Why is the U.S. press so self-censoring?

Roy Greenslade, Guardian News Service, London

It can be frustrating to read the Los Angeles Times. Last Tuesday's issue carried seven stories on page one, all of which continued inside on seven different pages. For the assiduous, reading every article, it meant a tiresome trip backwards and forwards.

The paper sells one million copies a day -- and around 1.2 million on Sundays -- and most American papers use the same reader-unfriendly turning device and similarly turgid prose. But anyway, the audience doesn't have an alternative because the LA Times holds a virtual monopoly in southern California.

Reading the seven-section, 82-page broadsheet is a reminder of the enormous cultural gap between British and American newspapers. U.S. papers affect to hold the moral high ground, announcing their commitment to a public ethic by the restrained presentation, selection of material and length of their articles. Their editors and journalists say the Britain's broadsheets are too racy in publishing too much "trivial" content.

Trying to compare papers on either side of the Atlantic has always been difficult because of their distinctive traditions and differing sense of purpose. But Sept. 11 and its aftermath have provided a rare chance to make some kind of comparison.

Three of the LA Times's front-page stories were about the war, and a fourth was related to it. Eight pages of the main news section were devoted to the war while the local section featured a story about "our boys" in the marine corps being among the first ground troops to see action in Afghanistan.

The New York carnage has drawn this nation together in an extraordinary way, shrinking the psychological distance between its two major cities. American flags are omnipresent, on houses, cars and T-shirts.

After arriving at LA airport I was asked whether I knew Tony Blair. "He's a great man," said the Guatemalan immigrant. "You must be so proud of him. He puts things across more passionately than President Bush."

There are probably many journalists here who share that view, but they wouldn't dare say so in print. As Leslie Bennetts noted in the Vanity Fair about the "furious retaliation" faced by writers who have dissented from the White House line, the result has been self-censorship.

American papers appear to treat the president as a sacrosanct figure. Senior journalists are giving Bush and his administration an easy ride, failing to put his policies under proper scrutiny. This undeniable truth doesn't surprise the LA Times's deputy managing editor, Leo Wolinsky, who believes that in following such a course his paper is reflecting the mainstream viewpoint.

"Only a very small segment of society is critical of the president and his decisions," he says, implying that this could be the reason that there is so little skeptical press analysis of the war, its conduct and the suppression of civil liberties.

He adds, "Newspaper people are contrarian by nature, but there has been little internal debate here about either the need to go to war or the way it has been prosecuted so far."

There has been none of the persistent questioning of motive, strategy and tactics leveled at Blair's government by the British press.

The LA Times's owner of just 18 months, the Chicago Tribune group, is certainly providing huge resources to cover the war, with about 35 journalists out of an editorial staff of 1,100 in the field. The New York Times and Washington Post also have far more people in the area than their British counterparts.

So are American papers doing a better job because of their extra journalistic firepower? After spending just 12 days reading the LA Times, it is probably too early to tell. But it seems the sheer quantity of the American output doesn't match the quality of the British coverage.

It is also evident that journalists are receiving more information from the British government than from the U.S. administration. Indeed, few if any protests have been made by the usually vociferous American press corps about the Bush administration's reticence, a strange silence from a group that likes to trumpet the freedoms it has traditionally enjoyed. It is as if the first amendment has been put on ice while America is at war, the very moment when it is most necessary to use it.

Wolinsky did point to one concern, about Bush's sudden decision to press Saddam Hussein to allow United Nations arms inspectors to return to Iraq. If that were to lead to a renewed war with Baghdad, he said Bush might well lose the overwhelming support he currently commands from the press and the people.

The following day, the LA Times's leading article warned, in the mildest of terms however, of the problems that Bush might face if he decided to invade Iraq.

Much more telling was an article by columnist Robert Scheer, who called for an end to "the sanctimonious sneer that has dominated war coverage". In the past, he wrote, "we've failed Afghanistan" when we were "playing footsie with the Taliban". This kind of attitude, if it takes root, may herald a change of heart by U.S. journalists who have been censoring themselves.

How odd that these same tamed journalists spared no effort in their relentless search for muck about the former president's sex life. Yet they have failed utterly to apply the same energy to hold this president to account over infinitely more serious matters. And they think we're trivial!