Dear FRONTLINE,

I teach here at Hampton University and I was relieved to see that Earl Caldwell, an essential player, was included in the opening report. It is difficult to have a credible discussion of the Plame/Judith Miller case and not reference U.S. vs. Caldwell. Unfortunately, Caldwell's landmark case has been overlooked too many times in other analyses in last few years.

wayne dawkins
newport news, VA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I'm an avid viewer of Frontline and have always found your reporting/presentation to be comprehensive and understandable. That is until I watched News Wars - Part I, not once but twice. Let me get this straight: Someone from the WH, and you seem to insinuate perhaps Rove or Libby or Cheney, blew Valerie Plame's cover as a CIA operative at the end of a long interview with (as the final twist in this story) Carl Bernstein. Now, working backward, this is where your coverage appears to me to obfuscate, throw the thoughtful viewer off track, disorient, or perhaps, in a more cynically description, actually seeks to distract, at a very inopportune juncture in the logic line of the narrative, so as to avoid the of question of whether such a leak is criminal.

Then, a flashback leads us through the history of the gray legal area of reporters' privilege. And then, back to story, and the off-hand inference that nothing about the leak was criminal, just dirty politics as usual, but the press accounts and legal machinations in all this were: a) a waste of time, b) a waste of "ink," c) gave the WH more power to abuse, d) left the press in a worse position then before the WH leak, e) outing a CIA operative is okay, and finally, f) all of the above.

Excuse my language, but WTF!!!! If you want to tell this "news wars" story, set it up right. Tell us up front that that the WH committed treason. Remember: who, what, when, where, why and how! Then go on to the five W's and H about how they have subverted the First Amendment. Or, perhaps, we are suppose to get one other message from Part I, that is Frontline has also bowed to the government's recent effort toward media castration.

Charles Valenza
Ocean Grove, NJ

Dear FRONTLINE,

Apathy! We go to our jobs, we come home and plug ourselves into our televisions and watch other peoples lives - editted and scripted to portray what the powers that be want us to see. We follow stars lives and we're more interested in if Hilary is gay and have no idea what she would do for or to our country.

It's all been said before in this discussion but it's times like this that are very scary for this ordinary teacher and mom. Who does care? Who is really watching? Reporters like Lowell Bergman are few and far between. He's reporting about what's really important. He's watching out and over. There are very few people out there who are brave enough to put the facts out there without the fear of repercussions. What happens when he and his contemporaries are gone?

There was a time when reports of the nature given here would have destroyed a presidency. Now unless your reporting about the presidents suspected plastic surgery, no one's interested.

Investigative reporting is one of the average persons last line of defense against corruption in government. I applaud this report and Lowell Bergman for his guts and sense of responsibility. Is it enough to empower me to move beyond my apathetic generation or has it scared the crap out of me and made me feel justified in my eternal procrastination? Where does one begin?

Jennifer Bergman-Gilman
Danforth, Maine

Dear FRONTLINE,

I believe strongly in the value of an independent press. I believe in a journalist's right to protect sources. However, I cannot understand the idea that a journalist should go to jail to protect a top administration official who goes on deep background to smear an opponent.

When the decision to go to war was rightly questioned by Joe Wilson, the Bush administration did not pull out the valuable, secret intelligence that showed without a doubt why we rightly went to war - because there was none. Apparently, they cooked the intelligence to make the case for war before they declared the pre-emptive strike on Iraq.

There was no whistle-blowing in Plamegate - except by Joe Wilson, who made his case publically in his NY Times editorial. Wilson and his wife soon found out that public declarations like this left them vulnerable to attack by the very people who lied us into war in the first place.

The notion that a highly placed administration source can smear people anonymously is not a privileged right to be protected. For a layperson like me, someone who is not a journalist, the idea that they should be so protected is incomprehensible. Frankly, highly placed political sources should be aware that expensive lawsuits and a jail term could result from subverting the democratic process in this way.

In examining the issue of a journalist's right to protect smear experts like Rove and Libby, we take time away from a far more important topic - how could this administration - which was so convinced that we'd be enveloped in a mushroom cloud if we did not attack - be so wrong? What really led us to the war in Iraq?

Anne Ward
Libertyville, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

Dear Frontline:

In your "Press Reaction" section, David Friend of the New York Times writes, "In the end, the achievement of 'News War' is to remind viewers of the fundamental principles at stake in this showdown between the government's desire for secrecy in the post-9/11 age and the journalist's ability to report what Mr. Woodward once termed 'the best obtainable version of the truth.'"

If he seriously thinks the Times' reporting on "WMD's" and "The Plame Affair" to be 'the best obtainable version of the truth,' then he ought to say so, and not hide his defense of Miller's reporting behind wear-dated statements by great icons, like Mr. Woodward, or the hollow statues of some of the minor icons interviewed for your series, for that matter.

