Dear FRONTLINE,

Frontline, nice job. I look forward to next week's installment, but I must have a word:

Back when I took poli-sci 101 as a freshman at Arizona State um teen years ago I was taught 'the media is the watchdog of the government.' I believe there was time when it was, no matter how hard a job it was. Now, big advertising dollars and TV ratings have stepped in and the media only tells us what we want to hear to get us to tune in.

The media (and most of us viewers) are hypocrites. As I recall, the lead up to the Iraq war was reported exactly as journalists acquired the WMD information from the White House -- no more no less. Everyone -- including a unanimous UN Security Counsel and US Congressional vote -- thought they were there and this was the justification for war.

Now, after the fact, we've all learned they weren't there. In a sort of 'Monday morning quarterbacking' the popular thing to do is slam Bush and the Administration and it's faulty intelligence gathering. The media is doing the exact same thing it did leading up to the war -- reporting what everyone wants to hear --and we're all watching and gladly agreeing.

I feel it's time for the media to stop worrying about what they look like in the monitors, start digging for the real truth, and get back to what they used to do best. Maybe then 'as watchdogs' -- and gathering the correct WMD intelligence -- we would have averted war.

James Stellhorn
Scottsdale, AZ

Dear FRONTLINE,

I understand a rule of good journalism is: Don't raise unanswered questions. Yet Frontline commented that former reporter Judith Miller was not well liked in the journalism community, or words to that effect, raising the question Why? but not answering it. Similary, Frontline reported Ms. Miller "had parted ways with the New York Times" but again did not explain why.

Hal Holden
Vancouver, B.C.,

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

On the web site for "News War," in the INTERVIEWS area, check out some of these sections: 1) Judith Miller 2) The Failures on WMD reporting and 3) "When the Press gets It Wrong." Some top players on all of this offer some candid, insightful comments.

Dear FRONTLINE,

The money quote in this program is Lowell Bergman asking Floyd Abrams, regarding the appellate court's opinion in Branzburg, "Is it possible that given the bad facts in this case, and given the decision to fight this on principle, that in the end what you did was make bad law?" Abrams responds, "it's possible, it's possible."

Lowell responds, "you got the appellate court to affirm Branzburg, [a decision] which your friend Goodale and his allies have been trying to avoid for decades."

Abrams replies, oozing ruefulness, "it seems to me there are some fights which have to be fought."

The heart of the Appellate opinion referred to is highlighted text shown prior to this exchange, written by conservative judge David Sentelle, (one of the three judges who brought us Ken Starr, as persecutor-in-chief of Clinton's dalliance): "The District Court held that neither the First Amendment nor the federal common law provides protection for journalists' confidential sources in the context of a grand jury investigation."

Poof! At a stroke, there goes the whole house of cards that Goodale et al. had worked so hard to construct -- a special privilege for the press that elevated their rights above those of the rest of us. A privilege that, had it been handled with greater wisdom, might have endured or been strengthened.

The past four decades of history behind this crucial exchange are filled with events that few people understand with more force and clarity than Lowell Bergman, who has done his share of superb reporting, while showing some real guts along the way.

I would love to hear Lowell himself explicate the thoughts behind his tart question to Abrams, but since I doubt he'll do that, let me speculate that what was behind his question was immense frustration that the biggest guns of the press, and the legal community that fights for their freedom, had wasted their resources in a futile and stupid fight "for principle" when all that was really at stake was the hollow conceit that the press should enjoy special privileges not granted to mere citizens. A conceit that, having been abused, has now vanished.

People like Bergman, who have actually had some real fat in the fire in these matters, would have loved to see the law bend in their direction, so they could enjoy more leeway to do gutsy reporting that afflicts the comfortable and comforts the afflicted. Instead, they saw the big-gun institutions go into auto-pilot mode, defending a principle that had been abused and twisted beyond recognition.

A principle that Lowell remembers being used to defend Woodward & Bernstein and Daniel Ellsberg -- who exposed the lies of the government nearly four decades ago -- was perverted to enable the highest-level officials of the Bush administration to lie to reporters, who then 'martyred' themselves to protect sources who had cynically spun them.

