The Muzzled Press

"CNN's top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, says that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war. And, she says CNN 'was intimidated' by the Bush administration and Fox News, which 'put a climate of fear and self-censorship,'" USA Today's Peter Johnson writes. Appearing on CNBC's "Topic A With Tina Brown" with other guests comedian Al Franken and former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke, Amanpour told Brown that is wasn't a question of being able to do certain stories and not do others. "It's a question of being rigorous. It's really a question of really asking the questions. All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it's the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels," Amanpour said.