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emilybriano's review
4.0
I wasn't very familiar with Mr. Hersh's work before this book arrived in my school's JLG shipment. While its appeal to (at least my) school's teen readers is uncertain, this book is a revealing look into the life and work of a sadly declining breed--the investigative reporter. His work on the Mỹ Lai massacre, as well as countless other political investigations and scandals is unprecedented and largely unknown among younger people. So if you're wanting to understand the role of the media as a check and balance to American power, look no further.
cook_memorial_public_library's review
4.0
A 2018 staff favorite recommended by Rob. Check our catalog: https://encore.cooklib.org/iii/encore/search/C__Sreporter%3A%20a%20memoir%20hersh__Orightresult__U?lang=eng&suite=gold
jiujensu's review
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I've long admired his reporting and always wanted to read about how he did what he did. Maybe his story has the usual hallmarks of white male success - not wealthy, but racism and sexism helped a great deal.
Aside from that, it has those romantic old newsroom stories about cub reporters, teletype, running in the rain to get the story in, secret sources he convinces to talk, etc. My Lai, CIA involvement with Allende coup and tracking anti-war protesters to unpopular stories about US crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. He seems the last of a certain kind of reporter that holds power to account. I hope I'm wrong about that.
It ends with a chapter on the time period in which I became acquainted with his work:
"I watched over the next years as the American media, overwhelmed by twenty-four-hour news, would increasingly rely in a crisis on the immediate claims of a White House and a politically compliant intelligence community. Skepticism, the instinct that drives much investigative reporting, would diminish even more after Barack Obama, full of hope and promise, took office in early 2009."
This quote was exactly the landscape around the invasion of Iraq in 2002. I wanted to see/read rigorous questioning of those in charge for what seemed like murder, vengeance and massive abuses of power - proof to back up all the official accusations - careful consideration of the massive slaughter.
Except for Hersh and Democracy Now, I couldn't find any good investigation or a remote desire to get to the truth of the matter, whatever it was, wherever it led.
The early 2000s. I was in my 20s and having one of those pivotal reassessments. I had to reorient as though i could feel the literal ground shift under my feet - what I'd been taught and felt sure i knew about America's goodness and promise and the murder and torture and lies i saw when i asked the questions i needed answered.
I know he's probably got massive faults and represents the good old boys club that i hope dies off and never returns, but he was a huge figure i saw with courage, integrity and answers at the time i was becoming more aware and processing things and needed someone out there to tell the truth.
Aside from that, it has those romantic old newsroom stories about cub reporters, teletype, running in the rain to get the story in, secret sources he convinces to talk, etc. My Lai, CIA involvement with Allende coup and tracking anti-war protesters to unpopular stories about US crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. He seems the last of a certain kind of reporter that holds power to account. I hope I'm wrong about that.
It ends with a chapter on the time period in which I became acquainted with his work:
"I watched over the next years as the American media, overwhelmed by twenty-four-hour news, would increasingly rely in a crisis on the immediate claims of a White House and a politically compliant intelligence community. Skepticism, the instinct that drives much investigative reporting, would diminish even more after Barack Obama, full of hope and promise, took office in early 2009."
This quote was exactly the landscape around the invasion of Iraq in 2002. I wanted to see/read rigorous questioning of those in charge for what seemed like murder, vengeance and massive abuses of power - proof to back up all the official accusations - careful consideration of the massive slaughter.
Except for Hersh and Democracy Now, I couldn't find any good investigation or a remote desire to get to the truth of the matter, whatever it was, wherever it led.
The early 2000s. I was in my 20s and having one of those pivotal reassessments. I had to reorient as though i could feel the literal ground shift under my feet - what I'd been taught and felt sure i knew about America's goodness and promise and the murder and torture and lies i saw when i asked the questions i needed answered.
I know he's probably got massive faults and represents the good old boys club that i hope dies off and never returns, but he was a huge figure i saw with courage, integrity and answers at the time i was becoming more aware and processing things and needed someone out there to tell the truth.
babsellen's review
3.0
Titillating at times, long-winded at other times. A book for journalists more than the woman on the street. I like Hersh and wish we could clone him because we badly need top notch bulldog journalists like him. I just wish he hadn't needed to protect his some of his sources so strongly, though I respect him for that. He is principled but admits there is a lot he knows that he can't tell. Frustrating for the reader. There may be good reason. He had begun a book on Cheney but has delayed it, so it may or may not get written. Hersh is no spring chicken and Cheney has a fresh heart (only physically) and a taste for revenge.
