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From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

And I'm Brooke Gladstone. For many months, the U.S. media have largely and delicately avoided using the term civil war to describe the violence in Iraq, relying instead on all manner of qualifiers, like on the brink, on the edge, and looming.

But pressure has mounted to reappraise the term, and on Monday morning, NBC's Matt Lauer announced a policy change.

After careful consideration, NBC News has decided that the situation in Iraq with armed,

militarized factions fighting for their own political agendas can now be characterized as civil war.

Here's Fox's Bill O'Reilly.

You have violent, out-of-control chaos, not civil war.

Of course, the American media is not helping anyone by oversimplifying the situation and

rooting for the USA to lose in Iraq.

And CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware.

The debate about whether there's a civil war is fueled either by the luxury of distance

those who aren't here living on the ground or those with a political agenda to deny its existence.

...