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| Seymour Hersh on the 'pathetic' American media | |||
| 2013-09-29 | |||
He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth. Don't even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends "so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would" -- or the death of Osama bin Laden. "Nothing's been done about that story, it's one big lie, not one word of it is true," he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011. The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him. "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]," he declares in an interview with the Guardian. "It used to be when you were in a situation when something very dramatic happened, the president and the minions around the president had control of the narrative, you would pretty much know they would do the best they could to tell the story straight. Now that doesn't happen any more. Now they take advantage of something like that and they work out how to re-elect the president." He has said before that the confidence of the US press to challenge the US government collapsed post 9/11, but he is adamant that Obama is worse than Bush. "Do you think Obama's been judged by any rational standards? Has Guantanamo closed? Is a war over? Is anyone paying any attention to Iraq? Is he seriously talking about going into Syria? We are not doing so well in the 80 wars we are in right now, what the hell does he want to go into another one for. What's going on [with journalists]?" he asks. He says in some ways President George Bush's administration was easier to write about. "The Bush era, I felt it was much easier to be critical than it is [of] Obama. Much more difficult in the Obama era," he said. He isn't even sure if the recent revelations about the depth and breadth of surveillance by the National Security Agency will have a lasting effect. He is certain that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden "changed the whole nature of the debate" about surveillance. Hersh says he and other journalists had written about surveillance, but Snowden was significant because he provided documentary evidence -- although he is sceptical about whether the revelations will change the US government's policy. Holding court to a packed audience at City University in London's summer school on investigative journalism, 76-year-old Hersh is on full throttle, a whirlwind of amazing stories of how journalism used to be; how he exposed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, how he got the Abu Ghraib pictures of American soldiers brutalising Iraqi prisoners, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden. He says investigative journalism in the US is being killed by the crisis of confidence, lack of resources and a misguided notion of what the job entails. Despite his concern about the timidity of journalism he believes the trade still offers hope of redemption. "I have this sort of heuristic view that journalism, we possibly offer hope because the world is clearly run by total nincompoops more than ever ... Not that journalism is always wonderful, it's not, but at least we offer some way out, some integrity. The republic's in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple." And he implores journalists to do something about it. | |||
| Posted by:Pappy |
| #2 A free people rely on a free FIFY. Never confuse the technology (printing press) that provided information with the social institution that, as we see, seeks to control, contort, constrict, and fabricate what you see and hear. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2013-09-29 22:02 |
| #1 I've got to agree with Hersh re journalists. The The lapdog media is doing a great disservice to the American people. It will catch up with them one day. A free people rely on a free press, (although this last line seems so foreign to what is really going on today. |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2013-09-29 17:56 |