholarly books have no obligation to be "a good read," but I found it extremely interesting.

For someone who experienced the Gulf War on assignment in Israel and got the report of the Iraqi attack through CNN moments before hearing the first Scud missiles slam into Tel Aviv, "Media Access and the Military" by Judith Raine Baroody is a fascinating read. An extremely insightful, carefully researched analysis of the Gulf War, the study looks beyond the pyrotechnics and smart and not-so-smart bombs that captured public imagination at the time to the crucial role of the press and its interface with the warriors. It's a story not often told, but told here extremely well -- by a seasoned diplomat who is also a scholar and former TV anchor. It is clear that this book will be the definitive statement on the subject for years to come and an absolute must-read for the military and embassy professionals who are called upon to handle public affairs issues during our next war.

The definitive study of this important issue, written with clarity, effective argumentation and comprehensive research. The oral history or the negotiations between the press corps and the Department of Defense is perhaps the most interesting and accessible portion of this TEXT, and gives an insight into the evoling nature of government/media relations.Overall, a valuable contribution to the field.

As we watch the reruns of the news, it's almost surreal, how the run up to the Iraq invasion and the far reaching Patriot Act had such very little scrutiny. Since that time there have been a number of popular treatments of this phenomenon. This is the first one I've seen that is written and documented in a more academic style.

The author's background in psychology shows in that she spends a lot of time on group think, fear of criticism and intimidation. She covers all the other areas, such as corporate consolidation and how the bureaucracy itself was used to orchestrate unified messages.

The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man Named Silvio Berlusconi tells a similar tale of the power of coordinating a media message. In the case of Berlusconi, the media mogul and the government fully join and the effect on democracy is equally negative. Interestingly, the only news to break through the propaganda in Italy is a news parody.

I would expect more works of this time will emerge, emphasizing different aspects of this problem or discussing comparative studies. Hopefully some will be devoted to remedies.

Even before 9/11, I had been increasingly disturbed by the disconnection between the reporting of news in the USA and what I receive via my satellite connection from France, Germany and elsewhere. In the post 9/11 world, the gap in factual reporting and astute interpretation between US media and much of the rest of the world became positively bizarre. What could explain this cultural shift in news reporting, this apparent decay of the US Fourth Estate?

Lisa Finnegan has squarely addressed my bewilderment in her new book, No Questions Asked, itself an excellent example of reportage. The title says it all. In the fallout from 9/11 reporters and news analysts stopped asking questions. Better to say, they stopped asking hard questions, they stopped asking follow-up questions, they stopped asking embarrassing questions.

Why? Finnegan cites and documents the reasons and the trends.

Patriotism and groupthink. US Americans and their news reporters like much of the rest of the population were emotionally overwhelmed by the events of 9/11. They lost it, so to speak when it came to examining the causes, hard facts and political motivations surrounding this unheard of attack on the US homeland. Once lost, independence of perspective was next to impossible to regain. A quagmire of unqualified patriotism and groupthink suffocated independant thinking and inquiry. Under stress, the culture had shifted to blind survival values. Dissent, when not attacked as treason, was dismissed or omitted was slightly reported and relegated to the back pages. The media willingly and even eagerly accepted direction from the government on what to write and not write. Being the government's mouthpiece was suddenly a virtuous thing to do.

Growing media monopoly. The culture of newsmaking and news selling had been in a process of transformation and consolidation. Media giants and moguls left little room for independent thinking when the emphasis is on profits in an enviornment of political, competitive and advertising pressures. Embarrassing questions sap power and cost money, as they often inquire into power and money. Cost cutting reduces time and resources for free and first hand investigation. Corporate and editorial policies are aligned to sell what they think people want to hear. They must bow to public opinion and so it is extremely important that they create it favorable to themselves. Post 9/11 reporting became a tug of war between broadcasting insecurity and promising security in the form of clear, easy answers. It delivered the poison and gave the recipe for the antidote in the same paragraph.

Gentrification of the newsroom. Finnegan also shows how news reporters themselves had changed culturally and socially. Through the first half of the 20th Century, US news reporters seemed to largely stem from the US working classes, with strong connections to the mainstream of the time, and possessed of considerable street sense. They smelled and instinctively distrusted political and corporate interests. Today many successful college educated writers and anchors have moved into upper class wealth and have few if any first hand experiences of the realities they could and should in many instances be reporting.

Tailor made news. Add to this, the "selling of the war." Vast sums of public money have been used to hire public relations firms and professionals to not only spin the political priorities of the Bush administration but to actually write the news reports and articles to be distributed to media both home and abroad.

