153-603: Seymour Myron Hersh (born April 8, 1937) is an American investigative journalist and political writer. He gained recognition in 1969 for exposing the My Lai massacre and its cover-up during the Vietnam War , for which he received the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting . During the 1970s, Hersh covered the Watergate scandal for The New York Times , also reporting on the secret U.S. bombing of Cambodia and
306-637: A commando task force, had infiltrated the country to gather intelligence on nuclear, chemical, and missile sites since mid-2004. In April 2006, an article by Hersh titled "The Iran Plans" alleged that the Bush administration was accelerating military planning for an attack on Iran, and that the Pentagon had presented the White House the option of using bunker-buster nuclear weapons on the country's underground uranium enrichment sites; he further alleged that
459-525: A court-martial for allegedly killing 75 civilians in South Vietnam . After speaking with a Pentagon contact and Fort Benning's public relations office, Hersh found an AP story from September 7 that identified the soldier as Lieutenant William Calley . He next found Calley's lawyer, George W. Latimer , who met with him in Salt Lake City, Utah , and showed him a document which revealed Calley
612-781: A false flag operation aimed at drawing the U.S. into the war against Assad. It described an alleged supply chain operation, organized by the CIA and the United Kingdom's MI6 with funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which transported weapons to the Syrian rebels from Libya via southern Turkey between early 2012 and the September 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex at Benghazi . Hersh alleged that Turkey's National Intelligence Organization and Gendarmerie had proceeded to instruct al-Nusra on producing and deploying sarin, and that
765-473: A freelancer . Hersh wrote six articles in national magazines in 1967 (two for The New Republic , two for Ramparts , and two for The New York Times Magazine ) in which he detailed the government's growing stockpiles of the weapons and its co-operation with universities and corporations, as well as the secret adoption of a first-use policy. The research formed the basis for his first book, Chemical and Biological Warfare: America's Hidden Arsenal (1968), and
918-641: A "freer hand in Afghanistan". Further allegations were that bin Laden's DNA had been collected by a Pakistani Army doctor, not by Shakil Afridi in a fake vaccination drive by the CIA; that the Navy SEALs met no resistance at the compound, and were escorted by an ISI officer; that bin Laden's body was torn apart by rifle fire; and that pieces of his corpse were tossed out over the Hindu Kush mountains on
1071-408: A $ 50 million libel lawsuit against Hersh; when it went to trial in 1989, Desai, then 93, was too ill to attend, but Kissinger appeared and testified that Desai had not worked in any capacity for the CIA. A Chicago jury ruled in favor of Hersh, finding it had not been proved that Hersh had intended to write falsehoods or that he had shown reckless disregard for the truth, either of which must be proven in
1224-511: A 10,000-word article by Hersh detailing an alternative account of the raid, titled "The Killing of Osama bin Laden", was published in the London Review of Books . The official account was that bin Laden had been located through interrogation of detainees and surveillance of his courier, that Pakistan was unaware of the operation, and that he was killed only when he did not surrender; Hersh reported that bin Laden had been captured and held as
1377-436: A January 16, 1975, meeting between the paper's top editors (including executive editor A. M. Rosenthal ) and President Gerald Ford , in which the president mentioned CIA political assassinations —a comment which he subsequently asked to be struck from the record; the editors later agreed not to tell Hersh about the disclosure. Hersh thereafter decided to move away from reporting on the CIA. On May 25, 1975, Hersh revealed that
1530-509: A July 2006 article on how senior commanders were challenging Bush's plan for a major bombing campaign, articles in November 2006 and March 2007 on the plan's re-focusing on targets in Iran aiding Iraqi militants, and an October 2007 article on planned "surgical" strikes on Iranian Quds Force training camps and supply depots. In an August 2006 article, Hersh alleged that the U.S. was involved in
1683-420: A U.S. warship had nearly fired on Iranian boats, had held a meeting on how to create a casus belli for a war; Hersh later said in an interview that one of the options discussed and rejected was a false flag operation involving Navy SEALs , who would pose as Iranian patrols and start a firefight with U.S. ships. Hersh later began writing a book on Cheney in 2011, on which he spent four years before dropping amid
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#17327913451511836-453: A U.S.-backed airlift of Pakistani officers from Kunduz in Afghanistan had inadvertently carried Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. Hersh later reported on the government's flawed prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui , on the U.S.'s aggressive assassination efforts against al-Qaeda members, and on business conflicts of interest held by Richard Perle , chairman of the Pentagon's advisory Defense Policy Board , which led to his resignation. Following
1989-452: A book. Nellie would go on to write more articles on corrupt politicians, sweat-shop working conditions and other societal injustices. The muckrakers appeared at a moment when journalism was undergoing changes in style and practice. In response to yellow journalism , which had exaggerated facts, objective journalism, as exemplified by The New York Times under Adolph Ochs after 1896, turned away from sensationalism and reported facts with
2142-528: A broom stick and a chair, threatening males with rape, allowing guards to stitch wounds from a beating, sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and a broom stick, and using military dogs to intimidate. The article also alleged that military intelligence teams, which included CIA officers and "interrogation specialists" from private contractors , had directed the abuse at the prison. In two articles in May 2004, "Chain of Command" and "The Gray Zone", Hersh alleged that
2295-470: A counter-balance to Shiite-backed Hezbollah. In May 2007, Lebanon launched an attack on Fatah al-Islam, which it accused of having ties to the Syrian government, starting a severe domestic conflict . In a June 2008 article titled "Preparing the Battlefield", Hersh alleged that Congress had secretly appropriated $ 400 million for a major escalation of covert operations against Iran in late 2007, following
2448-548: A crackdown on a number of other patents and fraudulent schemes of medicinal companies. Many other works by muckrakers brought to light a variety of issues in America during the Progressive era. These writers focused on a wide range of issues including the monopoly of Standard Oil ; cattle processing and meat packing ; patent medicines; child labor ; and wages, labor , and working conditions in industry and agriculture. In
2601-634: A crackdown on leaks, instead writing his 2018 memoir Reporter . Hersh alleged in a May 2011 article titled "Iran And the Bomb" that the U.S. lacked conclusive evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons, citing a still-classified National Intelligence Estimate produced by the National Intelligence Council earlier that year. The summary of the 2007 estimate, which had been released publicly, had found "with high confidence" that Iran had halted its weapons program in late 2003 after
2754-581: A government position during the Reagan administration . While writing the book, Hersh revisited his previous reporting on Edward M. Korry , the U.S. ambassador to Chile from 1967 to 1971. In 1974, Hersh had reported in the Times that Korry had known of the CIA's efforts to foment a coup. Korry, who had reacted to the claim with furious denial, demanded a front-page retraction in exchange for documents Hersh wanted for his book. The retraction, which Time called
2907-460: A letter on March 29 from Ronald Ridenhour, a Vietnam veteran who had interviewed soldiers who knew of the killings. After traveling to California and visiting Ridenhour, who gave him their personal information, Hersh traveled across the country to interview the soldiers. This revealed that eyewitnesses had been told not to talk to anyone, and that the actual death count was in the hundreds. On November 20, Dispatch syndicated Hersh's second article, which
