This piece speaks to the heart of the problem journalists are facing in Iraq and Washington. It illuminates the manipulation of the press at home and on the frontlines of the conflict, by the Bush administration and the military. Furthermore, Journalists and War, reaffirms the importance of a free press, especially during armed conflict. Through the featured speakers we are given a window into the intrigue and politics of the war in Iraq and the harsh realities on the ground of the conflict.

Somebody's gotta report on the reporters – especially when so many reporters are repeating, not reporting.

Here's an invitation to look inside the business, from Nieman writer-in-residence Mark Kramer. His program on Narrative is the shining star of Harvard's journalism, this excerpt the best primer NDs can use to arm listeners to think for themselves.

Because the old, and new, "mainstream" media – the New York Times (unvetted WMD reports), CBS Television (fabricated National Guard documents), Slate.com (purloined, uncalibrated exit polls posted during voting hours) – have demonstrated themselves lazy, self-promotional, partisan.

NPR News isn't immune either. Reviewing recent coverage, Ombud Jeffrey Dvorkin wrote, "NPR sounded as though it were reporting on behalf of the White House, not about the White House."

Local stations should rush to the breach with "Journalists and War".

Listeners eavesdrop as three top reporters address their peers, with yeoman field work by Benjamen Walker coaxing good sound out of cathedral-sized ballrooms. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh leads off and hits hard. How did they take over the government? [That's] the question we should be asking, [how did] eight or nine neo-conservatives, people considered to be whackos for the last ten years, suddenly take over [and] the Press [is] basically supine -- or prone.

Hersh's presentation doesn't disguise his politics, and his journalism relies, understandably but unfortunately, on nearly uniformly anonymous sources. But the work has proved out over 30 years (on one occasion here he confuses Baghdad with Saigon). And most – he knows that story is crucial to effective journalism – the point of the Nieman Narrative program.

When Jay Allison presented at the 2003 conference, the room was filled with print journalists who seemed stunned that storytelling was part of their job. That's part of the problem.

Photographer Molly Bingham and The Washington Post's David Finkel - (on the ground, unembedded) follow Hersh with more real reportage, and a mantra from inspired editors -- Go, see, witness, tell us what's going on – and assume that the readers are intelligent enough to figure out what the truth means to them.

NDs, schedule "Journalists and War" at year's end to help defrock those glib Year-in-Review programs so listeners can make a New Year's resolution:

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...