In "Into the Buzzsaw", the award-winning expose of investigative journalism, Kristina Borgesson shattered the silence about efforts to quash the public's right to know the truth. In "Feet to the Fire", she breaks new ground by offering candid, often alarming conversations with America's most distinguished journalists and news executives, revealing what they really think about the companies they work for and each other, the Bush administration, their pre-Iraq war and war coverage, and much more. Focusing on the post 9/11 crisis period, Borjesson has interviewed ABC's Ted Koppel, "Hearst Newspaper"'s Helen Thomas, Paul Krugman of the "New York Times", Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of the "Washington Post", Associated Press President/CEO Tom Curley, "Harpers" publisher John MacArthur, and many others. This collection of masterful interviews unveils a journalistic environment that rivals any long-running soap opera on television. Filled with astonishing personal stories, conflict, and drama, "Feet to the Fire" gives readers the rare opportunity to walk a mile in the shoes of this nation's most powerful journalists and news executives and experience their highly stressful environments. With each new and revealing interview, Borjesson gathers devastating details from national security and intelligence reporters, White House journalists, Middle East experts, war correspondents, and others. Like pieces of a terrible puzzle, these conversations combine to provide a hair-raising view of the mechanisms by which the truth has been manufactured post 9/11. As a serious, first-hand account of contemporary mainstream journalism, "Feet to the Fire" has no equal.
Kristina Borjesson is an Emmy and Murrow Award-winning investigative reporter, who has worked for CBS and CNN.
""In [this] engrossing anthology of interviews with journalists, the Emmy-winning investigative reporter takes on what she views as the profession's loss of nerve...It's an alarming collection that raises a multitude of disconcerting questions about the state of the news media--and a paucity of answers....An unabashed critic of the war [with Iraq], Borjesson sets her sights on the media during its run-up. What she finds is an institution that failed in its duty to question officialdom, separate truth from lies and duly inform the public...compelling reading in the current context, as each new and dismal dispatch from Iraq gives the book an ominous frisson...Borjesson has performed a valuable service by holding the media's feet to the fire. Perhaps it's time someone did the same to the American public." - Cleveland Plain Dealer "Borjesson goes straight to the sources--21 of war journalism's heavy hitters. Feet to the Fire...is an exhaustive collective critique--by the likes of Walter Pincus, Ted Koppel, Ron Suskind, Anthony Shadid, and Chris Hedges--of the way American media covered recent U.S. involvement in the Middle East." - Editor & Publisher "Thoughtful questions asked during individual meetings...gave reporters emotional and intellectual space for candor - or as close to it as we're likely to see.... Each interview is substantial and followed by elaborative notes." - Library Journal "Full of such insightful commentary." - Publishers Weekly
