With Every Mistake

This essential collection contains the best of Gwynne Dyer’s writing on the post–September 11 world.

Since 1973, writer, historian and filmmaker Gwynne Dyer has written a widely syndicated newspaper column on international affairs, regularly published in 45 countries. With Every Mistake is not only a collection of the very best of Dyer’s recent work, but an examination of how, time and again, the media skews fact and opinion, wielding formidable influence on how we all shape our own thoughts. And why is so much of the information wrong? Is it herd instinct, official manipulation, robber-baron owners with ideological obsessions — or just the conflict between the inherently bitty, short-term nature of news reporting and analysis and the longer perspectives needed to understand what is actually going on? How much misinformation stems from simple ignorance and laziness?

With Every Mistake combines an examination of how powerful owners mould the agendas of the press with a self-critique of Dyer’s own columns from the three and a half years between 9/11 and the January 2005 election in Iraq. How hard is it to get things right, and why do so many people in the media get things wrong?