As the New York Times confessed in May, the Washington Post now says its own coverage of the war in Iraq systematically suppressed dissenting voices that challenged the Bush administration's rationale for war.

One "very prescient story" that questioned "whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence" wouldn't have been printed at all without Woodward's influence, and even then it was buried on Page A17.

Some highlights:

As violence continues in postwar Iraq and U.S. forces have yet to discover any WMDs, some critics say the media, including The Washington Post, failed the country by not reporting more skeptically on President Bush's contentions during the run-up to war.
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Administration assertions were on the front page. Things that challenged the administration were on A18 on Sunday or A24 on Monday. There was an attitude among editors: Look, we're going to war, why do we even worry about all this contrary stuff?
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[Bob] Woodward, for his part, said it was risky for journalists to write anything that might look silly if weapons were ultimately found in Iraq.
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[A senior reporter] turned in a piece that he titled "Doubts." It said that senior Pentagon officials were resigned to an invasion but were reluctant and worried that the risks were being underestimated....The story was killed by Matthew Vita, then the national security editor and now a deputy assistant managing editor.
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Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials had no problem commanding prime real estate in the paper, even when their warnings were repetitive. "We are inevitably the mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power," DeYoung said. "If the president stands up and says something, we report what the president said." And if contrary arguments are put "in the eighth paragraph, where they're not on the front page, a lot of people don't read that far."