单项选择题

Since the buildup to the war with Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken it on the chin from the media. The British media ordinarily grill politicians, but in this case they have been particularly feisty, empowered by opinion polls that showed most Brits wanted nothing to do with invading Iraq. ①Until now the American media, which by nature are less aggressive than their British counterparts but probably are taking a lead from polls and politicians that supported the administration’s war stance, have gone relatively easy on President Bust.
But this week the media have hit the administration hard with questions about Bush’s State of the Union statement that Iraq was acquiring uranium from Niger, one of the administration’s justifications for war. And with the 2004 campaign heating up and Bush’s approval rating dipping, his administration is being grilled harder than it has been in months. Experts say the questioning will get sharper as summer progresses.
②"That Democrats are just now ’beginning to get traction’ on the justification for the war is an example of how differently politics are played in the U.S.A. than they are in Britain"says Martin Turner, Washington bureau chief of the BBC. The respondents have been highly critical of the war and suspicious of administration claims that weapons of mass destruction exist in Iraq.
In Britain, whereas prime minister must defend himself every week before Parliament, the media take a "much more muscular approach to grilling politicians", Turner says. Here, the BBC is often regarded as a rather impolite member of the Washington press corps. "We tend to ask questions in a different way than they are asked on the Sunday political programs."
In London, Michael Goldfarb, senior correspondent for National Public Radio affiliate WBUR in Boston, says his British counterparts talk about "how astonishing the ride has been for Bush" and how the Bush administration "manages the news like it’s nobody’s business. Here they call Blair Bush’s poodle (狮子狗)". But then again, he says, British media "simply don’t hold to the American notion of objectivity and certainly not impartiality". ABC anchor Peter Jennings, who reported from London in the 1970s and 1980s, says he has "always been struck by how mu ch more aggressive the British press is". They’re simply much more aggressive. In the U.S.A., "there is no doubt that the press is aware of the influence of a powerful president, and the press is aware to some extent that it is in competition for public opinion, so there is always stress between a powerful president and the press." But in the past week, with debate over the war heating up, it led several of Jennings’ World News Tonight broadcasts. "Our reporters sense some deep concern about what is happening.\
The passage is primarily concerned with ______.