If I am right about this, then my respect for Lowell has gone up several notches. But as others here have pointed out quite bluntly, I think he and Frontline need to be much more hard-hitting about this.

The Achilles heel of the press is the seduction of being close to power. Reporters live in the most accountability-free zone of any the powerful elites in our country, and when they abuse the public's trust, their credibility is irretrievably damaged.

Ordinary citizens don't get exclusive one-on-one meetings with Presidents and cabinet officials. We schmucks out in the hinterlands rely on the members of the press who are granted such privileges to ask tough questions and hold officials' feet to the fire with informed skepticism.

The disaster of Iraq showcases the monumental failure of the press to fulfill this function, and Bergman knows this. I would like to know more about the depths of what I hope is his disgust with the squandering of the national press's hard-won credibility, and the ridiculousness of the charade of reporters like Judy Miller and First-Amendment stalwarts like Floyd Abrams making a mockery of the genuinely heroic efforts of many reporters over the years to get the truth out to a public that certainly does have the right to know when their government has misled them about the most serious issues.

Alex Kline
San Francisco, CA

Dear FRONTLINE,

The Valerie Plame/Miller/Libby case is not a good example of journalism vs. government.

In fact, this case is the opposite. Judith Miller and Robert Novak knowingly publish(ed) the Administration's talking points for the purpose of fattening their own wallets via "front page" stories and national syndication for the "scoops" the Administration feeds them. It is a plain case of quid pro quo.

Hopefully the following parts of your report will make this point. In today's mass entertainment media, it is not confrontation between journalists and government that is the problem, but the serious lack of journalistic integrity and ethics for the almighty dollar that has corrupted both the profession and the nation.

University Place, Washington

Dear FRONTLINE,

Prof Feldstein said it best..." to push our agenda againt any White House...". Mmm, it was a rather cozy relationship between the press and the White House than under the Clinton admin.

However, the admission of an agenda by the media, a group that has voted 80% democrat in the last 7 presidential elections by their own polling, tells me all there is to know.

Thomas Abolins
Eagle, Wisconsin

Dear FRONTLINE,

"Frontline", the WGBH series of investigative reports on various national and international topics, is now presenting a series on the case for immunity from prosecution for a reporter who refuses to reveal his sources to governmental authorities. That immunity has for many years been claimed under the 1st Amendment's protection for "freedom of the press".The case explored in the first program of the series is the one invoving the "outing" of CIA agent, Valerie Plame. In that case, several reporters were subpeonaed and asked to reveal the sources of their information that Ms Plame was a CIA operative.

The background that the Plame case and the contempt charges against Judith Miller are examined against is the Watergate reporting by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. If they had not been able to keep their source secret, the argument is made that those two reporters would not have been able to dig into the events that pointed to the Nixon administration's culpability in the Watergate break-in.I find two problems with that argument: one, the most effective activity back then in pushing the Nixon administration to the wall was the work of Judge Sirica, the federal judge who tried the Watergate break-in criminals.

The second argument is for me the most compelling: the "press" today is nothing like its Nixon era predecessor. Today, it is not the "press", it is the media but the difference is not just a word. OUr news is no longer reported, analyzed and opined by a large number of divergent news organizations. We have a very concentrated "press" of only a handful of broadcast and cable companies and another small handful ofpublishers. They, for the most part, are owned by large conglomerates, like GE, Disney, that have widespread interests outside of journalism.

Journalism today is part of the world of entertainment, and it is for sale in return for favored treatment of the conglomerates that own the media. For those reasons, the "press" no longer has the standing, as I see it, to claim that it serves a special role as a "watchdog" of our democracy or republic or whatever one wishes to call what we now have. I call it a plutocracy.

The failure of the media to dig into the claims of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had WMDs, that he was tied to Al Queda, that he was linked to 9/11, is not a small matter. It is clear evidence that our "press" is no different from any other self-serving entity that comes into a court of law. As such, I do not see that it deserves any special privileges.

