Now That He’s Attacking Bush, Reporters Have Respect for Hersh

MRC ^ | 5/19/04 | Brent Baker

[pookie18]

Now that crusading liberal journalist Seymour Hersh is fueling a scandal that hurts a President the media largely dislike, writing stories about how the responsibility for prisoner abuse in Iraq goes right up to the office of the Secretary of Defense, as opposed to writing a book which tarnished JFK’s “Camelot,” he’s become the media’s darling. “Is Seymour Hersh becoming...respectable?”, media reporter Howard Kurtz marveled in Wednesday’s Washington Post. [Ellipses in original]

Kurtz reported in his May 19 “Style” section article: “Thirty-five years after breaking the news of the My Lai massacre, the tenacious, hot-tempered reporter is winning praise for his disclosures about U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners. He's on the tube touting his findings with Bob Schieffer, George Stephanopoulos, Wolf Blitzer, Bill O'Reilly. He's just won a National Magazine Award. 'If there's a journalistic equivalent to Viagra, he's on it,’ gushes Newsweek. A Pentagon spokesman is ripping him for 'outlandish’ and 'conspiratorial’ reporting, but the media establishment is embracing the Cleveland Park resident as never before.”

Indeed, this week all the networks jumped on his latest story about how a secret team that doesn’t have to follow the rules, set up by Don Rumsfeld to capture terrorists, set in motion a disregard for prisoners which led to excessive abuses in Iraq.

NBC’s Today, the MRC’s Tim Graham noticed, provides a great example of how the media’s attitude toward Hersh has changed as Hersh has changed his targets.

Tim submitted this item for CyberAlert:

Today has interviewed the liberal New Yorker writer twice in the last few weeks on his prison abuse stories, treating him like an unbiased, authoritative journalist. But when he wrote a book in 1997 attacking the legend of John F. Kennedy, The Dark Side of Camelot, Today co-host Matt Lauer pounded him for two days with questions like, “Do you think you were blinded by the desire to tell a sordid tale?” And: “People think that you have strong opinions and that often your opinions cloud your journalism.”

To discuss his prisoner-abuse stories, Hersh appeared on April 30, with two other guests, and then alone on May 10. On the 10th, co-host Katie Couric asked straight questions, treating him like an unbiased, authoritative source of information: “Tell us how this worked. I mean these were civilian contractors, CIA personnel and DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, personnel. So they basically came in, they decided or it was decided that they would be in charge of the prison. Did they specifically order these soldiers, these underlings to do these specific things to the detainees or was it simply a request to soften up the prisoners for interrogation as far as you know?"

She also asked why the media and others had failed to beat him to this important story: “Sy, before we go, the International Red Cross, another human rights group, investigated this prison abuse late last year. Why wasn't the Pentagon, Congress, or for that matter, the media more aware or more aggressive about these reports?”

But on November 10 and 11, 1997, it was a much different story, since the ox being gored wasn’t the Bush family, but the Kennedy family. NBC had dumped out of a deal with Hersh for a Kennedy documentary project when, as Today’s Lauer explained in introducing Hersh, his “source documents on some of the most titillating topics proved to be fakes.” Hersh didn’t include that material in his book, but note the hostility of the hardballs Lauer threw at Hersh back then:

-- "You handle the legacy of JFK with about as much tenderness as a steamroller here. What was your goal with the book?"

-- “Let’s talk about the controversy. The documents you obtained in question was apparently a contract between JFK and Marilyn Monroe, hush money paid to Marilyn Monroe to keep her quiet about their alleged affair. You insisted that those documents were authentic long after others began to question their authenticity."

-- “Our network has expressed that they had serious concerns about some of your source material and that’s why they backed out of a project with you...So when Warren Littlefield, the President of NBC Entertainment, says he backed out of this because of questions he’s lying?"

-- “You did believe that these documents were true. Do you think you were blinded by the desire to tell a sordid tale?"

-- “What do you say about the problem that might now exist, where people may look at the other stories in the book, and the other sources in the book, and say that because there was a bogus document that we continued to believe for so long, these other stories may not be true."

-- "You say that in 1960, John F. Kennedy stole the election. Let’s begin with the fact that you say he paid $2 million in a primary election to win the state of West Virginia. And you go further and you say Bobby Kennedy and Ted Kennedy personally delivered some of that money to local state politicians. Based on what proof?...Obviously Bobby Kennedy’s not around to defend himself. A spokesperson for Ted Kennedy said, 'We don’t intend to comment on this kind of malicious gossip and innuendo.’”

-- Lauer concluded: "You have heard this about you before. People think that you have strong opinions and that often your opinions cloud your journalism. I know you’ve done wonderful works in the past, but they think that possibly you’ve been twisting the words of sources. Some of your sources in this book have now come out and said you twisted their words. As a matter of fact, one gentleman, Jerry Bruno, a former Kennedy advance man, says after being interviewed by you and reading the final product that you should have called this book the Dark Side of Seymour Hersh."

The next day, the 11th, the hardballs resumed as they discussed JFK’s sex life. Here are illustrative examples:

-- “You mentioned Arthur Schlesinger a second ago, Kennedy advisor, historian. He says this, I’ll quote, 'The notion that there was a bunch of bimbos parading around the White House is ridiculous. I worked at the White House. No doubt some things happened but Hersh’s capacity to exaggerate is unparalleled.’”

-- “Again stories have been going around for years. And I think that’s one of also the complaints on this book by the way, Seymour. Is that all these stories have been out there. That you’re basically taking a lot of, I guess, stories that have never been proven, putting them together, and making them fact. But the one story you do talk about in the book was that JFK was married before Jackie. That he actually married Durie Malcolm, a Palm Beach socialite. Basically you call it a one-night stand. Durie Malcolm, as you know, is still alive. She has always denied that she was ever married to JFK. There are no records to prove it. Why are you right and why is she lying?....Real quickly. Are you confident that the stories in this book will stand the test of time?....And you are receiving the scrutiny.”

That book may be riddled with misinformation. But he’s getting only plaudits, not scrutiny, today.

For more on Hersh’s strong, anti-conservative opinions, see the May 6, 200 CyberAlert on how he thought John Ashcroft was "demented," President Bush "doesn't know much," Don Rumsfeld "thinks he's Woody Allen," and the Iraq war was going to start a "horrible Armageddon." Go to: www.mrc.org

In his Post story, “Seymour Hersh, At the Front Lines On War Scandals,” Kurtz recalled how as “a onetime volunteer for Eugene McCarthy's antiwar campaign,” Hersh, who toiled for many years for the New York Times, “doesn't pretend to be a neutral observer.” Kurtz elaborated: “Appearing with two Senators Sunday on Face the Nation, Hersh challenged them: 'If you convene a serious hearing and I assure you some senior officers will come and -- if you give them enough protection -- and tell you things that will really knock your socks off. So go for it.’ And on Late Edition, Hersh didn't hesitate to invoke a Nazi parallel: 'You're seeing two attack dogs, German shepherds, snarling, it's a scene from, you know, Third Reich, you name it.’"

For Kurtz’s May 19 article in full: www.washingtonpost.com

[alloysteel]

Seymour Hersh will NEVER be respectable. He uses innuendo, vague "interviews", and sheer conjecture to build his stories. As works of horror fiction, they are passable good, on par with Stephen King, maybe. But as a reflection of the realities involved, he misses the mark, and the internal inconsistencies somehow slip right past his admirers. He states effects, without seeming to delve into reasons, and expresses his astonishment and disappointment that the US should have lost its "moral superiority".

[lepton]

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