3060-503: A libel suit. In August 1983, a 17,500-word article by Hersh in The Atlantic magazine alleged that former President Gerald Ford , whom he interviewed in the story, had struck a secret deal prior to Nixon's resignation , brokered by Nixon's chief of staff General Alexander Haig , which gave him the presidency in exchange for his subsequent pardon of Nixon . Hersh worked on and narrated the 1985 PBS Frontline documentary "Buying
3213-586: A long article, questioning among other claims that the U.S. and Pakistan had struck a secret deal, as U.S. military aid had fallen and relations had deteriorated in following years. Peter Bergen of CNN , who visited the compound after the raid, disputed that the only shots fired were those that killed bin Laden, writing that he had seen evidence of an extended firefight. Both journalists, as well as Jack Shafer at Politico and James Kirchick at Slate , criticized Hersh's sources: an unnamed "retired senior [U.S.] intelligence official", "two longtime consultants to
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#17327913451513366-573: A mass audience as circulation figures of the magazines rose on account of visibility and public interest. Magazines were the leading outlets for muckraking journalism. Samuel S. McClure and John Sanborn Phillips started McClure's Magazine in May 1893. McClure led the magazine industry by cutting the price of an issue to 15 cents, attracting advertisers, giving audiences illustrations and well-written content and then raising ad rates after increased sales, with Munsey's and Cosmopolitan following suit. McCuckz sought out and hired talented writers, like
3519-485: A mass audience. In contrast with objective reporting, the journalists, whom Roosevelt dubbed "muckrakers", saw themselves primarily as reformers and were politically engaged. Journalists of the previous eras were not linked to a single political, populist movement as the muckrakers were associated with Progressive reforms. While the muckrakers continued the investigative exposures and sensational traditions of yellow journalism, they wrote to change society. Their work reached
3672-490: A military plane, and that the U.S. misrepresented the situation to portray the Soviets as deliberate murderers of civilians. In The Samson Option (1991), Hersh chronicled the history of Israel's nuclear weapon program , arguing that a nuclear capability was sought from the state's founding, and that it was achieved under a U.S. policy of feigned ignorance and indirect assistance. Hersh also wrote that Israel received aid from
3825-434: A number of instances, the revelations of muckraking journalists led to public outcry, governmental and legal investigations, and, in some cases, legislation was enacted to address the issues the writers identified, such as harmful social conditions; pollution; food and product safety standards; sexual harassment; unfair labor practices; fraud; and other matters. The work of the muckrakers in the early years, and those today, span
3978-756: A one-time co-author had received a $ 800,000 advance for the project. Other aspects of the book also came under criticism, including its prying into Kennedy's alleged sexual escapades based on interviews with his Secret Service guards, and its claim that Kennedy used Judith Exner as a courier to deliver cash to mobster Sam Giancana , made by a source who later recanted it before the Assassination Records Review Board . In 1998, Hersh published Against All Enemies: Gulf War Syndrome: The War Between America's Ailing Veterans and Their Government , about Gulf War syndrome . He estimated that 15 percent of returning American troops were afflicted with
4131-477: A prisoner of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) since 2006, that his location was revealed to the CIA by a former Pakistani intelligence officer in 2010, that top Pakistani military officials knew about the operation, and that bin Laden had been assassinated. The article alleged Pakistan had kept bin Laden, with financial support from Saudi Arabia, as leverage against al-Qaeda , and that it agreed to give him up in exchange for increased U.S. military aid and
4284-493: A pyramid. ... Yet another photograph shows a kneeling, naked, unhooded male prisoner ... posed to make it appear that he is performing oral sex on another male prisoner, who is naked and hooded. Hersh had obtained a secret 53-page report from an internal Army investigation headed by General Antonio Taguba , which had been submitted on March 3. It detailed more of the abuses, including pouring cold water and liquid from broken chemical lights on naked detainees, beatings with
4437-460: A regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, edited by Tina Brown until 1998 and David Remnick thereafter. A piece by him in 1993 alleged that Pakistan had developed nuclear weapons with the consent of the Reagan and Bush administrations , using restricted, high-tech materials purchased in the U.S. In May 2000, a 25,000-word article by Hersh titled "Overwhelming Force", the longest piece in
4590-529: A report. Practitioners sometimes use the terms "watchdog reporting" or "accountability reporting". Most investigative journalism has traditionally been conducted by newspapers, wire services , and freelance journalists. With the decline in income through advertising, many traditional news services have struggled to fund investigative journalism, due to it being very time-consuming and expensive. Journalistic investigations are increasingly carried out by news organizations working together, even internationally (as in
4743-453: A request from President Bush. The request allegedly "focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change ", and included new activities such as the funding of opposition groups in the south and east of the country. The article also alleged that Vice President Dick Cheney , after a January 2008 incident in the Strait of Hormuz in which
Seymour Hersh - Misplaced Pages Continue
4896-584: A village on March 16, 1968. The initial information about the massacre was provided by whistleblower Ronald Ridenhour , who investigated while serving as a soldier in the United States 11th Infantry Brigade in Vietnam. On October 22, 1969, Hersh received a tip from Geoffrey Cowan , a columnist for The Village Voice with a military source, about a soldier being held at Fort Benning in Georgia for
5049-515: A wide array of legal, social, ethical and public policy concerns. The influence of the muckrakers began to fade during the more conservative presidency of William Howard Taft . Corporations and political leaders were also more successful in silencing these journalists as advertiser boycotts forced some magazines to go bankrupt. Through their exposés, the nation was changed by reforms in cities, business, politics, and more. Monopolies such as Standard Oil were broken up and political machines fell apart;
5202-592: Is being put to light. ... Both the killer and the killed are victims in Vietnam; the peasant who is shot down for no reason and the G.I. who is taught, or comes to believe, that a Vietnamese life somehow has less meaning than his wife's, or his sister's, or his mother's. On March 14, 1970, the Peers Commission submitted to the Army its secret report on the massacre, containing more than 20,000 pages of testimony from 400 witnesses. One of Hersh's sources leaked
5355-615: Is called investigative journalism and is distinct from apparently similar work done by police, lawyers, auditors, and regulatory bodies in that it is not limited as to target, not legally founded and closely connected to publicity." Early newspapers in British colonial America were often suppressed by the authorities for their investigative journalism. Examples include Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick and Benjamin Franklin's New England Courant . Journalists who reported on
5508-478: Is giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign and pointing at the genitals of a young Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag over his head, as he masturbates. Three other hooded and naked Iraqi prisoners are shown, hands reflexively crossed over their genitals. ... In another, England stands arm in arm with Specialist [Charles] Graner ; both are grinning and giving the thumbs-up behind a cluster of perhaps seven naked Iraqis, knees bent, piled clumsily on top of each other in
