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A review by ithiliens
Reporter: A Memoir by Seymour M. Hersh
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.