There were some interesting details on My Lai and Watergate, information on JFK that is only hinted at, but enough on our government covered by Hersh over his lifetime (Johnson-Obama) to validate the fact that our leaders have been seriously corrupt for decades at least and have made many major decisions that have been disastrous - and for all the wrong reasons.
There were some interesting details on My Lai and Watergate, information on JFK that is only hinted at, but enough on our government covered by Hersh over his lifetime (Johnson-Obama) to validate the fact that our leaders have been seriously corrupt for decades at least and have made many major decisions that have been disastrous - and for all the wrong reasons.
ithiliens's review
4.0
A few years ago, I listened to an interview with Sy Hersh describing the problem with the initial reporting on the ground during the invasion of Afghanistan. He explained how reporters were embedded with soldiers, riding in tanks with them and getting to know them personally, so that when inevitably those soldiers began killing civilians the reporters felt obliged to look the other way. That story has stayed with me as I have grown more and more disgusted with the quality of popular journalism. There have always been reporters who are happy to fawn over authority figures and, as described in this book, take their word for gospel and their press releases as fact. (Think of how many headlines about cops killing civilians are contorted into passive voice, as if the bullets acted on their own). But it feels to me like the exceptions to that, at least in the big papers of record, have grown fewer and fewer. Hersh acknowledges himself as a veteran of the golden age of journalism and indeed much of the career he describes seems impossible now.
This was not always an enjoyable read; the subject matter was often difficult to stomach, given Hersh's career and the atrocities and deception he wrote about. But it was always engaging and written with a spirit of candor. There are many events described that you almost can't believe lined up as they did-- I am thinking particularly of the truly spectacular way he tracked down the murderous Calley -- but in the end you see it is Hersh's seemingly unstoppable energy and utterly sincere dedication to the value of truth that leads him to success. There is real value in Hersh's account of the endless research, calls, meetings, etc that informed every article. For me at least, it's a reminder that the truth doesn't come easy. It must be sought.
This was not always an enjoyable read; the subject matter was often difficult to stomach, given Hersh's career and the atrocities and deception he wrote about. But it was always engaging and written with a spirit of candor. There are many events described that you almost can't believe lined up as they did-- I am thinking particularly of the truly spectacular way he tracked down the murderous Calley -- but in the end you see it is Hersh's seemingly unstoppable energy and utterly sincere dedication to the value of truth that leads him to success. There is real value in Hersh's account of the endless research, calls, meetings, etc that informed every article. For me at least, it's a reminder that the truth doesn't come easy. It must be sought.
idrees2022's review
2.0
This book is tragic more than anything else. The last chapter of the book ends with such a glaring lie that it casts a shadow of doubt over everything that Hersh said before. Hersh falsely claims that at a press conference General Mattis claimed that he didn't have evidence that Bashar al Assad was responsible for the April 2017 chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun. If true, this would support Hersh's theory about the incident. Except, Mattis said no such thing. Hersh is reproducing a claim by a conspiracy theorist named Ian Wilkie that was widely disseminated by Russian media. The report was false, since Mattis was speak about recent reports of chemical attack in 2018 for which he had no evidence. Many of Hersh's earlier claims also strain credulity. He did some good reporting in the past, but in between he also did some terrible reporting. He is extremely cynical about governments in Washington, but almost worshipful in his praise for Bashar al Assad and Hassan Nasrallah (and, in breach of journalistic ethics, or perhaps aware of his own complicity, he didn't reveal the fact that Bashar al Assad had used him as an alibi while Rafiq Hariri was being assassinated). Overall this is the story of a parvenu who, driven by ambition more than anything else, was capable of doing good reporting as long as there was an editor to fact-check his claims and strip the rumours.
socraticgadfly's review
5.0
A very good book, primarily about how Sy did his work, then about some of the specific projects, such as My Lai, Watergate, the CIA domestic spying and on to Abu Ghraib.