5661-414: Is not a "naming names and telling all affair". In fact, one of the strengths is that discriminating readers will know how much more I know—and did not tell. I'm convinced that to give the name and hometown of a G.I. who committed rape and murder that day, or one who beheaded an infant, would not further the aim of the book. It is an exposé, but not of the men of Charlie Company. Something much more significant
5814-456: The April 7 missile strike on Shayrat Airbase , ordered by President Trump , was conducted despite U.S. intelligence affirming a conventional bombing. Higgins again criticized Hersh's claims, writing for Bellingcat that they were inconsistent with Syrian and Russian descriptions of the target and satellite images of the impact sites, as well as findings of sarin and hexamine in samples retrieved by
5967-518: The Center for Public Integrity which includes 165 investigative reporters in over 65 countries working collaboratively on crime, corruption, and abuse of power at a global level, under Gerard Ryle as Director. Working with major media outlets globally, they have exposed organised crime, international tobacco companies, private military cartels, asbestos companies, climate change lobbyists, details of Iraq and Afghanistan war contracts, and most recently
6120-628: The Central Intelligence Agency 's (CIA) program of domestic spying . In 2004, he detailed the U.S. military's torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq for The New Yorker . Hersh has won five George Polk Awards , and two National Magazine Awards . He is the author of 11 books, including The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House (1983), an account of the career of Henry Kissinger which won
6273-474: The Colombian drug war . Hersh performed six months of research for the article, and interviewed 300 people, including soldiers who had witnessed the killings; he alleged that McCaffrey had deceived his superiors and disregarded cease-fire orders. In July 2001, the magazine published Hersh's investigation of Mobil 's illegal multibillion-dollar oil swap deal between Kazakhstan and Iran in the 1990s. Following
Seymour Hersh - Misplaced Pages Continue
6426-646: The Evergreen Dispatch , a short-lived weekly newspaper for the suburb of Evergreen Park . He moved to Pierre, South Dakota , in 1962 to work as a correspondent for United Press International (UPI), reporting on the state legislature and writing a series of articles on the Oglala Sioux . In 1963, Hersh moved back to Chicago to work for the Associated Press (AP), and in 1965 he was transferred to its Washington, D.C. , bureau to report on
6579-784: The FBI 's failure to investigate political operative Donald Segretti , despite knowing of his activities, and leaks from the grand jury testimonies of former Attorney General John Mitchell and burglar James McCord , the latter of which revealed that the Committee to Re-Elect the President had made the payments. John Dean , Nixon's counsel, later said that while it had been the Post 's articles in 1972 that had encouraged prosecutors, "the most devastating pieces that strike awfully close to home" were Hersh's in 1973 and 1974. Hersh contributed to
6732-459: The Joint Chiefs of Staff later sought to drop this option, which had been resisted by White House officials. The article also alleged that U.S. troops were infiltrating Iran to establish contact with anti-government minority groups, and that carrier-based aircraft were flying simulated nuclear bombing runs. Hersh wrote several more pieces on this alleged plan in the next two years, including
6885-602: The Nation , assumed in 1970 that investigative journalism, and reform journalism, or muckraking, were the same type of journalism. Journalism textbooks point out that McClure's muckraking standards "Have become integral to the character of modern investigative journalism." Furthermore, the successes of the early muckrakers have continued to inspire journalists. Moreover, muckraking has become an integral part of journalism in American history. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed
7038-629: The National Book Critics Circle Award . In 2013, Hersh's reporting alleged that Syrian rebel forces , rather than the government, had attacked civilians with sarin gas at Ghouta during the Syrian Civil War , and in 2015, he presented an alternative account of the U.S. special forces raid in Pakistan which killed Osama bin Laden , both times attracting controversy and criticism. In 2023, Hersh alleged that
7191-609: The National Security Council after early bombings of Cambodia were exposed in the Times in May 1969. Hersh interviewed Knight and detailed the cover-up of Menu in an article on July 15, 1973, one day before the start of Knight's public testimony. On July 16, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger admitted that the Air Force had flown 3,630 raids over Cambodia in 14 months, dropping more than 100,000 tons of bombs. Hersh continued to investigate who had ordered
7344-474: The Obama administration and Pakistan had lied about the event, and that American media outlets were reluctant to challenge the administration, saying: "It's pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama]". Hersh later said that his sources told him that the official story was false days after the raid, but that The New Yorker had rejected his article pitches. On May 10, 2015,
7497-518: The Obama administration had a chance for diplomacy with Syria and perhaps Iran. On December 8, 2013, an article by Hersh titled "Whose sarin?", published in the London Review of Books ( LRB ), alleged that the Obama administration had "cherry-picked intelligence" on the August 21, 2013, sarin attack at Ghouta during the Syrian Civil War , which had killed hundreds of civilians, in order to attribute
7650-650: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). A later investigation by a joint UN–OPCW panel found that the attack was a sarin bombing by the Syrian Air Force. In a September 2013 interview, Hersh commented that the U.S.'s account of the May 2, 2011, raid in Abbottabad , Pakistan, which killed Osama bin Laden was "one big lie, not one word of it is true". He stated that both
7803-655: The Panama Papers and Paradise Papers . The investigative Commons center opened in Berlin , Germany in 2021 and houses the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights , Forensic Architecture , and Bellingcat . An investigative reporter may make use of one or more of these tools, among others, on a single story: Organizations, Publications and People Muckraker The muckrakers were reform-minded journalists, writers, and photographers in
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#17327913451517956-525: The Pentagon . While in Washington, he befriended famed investigative journalist I. F. Stone , whose muckraking newsletter I. F. Stone's Weekly served as an inspiration. Hersh began to develop his investigative methods, often walking out of regimented press briefings at the Pentagon to interview high-ranking officers in their lunch halls. In 1966, Hersh reported on the intensifying U.S. involvement in
8109-516: The Progressive Era in the United States (1890s–1920s) who claimed to expose corruption and wrongdoing in established institutions, often through sensationalist publications. The modern term generally references investigative journalism or watchdog journalism ; investigative journalists in the US are occasionally called "muckrakers" informally. The muckrakers played a highly visible role during
8262-450: The Progressive Era . Muckraking magazines—notably McClure's of the publisher S. S. McClure —took on corporate monopolies and political machines , while trying to raise public awareness and anger at urban poverty , unsafe working conditions, prostitution , and child labor . Most of the muckrakers wrote nonfiction, but fictional exposés often had a major impact, too, such as those by Upton Sinclair . In contemporary American usage,
8415-656: The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks , Hersh turned his focus to U.S. policy in the Middle East and the Bush administration 's " war on terror ". In The New Yorker , he reported on U.S. intelligence failures surrounding 9/11; on the corruption of the Saudi royal family and its alleged financial support for Osama bin Laden ; and on the potential instability of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, including an article alleging that
