"Peter Brock's devastating portrayal of the role played by western journalists in distorting the truth about what was really happening during the break up of Yugoslavia is a major accomplishment. The book underlines the terrible power of the media in influencing governments to make unwise policy decisions affecting the very course of history. It also exposes the close affinity that exists between media and government. Both are capable of telling lies and both are unwilling to admit mistakes. This is a "must read" book. It is a sad and shameful story but one that should be mandatory reading by every politician and by every practicing and aspiring journalist."
- James Bissett, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia (1990-1992).
"Peter Brock ...castigated many of his colleagues for 'negligence' and 'pack journalism' in their coverage of death camps and stories of other atrocities. In a scathing critique in the pages of Foreign Policy, Brock enumerated a few of the more egregious 'mistakes.'
"...For daring to criticize the media's coverage of the Bosnian war, Brock was subjected to vilification that went far beyond the bounds of hard-hitting debate Newsday's Roy Gutman, for example, not only sought to refute Brock's claims and argue that there were factual errors in the Foreign Policy article..., but implied - with virtually no evidence - that Brock was on the payroll of the Serbian-American lobbying organization SerbNet.
"Gutman's foray into McCarthyism was tame, however compared with the efforts of Charles Lane. Writing in the pages of the New Republic, Lane employed innuendo after innuendo to suggest that Brock was a front man for Serb propagandists. According to the editors of Foreign Policy..., Lane even tried to determine whether Brock's wife is Serbian (she is not)..."
- Ted Galen Carpenter, The Captive Press—Foreign Policy Crises and the First Amendment, Cato Institute (1995).
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