The "press" is no longer an honored coterie of truth-seeking journalists and institutions. It is a money-making business, and its owners are beholden to the Defense and Justice Departments, the SEC, the FCC and the entire alphabet soup of federal agencies whose decisions affect the conglomerates' bottom line.

Alvin Hofer
Saint Petersburg, FL

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

Part III of FRONTLINE's News War series addresses some of these issues and we hope you will be able to watch it. It will be broadcast nationally on 2/27.

Dear FRONTLINE,

I did watch Frontline thinking it had to do with the Bush Whitehouse and the Press, and maybe it did but I was dissapointed that the mention of the one Newspaper that got the Selling of Iraq right was very brief, while Judith Miller , a known shill for the administration was given a lot of time to talk about herself. Even if the subject is not Iraq, there was much more to the relationship of the Whitehouse to certain reporters, how they use those reporters to not only get their opinions across but to fabricate and manipulate what are purtportedly facts. The psychology of embeding reporters with troops or in the Whitehouse and the control of what they see needs to be emphasized. When a reporters life or career depends on those about whom they are reporting objectivity and reporting of negative facts become very difficult. This Whitehouse has systematicly tried to destroy any reporting of dissent and to a large part have been very successfull.

The media shares responsibility for letting it happen. But forcing the media to accept any responsibility is impossible, given that this Whitehouse has mainipulated the FCC to allow a few people to own and thus control what is reported. We need only look at Bill Moyers experience on PBS. An excellent reference in this regard is Bill Moyers speech to the National Conference on Media Reform in Memphis in January. The transcript is available in the Dempocracy Now Archives for January 16, 2007 at .

Amy Goodman in her books 'Static' and 'Exception to the Rulers' gives an excellent explanation of the medias relationship to the Whitehouse. Hopefully she will be given as much time as Judith Miller in the remaining 3 segments.

Lincoln, NE

Dear FRONTLINE,

I thought the first part of the series did a good job of untangling a situation that I couldn't fully understand from the many reports of it in the media. So, number one, I'd love it if reporters would stop pretending that everyone understands the players and how they work, the same way the press does.

Finally, I agree with a previous poster that the willy-nilly granting of anonymity has been an example of the press shooting itself in the foot. Just the other day, another military dog-and-pony show for the press about Iran's weapons and evil designs on the free world was reported with complete anonymity in the American press. Only the news outlet Voice of Iraq named names (Major General William Caldwell). Why didn't our press? This surely is something that is so tragically like Iraq. Don't fall for it again!

Marilyn Ferdinand
Skokie, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

A typical Frontline -- thorough, well researched, well presented, thoughtful ... and timid. I watched part one and couldn't help thinking "they were afraid to go too far and risk their federal funding."

I was also struck by the absence of two of the most important voices on the subject in the country today -- Eric Alterman of "The Nation" (author of "What Liberal Media?") and John Dean (Nixon lawyer and author of "Worse than Watergate"). The show suffered terribly without them.

I still intend to watch the rest of the series, though. I agree with the Boston Globe reviewer who gave the first part a B . Perhaps improvements in the final episodes will raise the grade to an A.

Peter Adams
Framingham, MA

Dear FRONTLINE,

I watched the first episode and thought it well done.

But you almost lost me early on when I saw Joe Wilson. Why does Frontline, like most of the media, continue to lend credibility to this man? For whatever purposes, Wilson and his cohorts perpetrated a fraud by conveniently conflating two issues. Now, the conventional wisdom is based on a false premise.

The 16 words, however, were not based on forgeries.

Issue 1: Wilson investigated a report, based on the forgeries, that Iraq had signed a deal to purchase uranium from Niger.

Issue 2: Bush stated: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Note purchase from Niger vs. sought from Africa.

British intel and their Butler investigation remain firm that Bush's statement is true and accurate. Their intelligence was not based on the forgeries which had not surfaced at the time of the findings.