8568-575: The Special Operations Command ", and retired Pakistani General Asad Durrani , who headed the ISI from 1990 to 1992, with Fisher writing that this was "worryingly little evidence for a story that accuses hundreds of people across three governments of staging a massive international hoax that has gone on for years". Fisher also questioned that Pakistan had insisted on an elaborate raid over simpler and lower-risk methods, asking why bin Laden
8721-526: The U.S. Navy was using submarines to collect intelligence inside the three-mile protected coastal zone of the Soviet Union in a spy program codenamed "Holystone", which had continued for at least 15 years. It was later revealed that Dick Cheney , one of Ford's top aides and later George W. Bush 's vice president, proposed that the FBI search the home of Hersh and his sources in order to halt his reporting on
8874-433: The U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Hersh disputed the Bush administration's erroneous claims about Saddam Hussein 's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism, which had been used to justify the invasion. He reported that the claim that Iraq had received nuclear materials from Niger was based on forged documents , that the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans had provided dubious intelligence to
9027-654: The University of Chicago Law School in 1959, but was expelled during his first year due to poor grades. After briefly working at a Walgreens drug store, Hersh began his career in 1959 with a seven-month stint at the City News Bureau of Chicago , first as a copyboy and later as a crime reporter. In 1960, he enlisted as an Army reservist , and spent three months in basic training at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. After returning to Chicago, in 1961 Hersh launched
9180-539: The "longest correction ever published", appeared on February 9, 1981. Peter Kornbluh , Chile expert at the National Security Archive , later judged based on declassified documents that Korry was unaware of CIA involvement. Also in the book was the claim that former Indian Prime Minister Morarji Desai had been paid $ 20,000 per year by the CIA during the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Desai filed
9333-424: The Bomb", which reported on a Pakistani businessman who had attempted to smuggle krytron devices which could be used as nuclear bomb triggers out of the U.S. On June 12, 1986, an article by Hersh in the Times revealed that U.S.-backed dictator of Panama Manuel Noriega was a key figure in weapons and narcotics trafficking. The article was the first in a "political landslide" of allegations against Noriega; in 1989,
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#17327913451519486-504: The CIA on the legality of " enhanced interrogation techniques ". As after Hersh's reporting on the My Lai massacre, he garnered national and international attention and won multiple awards, including his fifth George Polk Award . A book compiling and building upon his post-9/11 reporting for The New Yorker, titled Chain of Command: The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib , was published later in 2004. In July 2005, an article by Hersh alleged that
9639-649: The German newspaper Die Welt published Hersh's article "Trump's Red Line", which had been rejected by the LRB . It alleged that the Syrian Air Force 's April 4, 2017, attack at Khan Shaykhun was not a sarin attack, but a conventional bombing conducted with Russian intelligence that struck a regional headquarters building with "fertilisers, disinfectants and other goods" in its basement, which created "effects similar to those of sarin". The article further alleged that
9792-536: The Nixon campaign with secret information he had gathered from the Vietnam War's Paris peace negotiations . The book also alleges that Kissinger alerted Nixon to President Johnson 's October 31, 1968, bombing halt 12 hours in advance, securing his position in the administration. The book is noted for its density of information and prosecutorial tone, and it has been credited with preventing Kissinger from returning to
9945-437: The Nixon campaign. Together with Walter Rugaber , Hersh produced extensive reporting for the Times on the unfolding scandal; a key article by him published on January 14, 1973, revealed that hush money payments were still being made to the burglars, which shifted the press's focus from the break-in itself to its cover-up. During 1973, Hersh wrote more than 40 articles on Watergate, most printed on page one; his reveals included
10098-575: The Pentagon was planning a covert operation inside Pakistan to disarm the weapons. President Bush told Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf that Hersh was "a liar". During the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan , Hersh reported that a Predator drone had followed a convoy carrying Taliban leader Mullah Omar , but that delayed approval for a missile strike had allowed him to escape; that a failed Army Delta Force raid on Omar's compound in Kandahar had led to an escape in which 12 soldiers were injured; and that
10251-621: The Standard Oil Company in 1902, providing insight into the manipulation of trusts. One trust they manipulated was with Christopher Dunn Co. She followed that work with The History of The Standard Oil Company: the Oil War of 1872 , which appeared in McClure's Magazine in 1908. She condemned Rockefeller's immoral and ruthless business tactics and emphasized "our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for
10404-485: The U.S. Senate. This work was a keystone in the creation of the Seventeenth Amendment which established the election of Senators through popular vote. The Great American Fraud (1905) by Samuel Hopkins Adams revealed fraudulent claims and endorsements of patent medicines in America. This article shed light on the many false claims that pharmaceutical companies and other manufacturers would make as to
10557-558: The U.S. and Norway had sabotaged the Nord Stream pipelines , again stirring controversy. He is known for his use of anonymous sources , for which his later stories in particular have been criticized. Hersh was born in Chicago , Illinois , on April 8, 1937, to Isador and Dorothy Hersh ( née Margolis), Yiddish -speaking Jews who had immigrated to the U.S. in the 1920s from Lithuania and Poland, respectively. Isador's original surname
10710-470: The U.S. had covertly intervened in favor of Ayad Allawi in the January 2005 Iraqi parliamentary election , in an "off the books" campaign conducted by retired CIA officers and non-government personnel, and with funds "not necessarily" appropriated by Congress. In a January 2005 article for The New Yorker titled "The Coming Wars", Hersh wrote that the next U.S. target in the Middle East was Iran, and alleged that covert U.S. reconnaissance missions, including
10863-410: The U.S. in the 1973 Yom Kippur War through "nuclear blackmail" (Israel's threat to use the weapons against its Arab enemies). Another major allegation was that the intelligence passed to Israel by convicted American spy Jonathan Pollard had been shared with the Soviet Union by former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin , who denied the charge. Another allegation was that British media magnate Robert Maxwell
11016-429: The U.S. invaded Panama and captured him, taking him to the U.S. to stand trial. Hersh spent much of the decade writing two critically acclaimed but commercially unsuccessful books. In his 1986 title The Target Is Destroyed , Hersh examined the 1983 shootdown of Korean Air Lines Flight 007 by the Soviet Union. He reported that the U.S. Air Force knew almost immediately that the Soviets believed that they had shot down
11169-457: The United States around 1916. Their reports exposed bribery and corruption at the city and state level, as well as in Congress, that led to reforms and changes in election results. "The effect on the soul of the nation was profound. It can hardly be considered an accident that the heyday of the muckrakers coincided with one of America's most yeasty and vigorous periods of ferment. The people of
11322-546: The Vietnam War , writing series of articles on draft reform , the shortage of qualified pilots, and on the U.S. bombing of civilian targets in North Vietnam , revealed by New York Times correspondent Harrison Salisbury . In 1967, Hersh became part of the AP's first special investigative unit. After his editors diminished a piece he wrote on the U.S.'s secretive chemical and biological weapons programs , he quit and became
