investigative journalist David Barstow

David Barstow is an American journalist. He has worked for The New York Times since 1999, and has been an investigative reporter there since 2002. In 2009 he won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

In his award-winning story in The New York Times, headlined "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand", Barstow reported that the Department of Defense recruited over 75 retired military officers, some with undisclosed ties to defense contractors, to appear on major news outlets as military analysts commenting on the Iraq war and the case in its favor. He wrote, "Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse—an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." Although the Pentagon initially issued a statement exonerating the program, the Pentagon inspector general's office later said it was flawed, and the statement was withdrawn.

Most American television networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, CNN and Fox: incidentally, these are the ones that were criticized in the report) have failed to either mention Barstow's name in their news reports, or talk about his investigations that suggest the officers whose views they aired were biased. Nevertheless, after Barstow won the Pulitzer, he opined that his story had prompted some improvements in the networks' practices.