Seymour Hersh gave today’s keynote at the investigative journalism summer school. His only stipulation? Off the record. Still what I can say is that investigative journalism keeps you pretty spry…and if you want an indication of the way he thinks, this is from the New Yorker in 2005.
3 responses to “Seymour Hersh”
He said he wanted to avoid having his speech compared against his printed output and discrepancies cited as evidence of his unreliability.
From Wikipedia:
Those who criticize Hersh’s credibility especially point to allegations Hersh has made in public speeches and interviews, rather than in print. In an interview with New York Magazine, Hersh made a distinction between the standards of strict factual accuracy for his print reporting and the leeway he allows himself in speeches, in which he may talk informally about stories still being worked on or blur information to protect his sources. “Sometimes I change events, dates, and places in a certain way to protect people… I can’t fudge what I write. But I can certainly fudge what I say.”
Referenced article here: http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/people/features/11719/
I think he needs a more compelling reason…personally. Although I greatly enjoyed his talk.
I enjoyed it too, especially the bit with the heckling bluster flustering the lecturer. Agreeing with the flow of his argument, as I do, it can be easy to get swept away on the tangents and forget the sharpening benefits of strident dissent.
He seems to welcome it anyway, according to that New York piece:
Hersh is refreshingly candid about the showman aspect of his anecdotage: “I get paid to do speeches. . . . And I’m not there to be on straight. I’m there to tell, you know, give somebody, exchange views with people.”
If so, why not be sure of your stuff and let rip on the record? It surely speaks for itself, after all. And if not, then sexing it up in counter-narratives isn’t much of a response.
I was noting more that the request seems routine than that it seems justified. On that note, I like the article’s conclusion:
[A] a more careful Hersh may not be what the world needs at this moment. Former Washington Post reporter Scott Armstrong puts it this way: Say Hersh writes a story about how an elephant knocked someone down in a dark room. “If it was a camel or three cows, what difference does it make? It was dark, and it wasn’t supposed to be there.” And nobody else had yet described it. Sometimes, says Warren Strobel, “it’s worth it for him to be wrong.”
He sure seems wrong about the Guardian’s better performance than the New York Times’: they’ve run the same front-page talking points about Al Qaeda teaming up with Persian Shi’ites:
Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say.
The readers’ editor’s response wasn’t especially inspiring either. As I noted in the comments below it, the whole performance was so perverse that it almost makes sense to quote Alistair Campbell’s spin on journalistic ethics:
“I was also very surprised that your defence now rests on the principle that you can report anything that a source says, regardless of its veracity, provided that you report accurately what the source has told you.”
http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_1_0373.pdf
Yikes.
Best wishes,
Daniel