Our Media Have Been So Wrong for So Long

So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed on Iraq, by Greg Mitchell, a collection of essays that date back from the lead-up to the Iraq war, in 2003, through this fall, is a compelling antidote to the cult of misinformation written by the editor of Editor & Publisher, a journal of the newspaper industry, and one of the oldest magazines in the country. The book features a preface by Bruce Springsteen, and foreword by Joseph L. Galloway.

As one who has been on the cutting edge of exposing the Bush administration's pre-emptive war on the media, Mitchell, the author of nine other nonfiction works, is among the first to broach, and critically analyze, the issue of "non-hostile combat deaths," as well as suggest the long term costs of this war not merely to our veterans, but to our national ethos.

We're treated to a first rate account not merely of a media complicit in the debacle that is Iraq, but one equally responsible for our continued presence in the region.

AlterNet recently caught up with Greg Mitchell to talk about his latest book...

Jayne Stahl: You quote one of your reporters writing that the "highest calling of journalism is not reporting. It's finding the story that would help prevent a war." Tell how this relates to your decision to publish an anthology of your essays about the Iraq war now.

Greg Mitchell: This is the first book to look at five full years in the life of the war, from the "run-up" to the "surge" debate last fall. But its aim is to serve as a warning and, in part, a lesson for future journalists. When I was back in j-school, which came just before Woodward and Bernstein emerged, we were taught that the first rule for reporters is to be "skeptical." Not necessarily critical or negative, but skeptical. This rule applies whether you are probing a local school board scandal, or the preparation for an invasion of another country.

You might be looking behind what a housing department staffer said, or maybe examining the facts as put forward by, say, a U.S. secretary of state before the United Nations. Same thing.

Of course, reporters and editors don't have it within their full power to "prevent" a war, but they can sure try to put all the facts out there so that those who are backing an attack at least have to face full public questioning and the wrath of the poll numbers, not to mention, confront their own conscience. I hope the book encourages more skepticism, at least.

Stahl: To paraphrase Daniel Ellsberg, who you interviewed (the very prescient piece appears early in your book), have the media learned the lessons of Iraq, or are we poised for another prefab invasion?

Mitchell: I've charted some improvement in the "skepticism" since the WMD and other Saddam threats turned up empty. Surely you would hope that many in the media would be outright embarrassed and vow not to let it happen again. Indeed, as each succeeding "crisis" has emerged, involving Iran or Syria or North Korea, for example, at least more in the media have raised questions, although not universally.

But there's still far too much "report the military or White House view and worry about the rest later" kind of reporting. And, as we saw after the Watergate/Vietnam era, the fervor for really hard-nosed, skeptical coverage can die quickly.

Stahl: In the spring of 2003, one of the questions you say you wished the press had asked President Bush at his last press conference before the war had to do with how many Iraqi civilians did he expect to die as a result of the war. Do you think we are closer to knowing that, and do you think we can expect less obstruction with respect to the flow of information from the next chain of command in Washington?

Mitchell: It's impossible to know the true civilian toll in Iraq, but we know that it is horrible enough, no matter what the number. It is certainly higher than the minimal "tens of thousands" cited by the White House and many in the press, but how far it goes into the hundreds of thousands no one can say. It's almost as if the surveys that have produced much higher numbers have been attacked as a way to cut off all discussion -- you know, we can't know, so why try? But we have to keep trying.