Some intel had come from the French who would not allow the Brits to share sources with CIA because of our intelligence community's inability to maintain secrecy. Without knowing sources, Tenet had to conclude that the claim should not have been included in the speech.

From various press reports, we've learned how the French and Italians may have obtained the forgeries, but we don't know who forged them. Might Frontline consider doing an investigation into their origin and use? Thank you.

P.S. Both the Butler Report and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report that references Butler are available online.

Milford, Massachusetts

Dear FRONTLINE,

I watched the first part last night, and it was mindboggling. It makes you think of today's media. You people deserve an Emmy for this. Nice job.

Plainfield, IL

Dear FRONTLINE,

I pray that Part One was merely an introduction of the players, otherwise we, the people, are left with yet another puff piece and example of how impossible it is for the media to criticize itself.

All I saw was media elitists given the chance to put the best possible face on their betrayals of public trust. When you media types pull a mea culpa it is in makeup, studio lighting and well prepared by their publicists but when we pull ours it is with bad hair slicked by the rain and the with the blue lights from the police cruisers flashing in our faces.

We are not able to bring the academic elite from the journalism schools to paper over our crimes.

We live in one America, you live comfortably in yours.

James McCabe
San Jose, California

Dear FRONTLINE,

It's a sad day when Frontline is reduced to such a timid and belabored approach to criticism of the press.

We have no free press now - except for blogs. The press is so consumed with proving non-bias that they no longer care about accuracy or usefulness of the information they convey. They have been tricked into this by the right wing and pushed relentlessly towards this place over a decade or more. Without a more radical change, they are doomed. No one will believe or care about what they say any more than Soviets cared about Pravda. This is not just a sin of commission - as in Plame - it's a sin of ommission. They did not help us see the reality of the situation. They are not doing their job and they are being paid way too much money for nothing.

Mary R
Fairfax, Va

Dear FRONTLINE,

I watched last evening's program and came away a little perplexed. If the the point was a lamentation on the demise of the "shield law" for journalists, then why no serious attention to the role played by the washington press corps in making this happen? The simple truth is that the washington press corps, for reasons we can speculate, cozied up to the very people it was supposed to cover. Granting confidentiality to administration sources who seek to spin the american public is not the same thing as granting confidentiality to whistle blowers. To the extent that this blew up in their faces, too bad. The american public was ill served by its fourth estate and no amount of spinning by Woodward, Miller et. al. (i.e. "we were misled"0 changes the fact that they CHOSE to believe Cheney and Bush.

Brian Hosmer
Forest Park, IL

FRONTLINE's editors respond:

This report did touch on the subject, and in the interviews section of this web site we offer much more background. Explore under Interview "Topics" the section on "Washington's Culture of Leaking" where Norm Pearlstine, Dana Priest and other journalists discuss how the day-to-day business works in Washington between the press and government officials - the interactions, off-the-record conversations and sometimes cosy relationships. Also explore in the"Topics" section what it's like getting spun by sources.

Dear FRONTLINE,

Unfortunately, the Frontline report News War was disappointing. Frontline reports are always billed as "hard hitting" and "thorough" investigations of what is really behind the scenes. Well, there was nothing new or insightful here. There were no tough questions for the numerous journalists who were interviewed.

This News War series is just adding a bit of superficial analysis to provide cover for journalists clearly guilty of aiding and abetting the run up to the Iraq war. The question of protecting anonymous sources is misleading and a false issue in this case, as those anonymous sources are Libby and Rove feeding false information to the press to begin with. No real investigative journalism is conducted by Bergman, no holding the government and journalists accountable, and no checks and balances are provided in this report.

The News War series does have it right on one point, that is the mainstream media is loosing its customer base, and fast. Although this is due to a large extent to new technology, it is also due, in no small part, to the fact that truthful information with no bias or "spin" is abundantly available on the Internet. When Bush and the NYT have, hand-in-hand, taken us over the cliff (and may again in Iran), the mainstream media needs to do some serious soul searching and admit, not cover up, their culpability. Unfortunately, this Frontline report does not even scratch the surface.

Mary McGrane
Storrs, CT