11475-702: The Watergate cover-up during the House debate on Nixon's articles of impeachment in July 1974. In early 1974, Hersh planned to publish a story on "Project Jennifer" (later revealed to be codenamed Project Azorian ), a covert CIA operation that partially recovered the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the floor of the Pacific Ocean with a purpose-built vessel, the Glomar Explorer . The ship, which
11628-535: The White House on Iraq's weapons capacity, and that the Bush administration had pressured the intelligence community to violate its " stovepiping " rule, which allowed only vetted and confirmed information to rise up the chain of command . On April 30, 2004, Hersh published the first of three articles in The New Yorker which detailed the U.S. military's torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. The story, titled "Torture at Abu Ghraib",
11781-457: The abuse stemmed from a top-secret special access program (SAP) authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, which provided blanket approval for killings, kidnappings, and interrogations (at Guantanamo Bay and CIA black sites ) of "high-value" targets. He alleged that the SAP was extended to Iraq's military prisons in 2003 to gather intelligence on
11934-639: The activities in the Department of Defense"; he added that: "With these false claims, the Magazine and the reporter have made themselves part of the story." As the scandal grew and calls for Rumsfeld to resign mounted, he privately offered to step down, which Bush rejected. Later stories by other reporters revealed the Torture Memos , in which the Department of Justice had advised the Pentagon and
12087-575: The affair, Major Hal Knight, who had supervised radar crews in Vietnam, realized that the Senate "was unaware of what had taken place while I was out there", and in early 1973 wrote a letter to the committee that confessed his role in the cover-up of Operation Menu, in which he recorded fake bombing coordinates and burned his orders. Hersh learned of Knight's letter after exposing a different scandal on May 17, 1973, in which Nixon and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger had authorized wiretaps of employees of
12240-521: The articles with open-source intelligence , writing that the "improvised" rockets had been used by the Syrian Army as early as November 2012, and that the front lines on the day of the attack were just 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) from the impact sites, within Postol's estimated range. They also criticized the claim of al-Nusra responsibility, citing the high difficulty and expense of producing sarin, and
12393-678: The attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. Most of these journalists detested being called muckrakers. They felt betrayed that Roosevelt would describe them with such a term after they had helped him with his election. Muckraker David Graham Philips believed that the tag of muckraker brought about the end of the movement as it was easier to group and attack the journalists. The term eventually came to be used in reference to investigative journalists who reported about and exposed such issues as crime, fraud, waste, public health and safety, graft, and illegal financial practices. A muckraker's reporting may span businesses and government. Some of
12546-455: The attack to Assad's government and justify a military strike. The article, which had been rejected by The New Yorker and The Washington Post , alleged that U.S. intelligence had found by June 2013 that al-Nusra , a branch of al-Qaeda and part of the Syrian opposition , was also capable of producing and deploying sarin gas. The article cited munitions expert Theodore Postol , who judged that
12699-513: The body politic, economic and social, many and grave evils, and there is urgent necessity for the sternest war upon them. There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil man whether politician or business man, every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine, or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that
12852-763: The bombing of Cambodia; other topics included his role in the Chilean coup, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 , domestic wiretapping, and the White House Plumbers , as well as Hersh's criticism of his former Times colleagues, such as Max Frankel and James Reston , for their proximity to him. One much-discussed allegation was that Kissinger, originally an advisor to Nelson Rockefeller in the 1968 Republican Party presidential primaries before his defeat to Nixon, had offered Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey damaging material on Nixon before going to
13005-688: The book with the intent of addressing unsafe working conditions in that industry, not food safety. Sinclair was not a professional journalist but his story was first serialized before being published in book form. Sinclair considered himself to be a muckraker. " The Treason of the Senate: Aldrich, the Head of it All ", by David Graham Phillips , published as a series of articles in Cosmopolitan magazine in February 1906, described corruption in
13158-549: The budgets for investigative journalism. A 2002 study concluded "that investigative journalism has all but disappeared from the nation's commercial airwaves." Non-commercial journalism has increasingly stepped-up to work on this growing need for in-depth investigations and reporting. One of the largest teams of investigative journalists is the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) launched in 1997 by
13311-412: The case of the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers ), or by nonprofit outlets such as ProPublica , which rely on the support of the public and benefactors to fund their work. University of Missouri journalism professor Steve Weinberg defined investigative journalism as: "Reporting, through one's own initiative and work product, matters of importance to readers, viewers, or listeners." In many cases,
13464-399: The chronic and multi-symptomatic disorder, and challenged the government claim that they were suffering from war fatigue, as opposed to the effects of a chemical or biological weapon. He suggested the smoke from the destruction of a weapon depot that stored nerve gas at Khamisiyah in Iraq, to which more than 100,000 soldiers were exposed, as a possible cause. Starting in 1993, Hersh became
13617-419: The country were aroused by the corruptions and wrongs of the age – and it was the muckrakers who informed and aroused them. The results showed in the great wave of progressivism and reform cresting in the remarkable spate of legislation that marked the first administration of Woodrow Wilson from 1913 to 1917. For this, the muckrakers had paved the way." Other changes that resulted from muckraker articles include
13770-460: The cover-up; in a rare telephone interview, Kissinger stated Nixon had "neither ordered nor was aware of any falsification". On July 31, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Earle Wheeler admitted that Nixon had ordered him to falsify records. Nixon's impeachment on this basis was proposed that day by Representative Robert Drinan , and it was considered as an article alongside
13923-565: The dangerous conditions in which these people worked in the mines, and the dangers they faced from union members who did not want them to work. Lincoln Steffens published "Tweed Days in St. Louis", in which he profiled corrupt leaders in St. Louis, in October 1902, in McClure's Magazine . The prominence of the article helped lawyer Joseph Folk to lead an investigation of the corrupt political ring in St. Louis. Ida Tarbell published The Rise of
14076-570: The doings of the British authorities would later contribute to revolutionary sentiment in the run-up to the American Revolution ; one prominent example was the Boston Gazette , contributed to by Samuel Adams among others. American journalism textbooks point out that muckraking standards promoted by McClure's Magazine around 1902, "Have become integral to the character of modern investigative journalism." Furthermore,
14229-635: The early weeks of the Iraq War in 2003, Hersh traveled to Damascus in Syria and interviewed President Bashar al-Assad , whom he interviewed several more times in following years, the latest in early 2010; he also interviewed Hassan Nasrallah , the leader of Hezbollah . In February 2008, an article by Hersh questioned the Israeli and American claims that a Syrian facility bombed by Israel in September 2007
