CJR: ‘The Media’s Reaction to Seymour Hersh’s Bin Laden Scoop Has Been Disgraceful’

Trevor Timm, writing for the CJR:

Hersh’s many critics, almost word-for-word, gave the same perfunctory two-sentence nod to his best-known achievements — breaking the My Lai massacre in 1969 (for which he won the Pulitzer) and exposing the Abu Ghraib torture scandal 35 years later — before going on to call him every name in the book: “conspiracy theorist,” “off the rails,” “crank.” Yet most of this criticism, over the thousands of words written about Hersh’s piece in the last week, has amounted to “That doesn’t make sense to me,” or “That’s not what government officials told me before,” or “How are we to believe his anonymous sources?”

While there’s no way to prove or disprove every assertion Hersh makes without re-reporting the whole story, let’s look at the overarching criticisms one by one.

Must-read piece.

★ Sunday, 17 May 2015