Free Republic

<p>January 3, 2004 -- Now that it's become painfully obvious that France's hyperventilation over the U.S.-led effort that toppled Saddam Hussein was an exercise in political pig-headedness, are the holier-than-thou French ready to finally acknowledge their willful myopia? Guess again, mon ami.</p>

A European journalist, a Belgian working for a French newspaper, has written a book documenting the obvious _ that French coverage of the Iraq war was wildly biased against the United States. French newspapers' coverage reflected the French public's _ and, one suspects, the government's _ gleeful hope that the United States, if not actually defeated, would at least suffer a humiliating setback. "As soon as there were a couple of wounded, of dead, they were talking about Vietnam, Stalingrad," Alain Hertoghe told the Associated Press. French journalists, he said, "dreamed of an American defeat." Instead, the war was over...

PARIS (AP) -- Reporter Alain Hertoghe's book accused the French press of not being objective in its coverage of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. His newspaper fired him. The book, ``La Guerre a Outrances'' (The War of Outrages), criticizes the French reporting for continually predicting the war would end badly for the U.S.-led coalition. ``Readers can't understand why the Americans won the war,'' Hertoghe said in a telephone interview. ``The French press wasn't neutral.'' The book, published Oct. 15, charges French reporters were more patriotic than journalistic and what was written amounted to disinformation. It examines daily coverage by five...