The Media Are The Menace

Los Angeles Times:

Last week, in an essay labeled "Opinion," Pizzey took Republican Sen. John McCain to task for asserting that some neighborhoods in Baghdad were safe enough to stroll through.

"For Senator McCain to claim there are places here where all is well is to woefully minimize the dangers faced by the troops he otherwise so admirably supports," he wrote. " … Any time Senator McCain wants to walk the streets of Baghdad, unarmed and without a serious security detail, we'd be glad to lend him a camera so he can record his experience."

Pizzey said he felt compelled to write the piece because McCain "was talking utter rubbish." (In a piece airing Sunday on "60 Minutes," McCain said he misspoke.) He was also motivated by a belief that the media were not skeptical enough in the run-up to the war — a mistake he does not want to repeat.

"We the media gave the Bush administration a free ride for this war," he said. "We did not question sufficiently the statements made by politicians. I'm as guilty as anybody else. We climbed on board, and that's not what we should do."