BUT OF COURSE: A French reporter looked at French media coverage of the war:

Hertoghe’s book covers the performance of four national newspapers and France’s largest regional daily over a three-week period in March and April. It contends that the coverage was ideological, in line with the French government’s position opposing the United States, and that it was desirous of portraying a great catastrophe for the Americans.

His reward? He was fired. More crushing of dissent, in Jacques Chirac’s France! Meanwhile a German media watchdog group looked at German coverage:

A draft of the report, underwritten in part by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, says of the state networks: “After assuming a position of sharp criticism of American military actions, abandoned only after their increasing success, and after fixating on the Iraqis as suffering victims, they created a representation of the war in line with the position” of the German government. It continues, “Critical questions concerning the extent to which the unrelenting German position contributed to the escalation of the conflict were thus kept from public scrutiny.”

Do tell. And yet people like Bill Moyers are always saying that American media coverage is slanted because we don’t have state-controlled media.