14382-636: The exposure of the My Lai massacre, major newspapers began reporting on other U.S. atrocities in Vietnam. For his coverage, Hersh won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting and numerous other awards, including his first George Polk Award . He later wrote in a note to Robert Loomis , the editor of his 1970 book-length account of the massacre, My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath : Some will claim that I have attempted to exploit some dumb, out of service, overly talkative G.I.s. But few men are exposed to charges of murder ... it
14535-676: The findings were new or transformative, arguing that there remained "no definitive evidence" of a weapons program, and calling the report a "political document" in an interview. In an April 2012 article, Hersh alleged that the U.S. trained members of the Iranian dissident group Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), listed as a "foreign terrorist organization" by the State Department, at a site in Nevada from 2005 to 2007, and had provided intelligence for its assassinations of nuclear scientists . In
14688-539: The first entry in a three-part investigation by Hersh and Gerth into financial impropriety at Gulf and Western Industries , one of the country's largest conglomerates ; it was followed by two civil lawsuits by the Securities and Exchange Commission . The Times management was ambivalent about Hersh's new focus (he later stated that the paper "wasn't nearly as happy when we went after business wrongdoing as when we were kicking around some slob in government"), and he left
14841-541: The first three months of 1968, Hersh served as the press secretary for anti–Vietnam War candidate Senator Eugene McCarthy in his campaign in the 1968 Democratic Party presidential primaries . After resigning before the Wisconsin primary, he returned to journalism as a freelance reporter on Vietnam. In 1969, Hersh reported on the My Lai massacre , the murder of between 347 and 504 unarmed Vietnamese civilians (almost all women, children, and elderly men) by U.S. soldiers in
14994-625: The flight back to Jalalabad , rather than being buried at sea . A book compiling the article and Hersh's pieces on Syria for the magazine, The Killing of Osama bin Laden , was published in 2016 . Hersh's article was heavily criticized by other reporters. The narrative was similar to a little-known August 2011 post by national security blogger R.J. Hillhouse , who called Hersh's article "either plagiarism or unoriginal", though she speculated they used different sources; Hersh denied having read her work. Max Fisher of Vox accused Hersh's story of "internal contradictions" and "troubling inconsistencies" in
15147-552: The government eventually conceded the figure was closer to 300,000. He wrote 34 more articles on the story over the next months; they prompted the formation of the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee , which investigated covert CIA operations and led to reforms of the agency. Hersh's exposure of CHAOS was the earliest reporting to reveal contents of the CIA's " Family Jewels " list of its own illegal activities. Hersh soon felt "double-crossed" after learning of
15300-499: The growing insurgency , with Rumsfeld and Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone also extending its methods of physical coercion and sexual humiliation, under the name " Copper Green ". In a rare statement responding directly to the allegations, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said that they were "outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture", and that they reflected "the fevered insights of those with little, if any, connection to
15453-563: The growing middle class. The January 1903 issue of McClure's is considered to be the official beginning of muckraking journalism, although the muckrakers would get their label later. Ida M. Tarbell ("The History of Standard Oil"), Lincoln Steffens ("The Shame of the Cities") and Ray Stannard Baker ("The Right to Work"), simultaneously published famous works in that single issue. Claude H. Wetmore and Lincoln Steffens' previous article "Tweed Days in St. Louis" in McClure's October 1902 issue
15606-431: The intention of being impartial and a newspaper of record. The growth of wire services had also contributed to the spread of the objective reporting style. Muckraking publishers like Samuel S. McClure also emphasized factual reporting, but he also wanted what historian Michael Schudson had identified as one of the preferred qualities of journalism at the time, namely, the mixture of "reliability and sparkle" to interest
15759-563: The invasion of Iraq; Hersh alleged that the 2011 estimate found that this program had been aimed at Iraq (which Iran had believed to be developing a nuclear weapon), not Israel or the U.S., and that no new evidence had changed the 2007 assessment, despite expanded covert surveillance. In a November 2011 article after the release of a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear program, Hersh disputed that
15912-569: The job in 1979 to start writing a book on Henry Kissinger. In 1981, an article by Hersh in The New York Times Magazine described how former CIA agents Edwin Wilson and Frank Terpil had worked with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi , the leader of Libya, to illegally export explosives and train his troops for terrorism. Hersh reported that the CIA had given the pair tacit approval to oversee the sale of American technology. The story
16065-416: The key documents that came to define the work of the muckrakers were: Ray Stannard Baker published "The Right to Work" in McClure's Magazine in 1903, about coal mine conditions, a coal strike, and the situation of non-striking workers (or scabs). Many of the non-striking workers had no special training or knowledge in mining, since they were simply farmers looking for work. His investigative work portrayed
16218-537: The kind of influence he exercises." Her book generated enough public anger that it led to the splitting up of Standard Oil under the Sherman Anti Trust Act. Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1906, which revealed conditions in the meat packing industry in the United States and was a major factor in the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act and Meat Inspection Act . Sinclair wrote
16371-541: The last minute which were based on forged documents provided to him by fraudster Lex Cusack , including a fake hush money contract between Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe . An article about the controversy in The Washington Post said: "The strange and twisted saga of the JFK file is part cautionary tale, part slapstick farce, a story of deception and self-delusion in the service of commerce and journalism". Hersh and
16524-451: The magazine since 1993, detailed the Battle of Rumaila , an alleged massacre of retreating and surrendering Iraqi troops by soldiers under General Barry McCaffrey on the " Highway of Death " in the final days of the 1990–1991 Gulf War . He had received tips on the incident, which had been investigated and dismissed by the U.S. Army, from other officers while investigating McCaffrey's role in
16677-539: The middle-class electorate. When journalists went after different topics, he complained about their wallowing in the mud. In a speech on April 14, 1906 on the occasion of dedicating the House of Representatives office building, he drew on a character from John Bunyan's 1678 classic, Pilgrim's Progress , saying: ...you may recall the description of the Man with the Muck-rake, the man who could look no way but downward with
16830-450: The muck rakes are often indispensable to the well-being of society; but only if they know when to stop raking the muck." While a literature of reform had already appeared by the mid-19th century, the kind of reporting that would come to be called "muckraking" began to appear around 1900. By the 1900s, magazines such as Collier's Weekly , Munsey's Magazine and McClure's Magazine were already in wide circulation and read avidly by
16983-415: The muck-rake in his hands; who was offered a celestial crown for his muck-rake, but who would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor. While cautioning about possible pitfalls of keeping one's attention ever trained downward, "on the muck", Roosevelt emphasized the social benefit of investigative muckraking reporting, saying: There are, in
17136-432: The muckrakers became well known for their crusades, journalists from the eras of "personal journalism" and "yellow journalism" had gained fame through their investigative articles, including articles that exposed wrongdoing. In yellow journalism , the idea was to stir up the public with sensationalism, and thus sell more papers. If, in the process, a social wrong was exposed that the average man could get indignant about, that
