Last week the line between news reporting and news creation in the corporate media became all the more thin. It was learned that the letter of support written by leaders of eight European nations (three of them not part of the EU) for the Bush regime's war in Iraq that appeared on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) was actually solicited from signitories by the deputy editorial editor of the Journal's European edition. Upon publication, the letter suddenly became "news", appearing in WSJ's news pages, The New York Times, and throughout the corporate media.

Initial reports of the story's manufacture seem to have come from Spain. WSJ editors, unabashedly pro-war and allied with the far-right regime in Washington, published a brash defense of their practice that avoided the ethical issue of turning their own editorial initiatives into news. That practice is a regular feature of many mainstream papers in the US.

Read: entire feature - see global indymedia site