Good to see you again Shammer. :o) I would say that they really weren't given that option, at least in the US, as they are no longer a free press in any meaningful sense of the term. It was made clear to the media that obediance was to be, on the whole, unquestioning. Bear in mind that the vast majority of the media in the US are owned by corporations, and in the case of Fox Network, by one individual, with intimate links with those who sought to bring the invasion of Iraq/"The War on Terror" about by any means necessary. There are however honest journalists around the world who have refused to be intimidated, or bought off, and have taken seriously their role of investigation and the uncovering of the direct and provable lies told by the US, UK and other regimes. One such, of note (familiar certainly to most British members here I should think) is John Pilger, an award winning journalist who has, together with the BBC and other credible networks, shown time and again the true agenda behind the "War on Terror" and the invasion of Iraq. His groundbreaking documentary, "Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror" in particular, has helped to turn the tide against the falsehoods that have previously been reported as news in the US and, to a lesser extent in the UK and Australia, and there are plans to make it available in every school in the UK and elsewhere. Breaking the Silence includes the mostly unreported US funding of known terrorists in Afghanistan at the present time, the setting up, training and funding of the Mujahedin and Al Qaeda by the US and British in order to secure the oil pipeline in Afghanistan before the Soviet invasion of that country, and the present deliberate policy of turning a blind eye to opium production there. It also details the sheltering of thousands of torturers and other wanted figures by the US government and the complicity and self censorship undertaken by the American media. The warnings of those such as Norman Mailer, John Pilger, Gore Vidal, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Members of the European Court of Human Rights and members of the British and other Parliaments, as well as more and more members of both the Congress and the Senate in the US, that the US is now effectively a fascist, or at best a pre fascist regime, do need to be heard and the mainstream US media is no longer able to report on these things with any integrity. Some reading this and viewing the documentary, might, for example, want to find out why the American media doesn't report on an institution called "The School of the Americas", located in the state of Georgia, which is known by intelligence operatives and military people around the world as the pre-eminent world school for torturers. And yes, that's Georgia in the US. You can watch the complete documentary here, if you are interested and it is also embeded in this answer until this answer is deleted by Answerbag (whose owner too has an unsavoury history btw): http://www.videos.informationclearinghouse.info/jp-bts.wmv You might also want to read this representative piece on how the FBI are now being used to intimidate journalists who speak out, or whose questioning gets too uncomfortable for the US government: http://fanonite.org/2007/08/01/proto-fascist/