In fact, "the best obtainable version of the truth" is no standard at all. Best in what sense? Man bites dog sense? Or plausibility, i.e. dog bites man sense? Is there such a thing as a 'best...truth' in a slanted approximation of plausibility emanating from known liars and transmitted with perfect anonymity through reporters of doubtful track record? That's what it came down to at the Times.

I don't want to read 'the best obtainable version of the truth.' I want to read what everyone involved in the story has to say, and I want to read statements by people who are willing to sign off on what the say and to be held accountable for what they say.

The ambassador and his wife put their names, lives, and reputations on the line to tell their story. Whichever partisan propagandist and well-known spin artist fed the Times the administration 'version of the truth' did not. How simple does the equation have to be for the Times to figure it out? Apparently the ethical equation needs to be reduced to its basic form for Mr. Friend, which is why I write this.

Three cheers for Frontline for being the necessary catalyst for change.

Christopher Sweet
Mundelein, Illinois

Dear FRONTLINE,

I was riveted to Part I. I had a choice at graduation: go into journalism or go into government. I ended up in local government for 33 years, and often ended up as a press contact for my agency. I always was honest with the press, and frnakly regarded it as performing a public service to insure that reporters understood our programs.

What I did not count on was the public's mounting disinterest in what their governments (local, state, federal) were doing, unless it was sensational. This apathy has come back to haunt all of us, because those with less scruples have begun to manipulate the public to accept their own skewed policies.

They are to blame, and as Pogo once said, "Them is us."

Rahn Becker
Arnold, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

The potential weakening of the notion that journalists have the right to protect their sources is very disturbing.

Although these sources may also be important to a legal case, the press' function is more or less equally as important to American society as is that of the judicial system. Without the press' ability to be an effective watchdog and source confidentiality playing an important role, Nixon's corruption would never have been fully brought to light via the exposure of the Watergate affair -- remember Deep Throat?

On the other hand, in the case of the Plame affair, the confidentiality issue might be seen as one where confidentiality was actually abused by the sources, endangering an intelligence agent's cover for the purpose of damaging her spouse's reputation in order to discredit a point of view that was not consistent with the government's, and attempting to use reporters, witting or unwitting, as conduits. Perhaps such a distinction would be valid and might help to preserve something of journalist-source confidentiality.

Nevertheless, I'm disturbed that a reporter was made to sit in jail in order to try to force her testimony, in a case where she clearly felt that the relationship of journalist and source was legally protected and there was still a legitimate legal argument to be made in favor of her position. I say this even though I am in favor of the end result that was desired, which was to expose some of the corrupt goings on in within the current presidential administration.

If indeed we were to lose journalist-source confidentiality, while keeping attorney-client confidentiality, I think it would be a case of the judicial system taking itself seriously at the expense of the very important function of the press, which after all was put into the very first amendment to be added to our Constitution, and with good reason. Although the press should not become a fourth branch of government, I think there are many times when its function in our society should be taken as seriously those of the branches, adding a key component to our system of checks and balances by giving teeth to the public's right to know.

Thomas Marshalek
Bloomington, IN

Dear FRONTLINE,

I really like watching this episode of FRONTLINE. I am really concerned though how we can "bend" the consitution around the law, a law that is in place for the benefit of national security, such as outing a CIA offical.

How can this ever be okay??? If I, not a member of the press or a federal or for that matter a government offical outed a CIA offical or releasing CLASSFIED information I would be arrested. Doesn't that make sense??? This law actually makes sense to this Liberal.

bob harty
Wheaton, Illinois

Dear FRONTLINE,

As usual, your intial segment on the crisis in the American press is an excellent examination of the issue. I really feel that the comments of Tom Rosenstiel go to the heart of the matter.

The inversion of the use of confidentialilty resulting in protection of those in power from accountability for their spin ( historically known as propaganda) I fear is simply an extension of the market model in everything in the US (hence the mutual elites) and simply makes a mockery of the public's right/need to know. Ironically this comes at a time when more and more journalists the world over are indeed giving their lives on the ground to penetrate the marketing spin behind the news.

The Iraq war debacle has resulted in the destruction of an entire country, which is a very serious matter. I am still not sure that my countrymen have any idea how dangerous the consequences of this might be. Bravo Lowell Bergman. Looking forward to the next chapter.

Carole Bahou
New York, New York

Dear FRONTLINE,

Although I agree with many other comments here that this first report was timid, I also applaud you for this Web site, for providing this discussion board, and especially for offering your programs online. I would not otherwise be able to watch them.

I would like to mention two insightful writers whose books I cannot recommend strongly enough. One is Eric Boehlert. Read "Lapdogs" for an intelligent critique of everything that is wrong with the news media today. Another writer, Mark Crispin Miller, has been a commentator on the media for decades and I recommend EVERYTHING he has written, including "The Bush Dyslexicon" and "Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order."

