Greg Mitchell, editor of the newspaper business trade publication, Editor and Publisher, has doggedly reported on how the mainstream media botched the pre-Iraq War coverage, and the follow-up, for many years.

We e-mail back and forth with Greg from time to time and his indignation at how superficial and wrong most of the reporting on Iraq was remained strong. Most journalists, even if they saw the errors in the mainstream media reporting, kept quiet. It doesn't gain you a lot of friends in your profession when you point out their flaws. But Mitchell felt his calling was to the truth, not to participate in a cover-up.

Now he has a book out about the flawed Iraq War coverage: So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq.

As another colleague, Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News, writes:

How cool is this? Bruce Springsteen wants you to buy this book -- this book being the new "So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq" by my friend Greg Mitchell, the editor of Editor and Publisher who hobnobbed with rock 'n' roll glitterati during his stint at the legendary magazine Crawdaddy! Springsteen says in a brief (i.e., it's a lot more concise than "Jungleland") preface that Mitchell's book "is to remind us that we all need to be more questioning, skeptical and savvy than ever in assessing information that's presented to us. And we ought to teach our children to do the same."

"So Wrong for So Long" is certainly a big start in the right direction. Using a variety of writing techniques and approaches that stretch over five agonizing years of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the collected works touch on the wide scope of journalistic malpractice that stretches to the present, including the early ignoring of Abu Ghraib, civilian casualties, Haditha, and military suicides, among others. One thing stood out as a recurring and awful theme: That it didn't have to be this way, that America's journalists had plenty of information that was readily available in late 2002 and early 2003 to show that the case for the war was partly overhyped but mostly bogus.

Mitchell deserves our thanks for exposing how journalism, for the most part, failed us.

Here is the BuzzFlash interview with Greg Mitchell on his book.

About the Author: Greg Mitchell is the editor of Editor & Publisher, the journal of the newspaper business which has won several major awards for its coverage of Iraq and the media. He has written eight books, including Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton) and The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics, and his articles have appeared in dozens of leading newspapers and magazines. He lives in the New York City area. Joseph L. Galloway is one of the most respected war correspondents of our time and currently writes a syndicated column on military affairs. He co-authored the bestselling We Were Soldiers Once...and Young and the forthcoming We Are Soldiers Still. He was awarded a Bronze Star for valor in Vietnam. Bruce Springsteen is "The Boss."