Gordon certainly irritates because of his sycophancy and stenography, but I found it equally aggravating for reporters like Burns and Ricks to lay out everything that wasn’t working in Iraq and then to conclude lamely that was why we needed to stay. Somehow I don’t think that qualifies as great reporting to define a quagmire and then opine that the thing to do is stay in it.

I think that is true for Gordon, who in my view is guilty of journalistic malpractice under Bush. It’s amazing to me that he still works there. Burns is more complicated and I don’t think it’s correct to say he backed the Bush line. He did however think the war was justified. I’m sure he would say it was appallingly conducted, as well. Which is not the Bush line.

Mike: if you do the book with reporters who have covered Bush and the political “wars” he and his crowd fought at home, I think you would have a much harder time getting candor and perspective from the journalists involved. I don’t believe the press is even close to confronting its multiple failures in domestic reporting.

Indeed, it intends to move on without ever staging that confrontation, thinking the subject well chewed over by now. When in fact, like steroids in baseball, the accounting hasn’t even begun. Thus, a much harder book.

I think on the whole the journalists on the ground in Iraq have done a great job and deserve a lot of applause, and thanks, and credit for what they accomplished under brutal and dangerous conditions.

Words fail me.

Dubhaltach

I think on the whole the journalists on the ground in Iraq have done a great job

Some of the most important reporting from Iraq has been done by John Burns and Michael Gordon at the NYT, and both pretty much backed the Bush line.

“I just wonder to what extent the decision to not challenge readers is a response to the dwindling of newspaper circulation and to what extent it’s a cause.”

In a way, it’s the question of our time.

Some comments occasioned by this thread.

I think on the whole the journalists on the ground in Iraq have done a great job and deserve a lot of applause, and thanks, and credit for what they accomplished under brutal and dangerous conditions. The news organizations that have kept fully staffed teams in Iraq, at great expense, deserve a lot of credit too.

It’s the reporting on the Bush Administration and its politics at home, especially in launching, explaining, defending and describing the war, that the press has fallen down. Mike’s example of Bremmer and the unreality of what he was saying, compared to what the reporters were seeing, touched on it a little.

I’d love to see a book interviewing the reporters who covered the Bush wars at home.