Cindy Ross
Mesa, AZ

Dear FRONTLINE,

After viewing "News War" series, I thought it was a pointless waste of time. With very few exceptions, it consisted of a left-liberal interviewer talking with a long and predictable series of liberals, who invariable took the same tired, profoundly dishonest and self-aggrandizing liberal stance. The American viewing public already gets that every day on innumerable shows and channels. Do we really need yet another?

Beyond this, I was very irritated that Frontline doubtlessly knew, before production of this series began, that Mr. Wilson's Niger written report actually supported the Bush Administra-tion's claims, and that Mr. Wilson lied afterwards on too many points and on too many occasions to keep track of.

Frontline was probably also well aware, before production of this series began, that the Special Prosecutor became aware near the beginning of his inventigation that Armitage was the leaker, and that the law specifies a limit of five years after CIA undercover work, whereas Ms. Plame had not worked under cover for six years, so a "leak" was absolutely not illegal, no matter who did it. So we had this prosecutor carry on for years, secretly knowing the identity of the "guilty" party all along, and well aware, before the investigation even began, that no crime had been committed. Frontline fails to mention any of this.

The only real story about this (which Frontline would never cover in a 100 years) is how the press gleefully and eagerly went along with this lying charade, hoping that it would somehow hurt the President or some of his people. What suddenly happened to the public's "right to know", which they constantly cite? Frontline's keeping these absolutely critical facts (and many others) silent are shameless and outrageous lies of omission, and Frontline is guilty of knowingly acting in bad faith.

Practically the only statement of value in the series was at the beginning of the first installment, when the announcer said that the American people view their media with ever increasing disdain. Unfortunately, we can now add Frontline to the list of media that have chosen to squander their credibility in order to try to push the liberal party line, even if it entails lies, critical omissions and distortions.

Santa Barbara, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

Two major media failures in the run-up to Iraq:

The press at the time had a virtual blackout on the fact that there were a large number of U. N. arms inspectors in Iraq who were reporting that they were finding no weapons even when they looked in the places the Bush administration said there were such. The fact that they were pulled out because we were going to start bombing regardless received little coverage in the main stream U.S. press. This point was not mentioned in Part One of the Frontline series.

Additionally, media coverage neglected the actual depth of the effect of Ms. Plame's outing on the nation's security. It involved the destruction of Brewster-Jennings as a front for CIA activities in some 27 countries and the arrest or possible death of co-opted foreign citizens. This point was not mentioned in Part One of the Frontline series.

C. K. Roberts
Austin, TX

Dear FRONTLINE,

For a while now my attitude towards American Media is that it is dead and no one wants to do a post-mortem on it to find the cause. Your program is in a way an eye-opener.

Thanks for the wonderful work.

C K
sfo, ca

Dear FRONTLINE,

Good to see such a variety of comment on such a variety of important issues.

I note that the seeming non-sequiter, -- "The 16 words, however, were not based on forgeries." -- in the unsigned comment from Milford, Massachusetts, frequently appears, word for word, in comments made by self-defined Administration supporters on the internet, and refers to remarks in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address regarding proof of Saddam's claimed nuclear ambitions.

Also note that one of the issues raised by the series -- press performance in reporting on intelligence claims made by the government -- may be at least partially driven by lack of knowledge about the intelligence process on the part of some reporters. Lack of knowledge is no sin, of course, but it might explain why appropriate questions are not asked by the press at the right time.

For example, information gathered by intelligence agencies is always evaluated by them on two separate but complementary scales, one scale measuring reliability and number of sources, the other measuring credibility of the information based on multiple, independent, credible confirmation. While questions regarding actual sources and methods employed by an agency in gathering intelligence are out of bounds, questioning regarding the reliability of source(s) and credibility of the information should be asked but seldom are.

Best wishes.

Sam Thornton
Burwell, Nebraska

Dear FRONTLINE,

John Pulitzer said "Our republic, and its press will rise or fall together. A cynical, mercenary demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself."

How can the press justify the death of Anna Nicole Smith as more media worthy than mass genocide in Darfur? How is this justifies as the public interest? The media belongs to the people.

During the Reagan administration, the FCC redefined what was in the public's interest by dramatically altering FCC regulations on all media. The partisanship involved in who decides what is the public interest has comprimised our democratic processes. But I truly doubt we ever had them to begin with. When the media is giving people 'what they want', how is it that the public even knows that is what it is, when there are no other options presented. If corporations operate contrary to the safety and integrity of our republic, then their corporate charters need to be removed. That is how a real democracy works.

Ryan Blum-Kryzstal
Brooklyn, NY