Of course careful news consumers, those who read deep into news and magazine stories and search out lots of different perspectives, soon realized the dire warnings coming from the White House were not all that they appeared to be.

The sweeping concern about dams and reservoirs, for instance, sprang from a single, unidentified individual with alleged ties to al-Qaida whose computer was said to have contained relevant engineering information.

Those 100,000 al-Qaida-trained terrorists roaming the world? One week after the allegation was made by the White House, Newsweek reported that intelligence officials thought the number was inflated by 90,000. The magazine also reported many of the "diagrams of American nuclear-power plants and public water facilities," cited by Bush during the State of the Union, had simply been downloaded off the Internet.

Did terrorists set in motion a plan to send a hijacked airliner hurtling into a nuclear power plant? Asked about it on CNN, Ralph Beedle of the Nuclear Energy Institute seemed to downplay the threat: "We don't believe that this threat is real. This is not a credible threat."

One FBI source told the Wall Street Journal that the warning was based on the same "outdated information we recovered several months ago." The FBI dismissed the plot at the time.

So the question becomes, Why would the White House coordinate releasing a laundry list of upsetting terrorist plots, most of which, upon closer inspection, appear to be half-baked at best? And why did an obedient press corps dutifully play up the angle of fear?

Certainly rules for journalism change during times of war, when the natural reflex toward skepticism is often muted. That's especially true of a war like the current one, which at once avenges a deadly attack on U.S. soil, and also risks very few American casualties overseas. Clearly the mainstream press does not want to be, or even appear to be, on the wrong side of this war story. As the New York Times reported late last year, "Television news networks are increasingly coming under criticism from conservatives who say they exhibit a lack of patriotism or are overly negative toward the government."

Nobody, it seems, is more keenly aware of that dynamic than the White House, which is one reason it continues to pound away at the war theme: Despite relatively quick success banishing the Taliban, Bush tells us, this is not the end of the war, only the beginning. As long as a wartime culture exists -- a culture the press helps maintain -- Bush's job-approval ratings will likely remain sky-high.

Senior White House aide Karl Rove recently articulated what many inside Washington already believed: that the war on terrorism could help Republican candidates in elections come November -- and they should use it. And when the president unveiled his controversial $2 trillion budget by speaking first at a military base, wearing a leather bomber jacket and using fatigue-wearing soldiers as props behind him, could there any doubt the war on terrorism had become political?

Still, much of the press has continued to play along with the White House and frame Bush's domestic and international initiatives as part of his war effort, which helps shield the administration from criticism. But it's not simple patriotism, or a bias toward the GOP, that influences the media's choices on the topic. A wartime culture is not only good for Bush politically; it also helps news outlets attract readers and viewers.

The fight against terrorism has been a blockbuster story for the cable news outlets, whose ratings soared by triple-digit percentages after Sept. 11. Meanwhile, Time and Newsweek saw their lucrative newsstand sales, dormant for years, shoot up 80 percent last fall. Like the White House, it's in the media's best interest to sustain the war as an everyday news story. And yes, to prop it up, if need be.

It's why last month, when airing a segment about the ongoing congressional debate over tax cuts, CNN framed the issue with this on-screen headline: "Wartime Economy."

It's why the channels continue to use the crawling news format at the bottom of the screen to maintain the fagade of breaking wartime news, when in fact it's often used to inform viewers that 4,000 Oscar ballots were sent out earlier that morning, or that Black & Decker toasters were being recalled.

It's why when news broke Thursday that a man tried to kick in the cockpit door on a United Airlines flight to Buenos Aires, Fox News immediately labeled him an "attempted hijacker," despite the fact there was no evidence the reportedly inebriated banker was trying to hijack the plane.

It's why the all-news channels essentially ignored the first day of congressional Enron hearings last month and instead focused that day on the initial court appearance of John Walker Lindh, the accused American Taliban.

It's why Thursday, under the headline "America At War," MSNBC carried live coverage of the White House press briefing where Ari Fleischer discussed campaign finance reform legislation at length.

At the same time, it's just as telling to consider what facts about the war are not discussed on TV. Last week the Associated Press reported from the Afghanistan village of Hazar Qadam, where some locals were given cash payments in compensation for a deadly U.S. commando raid last month, during which 18 pro-American Afghan fighters were mistakenly killed. The AP quoted locals as saying U.S. forces burst into a small religious school at night and killed the Afghan men in their sleep.

To date, TV talkers have shown little or no interest in that unsettling story. That's not surprising. According to a recent study conducted by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which reviewed the war on terrorism's coverage, "the press heavily favored pro-Administration and official U.S. viewpoints-as high as 71% early on." However, "what might be considered criticism remained minimal-below 10%."

The simple fact is that this blockbuster news story is unlike almost any other in recent memory. The White House alone controls virtually all the information about the war on terrorism and it alone decides how that information is disseminated. The press, anxious for access, eagerly plays along.

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