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By Norman Solomon

This book focuses on the scarcity of tough questions that has plagued the news media of the United States for many years. Real journalism thrives only when it scrutinizes the claims and actions of the powerful. But especially after the events of September 11, 2001, what we have gotten from major news outlets is more akin to stenography for the movers and shakers in Washington.

Of course reporters should keep the public informed about what official sources have to say. But to stop there -- to mainly convey the statements and information provided by officialdom -- is to fail the true test of journalism. That test is independence.

When they function independently, journalists rely on a multiplicity of sources. By probing, searching, exploring, and excavating, journalists expose to the light of day what might otherwise remain hidden.

But in its prevalent forms, what we call journalism has a strong tendency to blend into the normalized scenery. In the short run, that’s apt to seem like the “professional” thing to do. Most gainfully employed reporters want to be a bit ahead of the curve -- without going too far out on a limb. In such an atmosphere, it takes a conscious act of will to look at the big picture and challenge the supposed truisms that might not be true.

Lisa Finnegan describes that professional atmosphere well. Journalists, she points out, “read and listen to each other’s reports and compare and contrast the information in them. They note the presentation and the play of their peers’ stories and compare them with their own. They often socialize together and sometimes with the politicians they cover. White House and Pentagon reporters often share their perspective through ‘pool’ reports, in which one reporter is given access to information and is expected to summarize it for others on the beat. As such, they are susceptible to groupthink...”

Anyone who is out of step -- straying from conventional media wisdom -- may lose access to official sources and coveted exclusive interviews. When journalists anger people in high places, the media career risks can be appreciable. But when journalists are careful to avoid angering people in high places, something is seriously amiss.

Too often we’re encouraged to view high-quality journalism as non-confrontational, in keeping with expectations that media professionals should do their jobs with rigorous neutrality. But passive acceptance of being spun -- going along to get along with sources at places like the White House and the Pentagon -- is a form of de facto advocacy. It has the effect of advocating by serving the interests of those sources.

Asking key questions is essential to the scrutiny process that is the crux of journalism. Only by questioning what’s on the surface can reporters and pundits shed meaningful light on profound choices to be made by individuals and institutions. Journalism can’t answer the most important questions. But journalism should ask them.

Major U.S. media outlets have overwhelmingly failed to ask key questions in recent years. In this book, Lisa Finnegan documents how devastating that failure has been -- for the quality of day-to-day news coverage and for the possibilities of wide-ranging democratic discourse in the United States.

To vigorously question is to enliven the body politic. To question only sluggishly, or not at all, is to facilitate the blockages that prevent the vital circulation of facts and ideas. Those blockages can be lethal for democracy.

Such patterns of media constriction have been longstanding. And the first years of the 21st century have made matters worse. As the author observes, “the American press corps enabled the Bush administration to cocoon the public to such an extent that it had only a vague notion about alternative viewpoints and policy options, or the consequences of American policy decisions worldwide.” She quotes CBS anchor Dan Rather’s succinct comment -- a full decade before 9/11 -- that “suck-up coverage is in.”

The launch of the ongoing “war on terror” enabled U.S. foreign policy -- and American media coverage -- to center on what Finnegan aptly describes as the “vague concept” behind it. A war against a defined enemy can end; a war against an undefined threat may not.

After 9/11, the label of terrorism quickly became so elastic that it could be stretched to suit the administration’s preferences at any time. Big U.S. news outlets, far too eager to stay in sync with those preferences, have shown little interest in focusing on insights along the lines of those expressed by retired U.S. Army Gen. William Odom , who told viewers of C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program on November 24, 2002: “Terrorism is not an enemy. It cannot be defeated. It’s a tactic. It’s about as sensible to say we declare war on night attacks and expect we’re going to win that war.” Continuing his heretical comment, Odom said: “We’re not going to win the war on terrorism. And it does whip up fear. Acts of terror have never brought down liberal democracies. Acts of parliament have closed a few.”

While some journalists grew to express skepticism about the nonstop “anti-terror” rhetoric from the White House and its supporters, the overall stance of news media has involved routinely embracing the assumption that the U.S. government is at war with terrorism. Along the way, that means ignoring how civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq have experienced terror as a result of American firepower.

We can now point to quite a few journalists who have gotten tough on the president’s refusal to address substantive criticism without reverting to anti-terror rhetoric to tar his critics. But on the whole -- and most egregiously in routine news coverage on front pages and news shows -- the reporting has accepted and propagated the basic world view from Washington.

Only as journalists stop cowering and start reporting on the basic flaws of the “war on terror” will the body politic benefit from the free circulation of ideas and information -- the lifeblood of democracy. And only then will there be appreciable media space to really explore why so many people have become violently angry with America.

“No Questions Asked: News Coverage Since 9/11" provides a valuable map of the media terrain that we will need to understand and explore to invigorate the role of journalism in our society.

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Norman Solomon is the author of “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).