How the New York Times Helped Sell the War
From Michael Massing, here’s a long but really excellent article on how the New York Times (among other media outlets) helped the Bush administration make its case for war by hyping bogus WMD intelligence and downplaying the concerns of those who thought the administration was giving a one-sided version of reality: Now they tell us.
Particularly interesting to me is the way Massing points out that in the run-up to war, most major daily newspapers in Washington and New York were running front page stories that were largely supportive of the administration’s position. Stories that were critical tended to be consigned to page 10 or 15. That’s an aspect of the coverage that I didn’t really notice at the time, since I was reading most of the stories online, following links from third parties or Google search results or what have you.
