World Editors Forum director Bertrand Pecquerie has some harsh words for the US press - and for advocates of citizens journalism. Writing on CBS News' Public Eye forum, he claims that US journalism has been in a "profound crisis" since 9/11, as "media nationalism" "transformed (journalism) into a war machine alongside the Bush administration."

Mainstream American journalism, he writes, was another casualty of the 9/11 terror attacks. "Everything that was positive – prosperity, diversity, credibility, the struggle for power – quickly turned negative."

Pecquerie mentions Fox News - widely regarded by Europeans and liberal Americans as the Bush administration's loudest cheerleader - but claims that the crisis goes well beyond that broadcaster. The US journalism model, he says, is now "Green Zone Journalism" - "a form of bunkered and blind journalism."

A pity, he says, because US newsrooms were once the world's model:

"First, it included heavily populated newsrooms, often twice as large as European newsrooms, which permitted real investigative journalism defined by weeks or months of intense digging and questioning. Second, there was a clear concept of a Fourth Estate -- the role of journalists was to question the power of the three others and big business. Finally, the education of journalists was very different -- real journalists were experts in their fields, capable of anticipating technological and economic evolutions."

Other nations undergoing national crises enjoyed more self-scrutiny from the press. France's press questioned French actions in the Algerian war of independence; government strategies against far-left terror groups in Italy and Germany in the 1970s were scrutinised and criticised by the press. Pecquerie might also have mentioned US reporting on the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, both viewed as belonging to a golden age of US journalism.

The major scandals to hit US journalism since 9/11 have drawn attention away from more important stories, he argues. Dan Rather resigned from CBS News following the exposure of a document used in his show as a fake. The document suggested that George W. Bush's military record wasn't all the President made it out to be - but, Pecquerie argues, the fuss right-wing bloggers caused about the fake drowned out any investigation into what he calls the President's "questionable" service record.

Eason Jordan - CNN's head of news - was another scalp claimed by bloggers. Jordan complained of the US Army's treatment of journalists in Iraq and resigned following criticism of claims that the military was actively targetting journalists. Pecquerie complains that the storm masked any enquiry into whether or not the army was killing journalists.

Villains of the piece, then, are right-wing bloggers. Pecquerie appears to assign these "citizen journalists" the role of keeping the media in check, making sure it is following the administration's line and destroying any journalist who deviates from the approved truth.

Worse, he adds, the American press is actively hastening its decline by courting bloggers in order to apply Web 2.0 slogans like "news is no longer a lecture but a conversation."

Dialogue with readers is fine, says Pecquerie, if we don't forget "breaking news and investigation into scandals and corruption performed by professionals is necessary before this conversation can start."

New media theorists like Dan Gillmor and Jeff Jarvis have convinced many industry figures that professional journalists are the old-fashioned "weak link in the chain" of citizen media's "information/entertainment/communication" revolution. This plays down the work professionals do and makes citizen journalists - still a tiny percentage of the people who actually read the papers every day - look like exciting revolutionaries.

No-one really challenges this thinking, he argues, which could just be another internet bubble in the making. In the end, he says, it's bad for democracy: Americans write blogs but don't vote, Europeans don't run big political blogs but do vote in larger numbers. "Which democracy is the most vibrant?" Pecquerie asks.

It's probable that many US journalists - and their readers or viewers - won't recognise themselves in Pecquerie's portrait of the American media. Right-wing bloggers, many of whom have made monitoring of the Mainstream Media a lifelong obsession, will reel at the news that newspapers like the New York Times and broadcasters like CNN are caught up in a frenzy of "media nationalism."

Certainly, Pecquerie's comments will add fuel to complaints from leftish quarters that the US press is too timid in its dealings with the Bush administration, but for most observers, Pecquerie's criticism illustrates the deepening gulf between US and European perceptions of one another than any failings in the US media.

