BBC News Boss Slams 'Flag-Wrapped' U.S. Media

[Supormom]

LONDON (Reuters) - The head of the BBC's news operations accused U.S. media organizations on Tuesday night of being overly patriotic in their coverage of the lead-up to the Iraq (news - web sites) war.



"Before Iraq, it seemed to me that some U.S. news broadcasters wrapped themselves in the flag and, as a consequence, did not perform the role the public expects of them," said Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC's global news division.


"Our natural instinct is to support our country. But the responsibility of the news media is to ask the difficult questions, to press, to verify," Sambrook said, according to an advance copy of his speech to the Columbia Journalism School in New York.


The New York Times, earlier this year, acknowledged it had failed to adequately challenge information from Iraqi exiles who were determined to show Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction overthrow him.
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