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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Gulf War Coverage By Jim Naureckas The morning after the U.S. began the bombing of Iraq, NBC's Robert Bazell reported the Pentagon's assessment via the Today show: "It was spectacular news," Bazell summarized. "We've lost only one casualty." Other networks were similarly ecstatic. CBS's Charles Osgood (1/17/91) described the early bombing of Iraq as "a marvel," while the same network's Jim Stewart (1/17/91) spoke of "two days of almost picture-perfect assaults." The war ended on the same note of enthusiastic cheerleading from the media, with CBS's Dan Rather (2/27/91) pumping a general's hand after an interview and gushing, "Congratulations on a job wonderfully done!" The euphoria at the beginning and the end of the Persian Gulf War bracketed one of the most disturbing episodes in U.S. journalistic history—a period in which many reporters for national media abandoned any pretense of neutrality or reportorial distance in favor of boosterism for the war effort. As Hodding Carter, who once served as a State Department spokesperson, put it: "If I were the government, I'd be paying the press for the kind of coverage it is getting right now." (C-SPAN, 2/23/91) Or in the words of a U.S. colonel who handed out little flags to pool reporters: "You are warriors, too." (London Independent, 2/6/91) A few journalists chafed at sacrificing professional standards: "We have sort of become adjuncts of the government," one correspondent in Saudi Arabia told New York Newsday (1/23/91). "The line between me and a government contractor is pretty thin." To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1518 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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