Greg Palast schreibt: "On my BBC television show, Newsnight, an American journalist confessed that, since the 9/11 attacks, U.S. reporters are simply too afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions that could kill careers: "It's an obscene comparison, but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck," Dan Rather said." Rather ist der renommierte CBS-Journalist, der sich unlängst traute, S. Hussein zu interviewen, was ihm von seinen hyperventilierenden Feinden gleich mehrere (symbolische) brennende Reifen um den Hals einbrachte.