'Feet to the Fire' contains a series of interviews in which Borjesson asks top US journalists to enact some self - examination regarding their reporting during the lead up to the Iraq war, and to account for the mistakes made.

The list of journalists interviewed includes, among others, Tom Curley, CEO of The Associated Press, Paul Krugman of The New York Times, and Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder.

In an interview with Buzz Flash Borjesson asserted that Landay and Strobel were “recognized by practically everyone else in the book as having done the best pre-war reporting.”

James Bamford, reporter and independent intelligence expert, quoted in 'Feet to the Fire', acknowledges that "With few exceptions, both print and television provided very poor coverage" of the run-up to war. Bamford's exceptions include Knight Ridder, and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post.

According to Bamford, the reason behind this poor media coverage is as follows: "The problem was, these people were fighting an entrenched mind-set that was accepting the Bush administration's rationales for going to war, when they should have been doubting."

Helen Thomas suggests that the support for the Bush administration's war was directly linked to the post- 9/11 atmosphere that prevailed at the time, she said: "From 9/11, the American press suddenly had to be the superpatriots … The press went into a coma." 

On the subject of Washington sources John MacArthur of Harper's Magazine said the following: "Everybody wants to be at Versailles. Versailles is Washington ... they want to be part of the power structure, and if taking the leak from the official source gets you credit within your news organisation ... if that brings you credit and gets you more promotions, it's a great way to live." 

The moral of the story was presented by Borjesson in an interview with AFP. She said: "Official source reporting needs to be given less emphasis, reporting from first hand sources who are lower down than official sources is the way to go."

Soucre: Yahoo News, Buzz Flash