Sacrificing objectivity for access. Few of us with outside perspectives could resist the temptation to replace "embedded" with "in bed with" when discussing the construction of war reporting in Afghanistan and Iraq. Reporters all but became part of the US military itself, while "unilaterals," independently moving reporters were excluded and even fired upon by US forces. US Americans got to see a sanitized version of the war, which, as Finnegan points out in a magnificent metaphor, amounted to "seeing the war through a soda straw." Foreign media and direct footage were carefully filtered and censored and the costs of the war in US and other casualties were deemed uninteresting. On the political scene access to administration news conferences was restricted to those who asked safe questions--troublemakers lost their credentials and were isolated from news sources. Language is continually reinvented to mask unpleasant realities. Collateral damage, insurgent, and the like, cover the nakedness of civilian gore and resistence.

The power of Finnegan's analysis of the recent history, this cultural shift in media and news reporting, could perhaps be written off by some as a rant from the left. However, the author has carefully let the newspeople on all sides speak for themselves. The book is packed with quotations and reflections on the part of people who are household names in the USA: Rather, Chung, Maher. Blitzer, Amanpour, and numerous others. Despite the clear evidence of dereliction of the duty to ask questions, many are still likely to excuse themselves or blame other forces for their temerity and seduction than to apologize and address the issues. The core US value of "speaking up" here as elsewhere seems to be replaced by CYA.

In time, reality began to seep through the cracks. No WMDs, lots of real torture, flouting of the Geneva Convention, gutted constitutional rights, and above all the callous response to Katrina's victims are starting to bring home the terrible lack of investigative mettle and the ability of the both the USA as a nation and its media to see and criticize themselves.Will this lesson be taught and learned and make a difference? Finnegan offers steps back to honesty, responsibility and sanity, but how do you fix a broken mirror...?

[...]Bungling the WMD Story

No Questions Asked: News Coverage Since 9/11
By Lisa Finnegan
[...]

By Carl Sessions Stepp

Carl Sessions Stepp (cstepp@jmail.umd.edu), AJR's senior editor, teaches at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland.
Here's an idea: Turn a psychologist loose on journalists.

Lisa Finnegan is a former newspaper and magazine writer who earned a psychology degree and now studies "the psychology of terrorism and its impact on the media." Here, she analyzes why the U.S. press became so meek after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Many others have documented the press' letdown in fulfilling its adversarial role after 9/11. Seeing the problem is easy. Explaining it is harder (see Books, August/September). So Finnegan's rather studious approach, drawing on individual and group psychology, holds promise for not only understanding the failures but pointing toward reforms.

Obviously, whatever went wrong has potentially staggering costs: the top terrorist still on the loose, a war spun out of control and a civil liberties crisis at home. Finnegan criticizes Congress and the public itself, among others, but she firmly casts central blame onto the media.

Why did journalists, who at least in their own imaginations form a fearless and independent Fourth Estate of relentless truth seekers, buckle so easily? How did an administration that couldn't seem to accomplish much else tame these watchdogs into marginalized yappers?

Finnegan's most provocative proposition is that press docility stemmed from a calculation of self-interest. "American journalists determined that in the highly charged environment that followed the 9/11 attacks, believing the administration's claims and keeping their questions in check best served their interests," she says. "To do otherwise could have led to ostracism by the administration and the general public, and possible harm to their careers."

Their motives? Profit and prizes, Finnegan says. In the run-up to the war, for instance, she charges that the media "highlighted alarmist viewpoints, minimized alternative perspectives, convinced the American public that the need to go to war in Iraq was urgent, and then gathered their Pulitzers and justified their work."

Unfortunately, Finnegan doesn't back this with evidence. She does show examples of media failure, and quotes journalists who felt intimidated. But she makes no substantial case that their submissiveness was intentional, and none that it was driven by a Pulitzer quest.

If her look at material motives rings false, however, her psychological analysis seems more convincing. It starts with the simple power of patriotism. After 9/11, she writes, "journalists were shaken..they were focused on the fact that the United States was vulnerable, and deemed everything else unimportant." So they didn't probe the breakdowns that let the attacks take place, scrutinize the administration's response or effectively resist its moves to control information and divert attention. Some even wore lapel flag pins.

The press hardly squeaked when the government tried to turn the debate into what President Bush called "a black-and-white choice with no grays." Or when his spokesman Ari Fleischer warned, "All Americans..need to watch what they say." Or when Attorney General John Ashcroft complained, about those who questioned the Patriot Act, "Your tactics only aid terrorists."

Finnegan also believes many reporters were personally "traumatized." She quotes a New York photographer as saying that "the most jarring thing was seeing myself and my colleagues just fall apart on the job."