Attacks on US democracy - and praise for the European media's support of anti-colonial or anti-capitalist actions - will persuade many readers that Pecquerie's motivation is partisan and political. Being a former employee of left-wing French newspaper Libération, which is fiercely anti-Bush and often anti-American, doesn't contribute to a sense of neutral commentary.

Contributors to the comments section following his posting appear to think this - though one writer can't help but chuck in a tired attack on things French. More surprisingly, Jeff Jarvis does the same in his defence - though by conflating the state of certain sections of the US media with US voting patterns, Jarvis could argue that Pecquerie was asking for it.

Jarvis says Pecquerie flatters him by claiming he has so much influence - true, perhaps, but playing down the esteem with which US (and some British) publishers hold the idea of "news as conversation" - a theory which Jarvis has done much to promote. Perhaps more specific criticism of this theory from Pecquerie would have been more welcome than an attack on the US media for failing to share the World Editors Forum's directors political beliefs.

That said, Pequerie finds an ally - if only for his political slant - in Dan Gillmor, the other Web 2.0 guru he attacks in his post.

"It is almost beyond question that the American press failed as a whole — with some honorable exceptions — in its solemn duty to question authority on behalf of the public," writes Gillmor, "But that has nothing whatever to do with citizen journalism; it was a failing of big institutions all on their own. They didn’t need anyone’s help."

However, Gillmor adds, "Professional journalism does not gain credibility by casting stones at the bottom-up media, which definitely can use some improvement as it veers into journalism but is not trying — at least not in my view of things — to replace the traditional media.

"Pecquerie suggests that citizen media is just another bubble. By what standard? Does he truly think that people, having discovered their ability to voice their concerns and pass along their knowledge to neighbors and others of like interests, will suddenly decide to shut up? I do not."

Pequerie's comparison of US bloggers with EU voters is an oversimplification, too. Plenty of European elections fail to capture voters imagination - recent elections to the EU parliament, where turnout fell below 50 percent in some countries, is a case in hand. Italy's huge turnout was an exception: In nations where voting is not compulsory, turnouts are falling. Moreover, Europeans have plenty of political blogs, and as a Frenchman, Pequerie should know this - blogs registering up to 35,000 visits a day contributed a great deal to debate leading up to France's 2005 referendum on the EU constitutional treaty.

Also, as Gillmor notes, "Bertrand’s equation above — more blogging=less democracy — is laughably spurious. I mean, the old East Germany had 99.999 percent turnout and not an ounce of officially permitted independent thinking: Now there was a democracy, right?"

Some observers might complain that the French press doesn't question mainstream political opinion particularly well either. Back in 2002, when far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen challenged Jacques Chirac in the presidential run-off, it was impossible to find a sympathetic word for Le Pen in the mainstream media. French industry magazine Médias later reflected that the blanket opposition to Le Pen and his Front National party was "Stalinist" in its refusal to cover dissenting voices.

One might argue that as an extremist, Le Pen did not merit serious coverage, despite the fact that nearly one in five French voters supported him in the first round. However, it is impossible to imagine an extremist left-wing candidate being similarly ostracised by the French media. The recent CPE labour law crisis, where the media was again criticised for firing soft questions at student and trade union protestors, only serves to confirm this suspicion.

Despite his accusations demanding a reply, it's a shame politics got in the way of what could have been an interesting dissenting essay from Pequerie. Intelligent criticism of citizen journalism advocates is few and far between - most of it coming from old media insiders who are too easy to depict as dinosaurs. The media industry needs to reflect on whether or not adding readers comments under the Guardian's leader column (for example) is an intelligent idea, or an invitation for maniacs to sound off. Or whether reports filed by non-professionals need vetting or editorial interference. Or if citizen journalists should abide by the same ethics codes as staffers.

It's not absurd for publishers to take a step back and a deep breath before throwing their pages open to citizen journalists and bloggers. Pequerie has good reason to compare the Web 2.0 buzz with the fervour surrounding the dot.com boom (and bust), if only because no-one else in the industry is doing so. It's a pity he didn't concentrate more on this angle.