Saturday, April 21, 2007

BILL MOYERS SLAMS MEDIA'S PRE-WAR COVERAGE

Next week, PBS welcomes the triumphant return of "Bill Moyers Journal" with a 90-minute documentary "Buying the War," a sharp indictment of the media's coverage of the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Bill Moyers returns to PBS Wednesday night with a smackdown of the media performance leading to the Iraq war
Greg Mitchell at E&P got his hands on an advance copy, and rates the program highly:
"While much of the evidence of the media's role as cheerleaders for the war presented here is not new, it is skillfully assembled, with many fresh quotes from interviews (with the likes of Tim Russert and Walter Pincus) along with numerous embarrassing examples of past statements by journalists and pundits that proved grossly misleading or wrong. Several prominent media figures, prodded by Moyers, admit the media failed miserably, though few take personal responsibility."
Mitchell also lists some statistics Moyers cites in the show:
Number of William Safire op-eds "fanning the sparks of war" in the year before the invasion: 27
Number of front-page Washington Post stories during the same period that made the Administration's case for war: 140
Number of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on CBS, NBC, and ABC in the six months prior to the war traced back solely to a White House source: Nearly all of them

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