Intimidated and fearful, some journalists turned to government for safety and reassurance. Finnegan says this may have been especially true among the more than 600 journalists embedded with troops. That led, she says, to becoming overprotective of authorities and slow to chase bombing errors, torture and policy failures.

More darkly, she suggests a U.S. policy of "targeting journalists," especially those who tried to operate outside the official embedding system. After several international journalists were killed by U.S. forces, a Pentagon spokesperson warned against independent reporting. "We are saying it is not a safe place; you should not be there." (See "Close to the Action," May 2003.)

Overall, Finnegan believes, the press lapsed obediently into innocuous "groupthink." "During times of uncertainty," she contends, "reporters tend to be more subservient than objective."

This part of Finnegan's analysis rings truer: a press at first respectful in the face of tragedy, then unduly passive under the pounding of hardball politics and propaganda.

If this is human nature, as Finnegan suggests, then is there a cure? At least, she says, you can "minimize your vulnerability to such manipulation." Her suggestions boil down to detachment and determination: Ask hard questions, pursue documentation, seek comments outside the party line and follow up on loose ends and claims. It seems like pretty good psychology: Just use your head.

NO QUESTIONS ASKED: NEWS COVERAGE SINCE 9/11 surveys the American media and its manipulation post-9/11, considering how the facts were misunderstood by the American public due to the lack of the right questions from reporters, and pinpointing mistruths about the war in Iraq and the nature of the threat of world terrorism. An eye-opening survey of democratic process and news reporting emerges which holds particular impact and importance for any college-level library strong in media studies.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

I enjoy books about the Civil War. This was a great way to learn about the war from the people who were watching it. Nowdays, we have wars such as the Gulf War on television. Here were the folks who HAD to be your eyes and ears. This would be a great book to have high school classes read as a comparison to seeing a film about Vietnam or Desert Storm, just to see the contrasts. History classes in American History and Journalism would also benefit. For the general public, unless you are interested in these topics, it is a lot of detail to absorb.

From the Kansas City Star Magazine, (October 10, 1999) "The love-hate relationship between the newspapers and the men who fought in the Civil War is just one of the subjects of Brayton Harris' Blue & Gray in Black & White: Newspapers in the Civil War . . . [In an interview, Harris said] "Before the Civil War, the newspapers in the United States were primarily opinion sheets for their editors. By the end of the war, they had actually become newspapers in the way we know them today. . . .One thing that came through is that nothing really has changed except technology . . . the media works the same way today that they did in 1860. Reporters do the same dumb, or brilliant things. Publishers sometimes put profits above ethics then and they do now.'"

From the Washington Times (October 2, 1999) "Mr. Harris' book is a compelling account of how the Civil War led to the emergence of the press as a power on the national scene. It gives fresh insight into how a cast of visionaries and tough reporters -- along with some rogues and crackpots -- used that power to shape the way the nation viewed the war the and for all time . . . .This book is the first full treatment of the subject of press coverage of the Civil War since a pair of books by J. Cutler Andrews nearly two generations ago . . . Readers may be distracted by some of the author's digressions . . . [but] the value of "Blue and Gray in Black and White" outweighs any quibbles. . . . Journalism is viewed as the disposable first draft of history. What Mr. Harris' book makes clear is that taken as a whole, the work of combat correspondents created a record of the war that has formed our perceptions and fueled our imaginations ever since." --

Finally, a comprehensive book on Crisis Management Planning written for the Construction Industry by someone who has worked in the field!

This book is well written and easy to read. Janine Reid takes the reader step by step through the process of developing and implementing a comprehensive plan for any size company. The question and answer format allows for easy reference and the media relations information is excellent. This book should be on every Contractors "must read" list.

This should be required reading for any CEO, President, or business owner! This is a comprehensive, very readable guide to identifying potential crisis situations, avoiding them when possible, and dealing with them when they happen. An indepth guide to surviving the bad things that can happen to any comnpany, this book is a step-by-step guide to creating your plan, and carrying out that plan.

This is an informative book. It covers a crisis situation from the beginning to the end and helps you create a crisis management plan for your business. A must read for construction and design business owners and management.

It's about time someone began some dialogue on something that should have been addressed a long time ago. It's voices like this that allow me to rest a little easier...just a little. I'm recommending this book to all my students and friends.

Just a wonderful read. It is about time a book like this came out.

Thought provoking ideas spring from every page, cover to cover. A must for journalists or those studying journalism and those who simply want to be more informed about what is going on in our media today. In this time, when understanding diversity is so important in our current culture, I couldn't recommend this book more.