Veteran journalist Bill Moyers examines why the government's claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq.

August 2007 ( check local listings )

In the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the government's claims about weapons of mass destruction and terrorist ties to Saddam Hussein went mostly unchallenged by the media. Four years after "shock and awe," how the government sold the war has been much examined, but a big question remains: how and why did the press buy it? Bill Moyers and his team piece together the reporting that shows how the media were complicit in shaping the "public mind" toward the war, and ask what's happened to the press' role as skeptical "watchdog" over government power. The program features the work of some intrepid journalists who didn't take the government's word at face value, including the team of reporters at Knight Ridder news service whose reporting turned up evidence at odds with the official view of reality. "Buying the War" includes interviews with journalists Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of "Meet the Press"; Bob Simon of "60 Minutes"; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers, which was acquired by the McClatchy Company in 2006.