17289-458: The next three months, 35 of whom agreed to talk. His fourth article, syndicated on December 2, revealed random killings of civilians in the days before the massacre; a fifth article was published weeks later. Ten pages of Haeberle's photos were printed in Life magazine on December 5. Hersh's reporting garnered him national fame, and encouraged the growing opposition to the war in the U.S. However, he
17442-583: The orders of Calley. Meadlo's mother told Hersh that she "sent them a good boy and they made him a murderer". Hersh's third article was syndicated by Dispatch on November 25, and that night an interview with Meadlo by Mike Wallace on the CBS News program 60 Minutes was broadcast on national television. The White House acknowledged the massacre for the first time the next day, and the Army appointed General William R. Peers to head an official commission investigating it. Hersh proceeded to visit 50 witnesses over
17595-462: The planned U.S. strike was averted after British intelligence found that samples of sarin from Ghouta did not match batches from Syria's arsenal. A report from an investigation by the United Nations (UN) concluded that sarin had been used at Ghouta, but did not assign responsibility for the attack. Blogger Eliot Higgins and chemical weapons expert Dan Kaszeta disputed some of the claims in
17748-627: The planning of Israel's attacks on Hezbollah in the 2006 Lebanon War as a "prelude" to the U.S. bombing of Iran. In his March 2007 article, titled "The Redirection", he alleged that the U.S. and Saudi Arabia were covertly supporting Sunni extremist groups to combat the influence of Shiite Iran and Syria, and that the Lebanese government of Fouad Siniora was using its U.S. backing to supply weapons to Osbat al-Ansar and Fatah al-Islam , militant groups in Palestinian refugee camps , to develop
17901-420: The post-Civil War era was the corruption and bribery case of Tammany boss William M. Tweed in 1871 that was uncovered by newspapers. In his first muckraking article "Tweed Days in St. Louis", Lincoln Steffens exposed the graft , a system of political corruption, that was ingrained in St. Louis. While some muckrakers had already worked for reform newspapers of the personal journalism variety, such as Steffens who
18054-421: The potency of their medicines, drugs and tonics. This exposure contributed heavily to the creation of the Pure Food and Drug Act alongside Upton Sinclair's work. Using the example of Peruna in his article, Adams described how this tonic, which was made of seven compound drugs and alcohol, did not have "any great potency". Manufacturers sold it at an obscene price and hence made immense profits. His work forced
18207-541: The presence of hexamine in the Ghouta samples, an additive which Syria later declared part of its chemical weapons program. In a December 2015 article in the LRB titled "Military to Military", Hersh alleged that the Joint Chiefs of Staff , after discovering by mid-2013 that Turkey was aiding al-Nusra and the Islamic State (ISIS) and that the moderate rebels were no longer viable, had sabotaged Obama's support for
18360-483: The press corps. To do so, he elevated his press secretary to cabinet status and initiated press conferences. The muckraking journalists who emerged around 1900, like Lincoln Steffens, were not as easy for Roosevelt to manage as the objective journalists, and the President gave Steffens access to the White House and interviews to steer stories his way. Roosevelt used the press very effectively to promote discussion and support for his Square Deal policies among his base in
18513-405: The problems uncovered by muckrakers were resolved and thus the muckrakers of that era were needed no longer. According to Fred J. Cook, the muckrakers' journalism resulted in litigation or legislation that had a lasting impact, such as the end of Standard Oil 's monopoly over the oil industry, the establishment of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the creation of the first child labor laws in
18666-503: The publishing history and one-year delay. On September 8, 1974, an article by Hersh revealed that the CIA, with the approval of Kissinger, had spent $ 8 million to influence unions, political parties, and media in Chile in order to destabilize the government of socialist Salvador Allende , who was overthrown in the September 11, 1973, coup d'état that brought to power a military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet . Hersh followed up
18819-482: The rebels by sending U.S. intelligence to the militaries of Germany, Russia, and Israel, on the understanding it would be forwarded to Assad. In exchange for this support, aimed at defeating ISIS, Hersh alleged that the Joint Chiefs had required that Assad "restrain" Hezbollah from attacking Israel, restart negotiations with Israel over the Golan Heights, agree to accept Russian advisers, and hold elections after
18972-532: The reorganization of the U.S. Navy (after Henry Reuterdahl published a controversial article in McClure's). Muckraking investigations were used to change the way senators were elected by the Seventeenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and led to government agencies to take on watchdog functions. Some today use "investigative journalism" as a synonym for muckraking. Carey McWilliams , editor of
19125-538: The revelations around Operation Menu , the secret U.S. bombing of neutral Cambodia in 1969–1970. On June 11, 1972, an article by Hersh alleged that General John D. Lavelle , who had recently been relieved as commander of the Air Force in Southeast Asia, was ousted because he had ordered repeated, unauthorized bombings of North Vietnam. The ensuing "Lavelle affair" led to Senate Armed Services Committee hearings in September 1972. After reading Hersh's articles on
19278-597: The rockets used in the attack were improvised, and that their estimated range of 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) was inconsistent with a proposed flight path from a Syrian Army base 9 kilometers (5.6 mi) away. In a second article published in the LRB in April 2014, titled "The Red Line and the Rat Line", Hersh alleged that the attack was conducted by al-Nusra with the aid of the Turkish government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in
19431-407: The story over the next two months, with 27 articles in total. On December 22, 1974, Hersh exposed Operation CHAOS , a massive CIA program of domestic wiretapping and infiltration of anti-war groups during the Nixon administration, which was conducted in direct violation of the agency's charter. Hersh reported that dossiers had been compiled on at least 10,000 American citizens, including congressmen;
19584-634: The story to 35 national papers. On November 13, the story appeared in The Washington Post , The Boston Globe , the Miami Herald , the Chicago Sun-Times , The Seattle Times , and Newsday , among others. Initial reaction was muted, with the press focusing on a massive anti-war demonstration in Washington on November 15. Follow-up articles by other reporters revealed that the Army's investigation had been prompted by
19737-473: The subject. In 1976, Hersh moved with his family to New York, where his wife was to attend medical school. He began working on larger projects; the first was a four-part investigation produced with Jeff Gerth , initially appearing on June 27, 1976, into the activities of Sidney Korshak , a lawyer and " fixer " for the Chicago Mafia , union leaders, and Hollywood. On July 24, 1977, the Times published
19890-507: The subjects of the reporting wish the matters under scrutiny to remain undisclosed. There are currently university departments for teaching investigative journalism. Conferences are conducted presenting peer-reviewed research into investigative journalism. British media theorist Hugo de Burgh (2000) states that: "An investigative journalist is a man or woman whose profession is to discover the truth and to identify lapses from it in whatever media may be available. The act of doing this generally
20043-489: The successes of the early muckrakers continued to inspire journalists. The outlook for investigative journalism in the United States was improved by the 1960s with the Freedom of Information Act and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan . The invention of the photocopier also offered an assistive tool to whistleblowers . The growth of media conglomerates in the U.S. since the 1980s has been accompanied by massive cuts in
