New York Times columnist and author Frank Rich regularly takes the Bush administration to task for everything from the war in Iraq to, most recently, the practice of torture. Now he has another target: the press.

On a visit to the Cornell campus, Rich is taking the media to task for years of what he describes as rolling over for the Bush administration. In delivering the Kops Freedom of the Press lecture today (Oct. 15) at 4:30 in Call Auditorium, Kennedy Hall, Rich draws on research conducted for his 2006 best-seller, "The Greatest Story Ever Sold: The Decline and Fall of Truth from 9/11 to Katrina."

In a telephone interview Oct. 12, Rich said, "What we now call the press, which has expanded greatly to include everything from the Internet to 24/7 cable news, can be manipulated by politicians to their own ends, whether it be to create fake political images or, in the case of Iraq, to take us to war under what I view as false pretenses."

Ronald Reagan, master of the photo op that obscured or diverted attention, Rich noted, operated in what is by today's standards a primitive media world. "There was no cable news. There was no mass use of the Internet. All that's come online has been harnessed in even more forceful ways by current politicians."

Alternative news sources first gained wide usage in the early 1990s. "As the Clinton scandals broke, this whole new media world really got online. There was a change of tone that ratcheted up during the Clinton scandals that continues, on the right and the left, to this day. In this new media world, yelling, whether it be in print or on TV, is often valued above everything else, just to cut through the fog."

Rich said that even though we live in a sophisticated media culture in a society with more access to news and information from more sources than in the history of man, "It is still possible to take that huge mechanism and use it to propagandize a country and disguise and bury the truth. We seem to be more susceptible [to propaganda] than we should be given the lessons of the past. But also, paradoxically, as the media has become more vast, more technologically advanced, this becomes a greater weapon for propagandists to use."

The current Bush administration, said Rich, has resorted to paying columnists to shill for them and to distribute sham video "news releases," heavily tilted toward the White House's view, to unsuspecting television stations. "I don't think there's ever been a use of taxpayer's money as flagrant and comprehensive as done by this White House," Rich said. "Fake reporters doing interviews with Bush administration bureaucrats. By American standards, this was an extreme use of that device."

What he calls the press's unquestioning role in disseminating Washington hype particularly irks him. "I feel that the press, including my own newspaper, have a lot to answer for in the run up to the war in Iraq," he said. "There have been many improvements and corrections since, and yet I'm not sure that, overall, the media progress has been as much as one might want. I think that particularly the mainstream newspapers have learned a lot from what went on in 2002 and 2003."

With the 2008 presidential campaign upon us, Rich said, we ought to remain critical of all news sources. "As we see the campaign begin, we see some of these same [less-than-truthful] proclivities reenter. Thankfully, not everywhere."