George Packer tells the New York Observer:
The press did discredit itself in the lead-up to the war. But I think the press redeemed in Baghdad what it missed in Washington. I’m not sure the public even knows that.
Also from the Observer piece (in which a handful of reporters in or once in Iraq reflect on their roles–past and current– and their readers), per CNN’s Michael Ware:
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.[F]or a litany of reasons, which may or may not be legitimate, from cost to security to audience fatigue, the media has dropped the ball on this conflict…Obviously, the media is a business at the end of the day. There are advertisers to attract. We’re also about much more than that. We don’t always have to follow the market. Sometimes we have to lead it. And illuminate it. That’s where the media is failing the longer this drags on. How many people cut their teeth in conflicts in Vietnam? This is the war of this generation. Where is the graduating class of this conflict?