As part of this, Hersh reveals how he landed at the NYT, why he moved on, how he landed for his second and main stint at the New Yorker, why he left (he thought Remnick writing a bio of Obama was an ethical bright line), and bits of how he landed at the London Review of Books and then moved past it to Die Welt. With LRB, it wasn't fact-checking as the deal-breaker; he says he thought he was being asked for facts that were trivial or irrelevant to the story he had produced.
That said, he more than once appreciates the work of Remnick in particular and editors in general. He admits they've helped him, on suggesting specific additional information, getting people to go on the record rather than just background, and on tightening things up. (He indirectly indicates that his writing tends to wander at times and so he needs that type of editing help as well.) At the New Yorker and LRB, he also says he appreciates the degree of fact-checking work.
It's a shame that his Cheney bio was derailed. Hersh, presumably as a good protector of sources, doesn't shed more light on that.
But, we get this instead.
For long-time readers of him, there's not a lot of new spill the beans stuff. (I can see voting it 4 stars instead of 5 because of this, but 3? No.)
He does mention that Clean Gene McCarthy was a CIA bagman for JFK; he may have mentioned that in Dark Side of Camelot, but it's been a long time since I read that. He also mentions three documented instances of Dick Nixon hitting Pat, the first when he lost the Cal governor's race, the second in the White House and the third just after arriving in San Clemente after his resignation. Hersh says he heard about the third in real time, then, working sources, got info about the other two.
Obviously, he didn't report it. He mentioned it to the public for the first time at a 1998 Harvard event, and was rightly called out by many women in attendance as domestic violence is a crime.
One thing that is missing, other than the broadest of overviews about the Trump Administration, is Ed Butowsky's attempt to entangle Hersh in the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Hersh didn't bite on Rich being murdered as a coverup, but he did appear to believe then that Rich stole the emails. (Confession: As I blogged at the time https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2017/08/sy-hersh-seth-rich-wikileaks-and.html, so did I, but I backed away from that within six months. I don't know where Sy is, and if he's not commented further on advice of counsel given all the lawsuits involved here.)
As part of this, Hersh reveals how he landed at the NYT, why he moved on, how he landed for his second and main stint at the New Yorker, why he left (he thought Remnick writing a bio of Obama was an ethical bright line), and bits of how he landed at the London Review of Books and then moved past it to Die Welt. With LRB, it wasn't fact-checking as the deal-breaker; he says he thought he was being asked for facts that were trivial or irrelevant to the story he had produced.
That said, he more than once appreciates the work of Remnick in particular and editors in general. He admits they've helped him, on suggesting specific additional information, getting people to go on the record rather than just background, and on tightening things up. (He indirectly indicates that his writing tends to wander at times and so he needs that type of editing help as well.) At the New Yorker and LRB, he also says he appreciates the degree of fact-checking work.
It's a shame that his Cheney bio was derailed. Hersh, presumably as a good protector of sources, doesn't shed more light on that.
But, we get this instead.
For long-time readers of him, there's not a lot of new spill the beans stuff. (I can see voting it 4 stars instead of 5 because of this, but 3? No.)
He does mention that Clean Gene McCarthy was a CIA bagman for JFK; he may have mentioned that in Dark Side of Camelot, but it's been a long time since I read that. He also mentions three documented instances of Dick Nixon hitting Pat, the first when he lost the Cal governor's race, the second in the White House and the third just after arriving in San Clemente after his resignation. Hersh says he heard about the third in real time, then, working sources, got info about the other two.
Obviously, he didn't report it. He mentioned it to the public for the first time at a 1998 Harvard event, and was rightly called out by many women in attendance as domestic violence is a crime.
One thing that is missing, other than the broadest of overviews about the Trump Administration, is Ed Butowsky's attempt to entangle Hersh in the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. Hersh didn't bite on Rich being murdered as a coverup, but he did appear to believe then that Rich stole the emails. (Confession: As I blogged at the time https://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2017/08/sy-hersh-seth-rich-wikileaks-and.html, so did I, but I backed away from that within six months. I don't know where Sy is, and if he's not commented further on advice of counsel given all the lawsuits involved here.)