BuzzFlash Reviews
So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq (Paperback)
Greg Mitchell, Preface by Bruce Springsteen, Foreward by Joseph Galloway
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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."
"Greg Mitchell has given us a razor-sharp critique of how the media and the government connived in one of the great blunders of American foreign policy. Every aspiring journalist, every veteran, every pundit—and every citizen who cares about the difference between illusion and reality, propaganda and the truth, and looks to the press to help keep them separate—should read this book. Twice." —Bill Moyers
"With the tragic war in Iraq dragging on, and the drumbeat for new conflicts growing louder, this is more than a five-year history of the biggest foreign policy debacle of our times—it's a cautionary tale that is as relevant as this morning's headlines. Greg Mitchell makes it clear that Iraq is a case study in bad judgment, from the misguided moves of an administration blinded by its zealotry to a complacent media that too often acted as an extension of the White House press office. Read it and weep; read it and get enraged; read it and make sure it doesn't happen again." —Arianna Huffington
“The profound failure of the American press with regard to the Iraq War may very well be the most significant political story of this generation. Greg Mitchell has established himself as one of our country's most perceptive media critics, and here he provides invaluable insight into how massive journalistic failures enabled the greatest strategic disaster in the nation's history.” —Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com columnist and author of A Tragic Legacy and How Would a Patriot Act?
"Anyone who cares about the integrity of the American media should read this book. Greg Mitchell asks tough questions about the Iraq war that should have been asked long ago, in a poignant, patriotic, and thoughtful dissection of our war in Iraq. Mitchell names names and places blame on those who’ve blundered. Examining the most complex issue of our time, he connects the dots like no one else has." —Paul Rieckhoff, Executive Director, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and author of Chasing Ghosts
From the publisher, Sterling Press:
In early 2003, Greg Mitchell was one of the few mainstream journalists to seriously question the stated reasons for invading Iraq. In the years since, he has repeatedly challenged the media to probe the conduct of the war and its toll on our troops. Now, after five years of war, he traces the conflict -- from the “runup” to the “surge” -- and the media’s coverage of it, in this important collection of commentaries with significant new additions: an original introduction and dozens of pages of fresh material that unify the essays.
If a free press is the watchdog of democracy, then Greg Mitchell must be the watchdog of the watchdogs, tracking the performance of the media at Editor & Publisher, the influential magazine of the newspaper industry. Over the past five years, in his widely read column, “Pressing Issues,” he has repeatedly been ahead of the curve in intensely scrutinizing both the president and the press—and the controversies swirling around Donald Rumsfeld, Pat Tillman, “Scooter” Libby, Ann Coulter and numerous other figures.
His book is a unique history of the entire war—and as topical as today’s headlines. Whether writing early warnings that anticipated a long and bloody war, analyzing Stephen Colbert’s in-his-face mockery of George W. Bush, or imagining the president confessing his sins to Oprah Winfrey, Greg Mitchell explores how we got into the war in Iraq—and why we just can’t seem to get out. With tens of thousands of American troops still in Iraq, debate over the war continues to rage on TV news and across editorial pages. Against this backdrop of controversy, Greg Mitchell is the rare journalist who has seen it all with clear eyes. In So Wrong for So Long, he can finally tell the whole story.
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