20196-499: The term can refer to journalists or others who "dig deep for the facts" or, when used pejoratively, those who seek to cause scandal. The term is a reference to a character in John Bunyan 's classic Pilgrim's Progress , "the Man with the Muck-rake", who rejected salvation to focus on filth. It became popular after President Theodore Roosevelt referred to the character in a 1906 speech ; Roosevelt acknowledged that "the men with
20349-435: The testimony to him over the course of a year; it revealed that at least 347 civilians were killed, over twice as many as the Army had publicly conceded. The leak formed the basis for two articles by Hersh for The New Yorker magazine in 1972, which alleged that officers had destroyed documents on the massacre, as well as his 1972 book Cover-Up: The Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4 . In April 1972, Hersh
20502-1610: The then unknown Ida M. Tarbell or the seasoned journalist and editor Lincoln Steffens. The magazine's pool of writers were associated with the muckraker movement, such as Ray Stannard Baker , Burton J. Hendrick , George Kennan (explorer) , John Moody (financial analyst) , Henry Reuterdahl , George Kibbe Turner , and Judson C. Welliver , and their names adorned the front covers. The other magazines associated with muckraking journalism were American Magazine (Lincoln Steffens), Arena ( G. W. Galvin and John Moody), Collier's Weekly ( Samuel Hopkins Adams , C.P. Connolly , L. R. Glavis , Will Irwin , J. M. Oskison , Upton Sinclair ), Cosmopolitan ( Josiah Flynt , Alfred Henry Lewis , Jack London , Charles P. Norcross , Charles Edward Russell), Everybody's Magazine ( William Hard , Thomas William Lawson , Benjamin B. Lindsey , Frank Norris , David Graham Phillips , Charles Edward Russell, Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Steffens, Merrill A. Teague , Bessie and Marie Van Vorst ), Hampton's ( Rheta Childe Dorr , Benjamin B. Hampton , John L. Mathews , Charles Edward Russell, and Judson C. Welliver), The Independent ( George Walbridge Perkins, Sr. ), Outlook (William Hard), Pearson's Magazine (Alfred Henry Lewis, Charles Edward Russell), Twentieth Century (George French), and World's Work ( C.M. Keys and Q.P.). Other titles of interest include Chatauquan , Dial , St. Nicholas . In addition, Theodore Roosevelt wrote for Scribner's Magazine after leaving office. After President Theodore Roosevelt took office in 1901, he began to manage
20655-582: The topic was highlighted that year by the Dugway sheep incident , in which an aerial test of VX nerve agent at the U.S. Army 's Dugway Proving Ground in Utah inadvertently killed more than 6,000 sheep owned by local ranchers. The event and Hersh's reporting led to public hearings and international pressure, contributing to the Nixon administration 's decision to end the U.S. biological weapons program in 1969. In
20808-460: The war. This alleged alliance ended in September 2015 upon the retirement of its architect, chairman General Martin Dempsey . Max Fisher of Vox criticized the narrative, citing reporting that Syria and Russia were primarily bombing anti-ISIS rebels instead of ISIS, and Dempsey's prominent public support for sending more arms to the rebels, over which he had clashed with Obama. On June 25, 2017,
20961-431: The world?" South Carolina Republican Representative Albert Watson said, "this is no time to cast aspersions on our fighting men, the President and ourselves for that matter, as some members of the national news media and a few demagogues are doing". The reveal of the massacre changed American media coverage of the war, which was restrained and had limited independence from official sources in its reporting before 1967; after
21114-466: Was Hershowitz, which he had changed upon becoming a citizen in 1930. As a teenager, Seymour helped run the family's dry cleaning shop on the South Side . Hersh graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1954, then attended the University of Illinois Chicago and later the University of Chicago , where he graduated with a history degree in 1958. He worked as a Xerox salesman before being admitted to
21267-616: Was a reporter for the New York Evening Post under Edwin Lawrence Godkin , other muckrakers had worked for yellow journals before moving on to magazines around 1900, such as Charles Edward Russell who was a journalist and editor of Joseph Pulitzer 's New York World . Publishers of yellow journals, such as Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst , were more intent on increasing circulation through scandal, crime, entertainment and sensationalism . Just as
21420-413: Was accompanied by a now-infamous photo of an Iraqi prisoner standing on a box and wearing a black pointed hood, his hands spread out and attached to electrodes. A short piece with the photo and others had appeared two days earlier on the CBS News program 60 Minutes II , in anticipation of Hersh's article. He described these photos: In one, Private [Lynndie] England , a cigarette dangling from her mouth,
21573-401: Was also attacked by some in the press and government, who questioned his work and motivations. An op-ed column in the Times by James Reston asked: "Whatever happened in the massacre, should it be reported by press, radio and television, since clearly reporting the murder of civilians by American soldiers helps the enemy, divides the people of this country, and damages the ideal of America in
21726-424: Was an informant for Mossad , Israel's national intelligence agency; Maxwell filed a defamation lawsuit against Hersh, but died in a drowning incident two weeks after the book was published. Hersh's 1997 best-seller The Dark Side of Camelot , about the political career of John F. Kennedy , was controversial and heavily criticized. Shortly before publication, it emerged in the press that Hersh had removed claims at
21879-545: Was an under-construction nuclear reactor; a later report by the IAEA in 2011 found it was "very likely" that it was a secret reactor. An article by Hersh in April 2009, citing his email correspondence with Assad, suggested that Syria was eager for peace with Israel over the Golan Heights , as well as negotiations with the U.S. over its withdrawal from Iraq and Syria's support for Hamas and Hezbollah . Hersh concluded that
22032-470: Was called the first muckraking article. The muckrakers would become known for their investigative journalism, evolving from the eras of "personal journalism"—a term historians Emery and Emery used in The Press and America (6th ed.) to describe the 19th century newspapers that were steered by strong leaders with an editorial voice (p. 173)—and yellow journalism . One of the biggest urban scandals of
22185-474: Was charged with killing 109 people. Hersh traveled to Fort Benning on November 11, where he quickly gained the confidence of Calley's roommates and eventually Calley himself, whom he interviewed that night. Hersh's first article on the massacre, a cautious and conservative piece which was approved with Latimer, was initially rejected by Life and Look magazines. Hersh next approached the anti-war Dispatch News Service run by his friend David Obst , which sold
22338-428: Was falsely presented as a underwater mineral mining vessel, was built by a company owned by magnate Howard Hughes . After a discussion with CIA director William Colby , Hersh promised not to publish the story while the operation was still active, in order to avoid triggering a potential international incident . The Times eventually published Hersh's article on March 19, 1975, with an added five-paragraph explanation of
22491-473: Was fine, but it was not the intent to correct social wrongs as it was with true investigative journalists and muckrakers. Julius Chambers of the New York Tribune could be considered to be the original muckraker. Chambers undertook a journalistic investigation of Bloomingdale Asylum in 1872, having himself committed with the help of some of his friends and his newspaper's city editor. His intent
22644-425: Was followed up by Gerth at the Times through 1982, prompting reforms at the agency. Hersh's 1983 book The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House , which involved four years of exhaustive work and more than 1,000 interviews, was a best-seller and won him the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction . The 698-page book contained 41 chapters, including 13 devoted to Kissinger's role in Vietnam and
22797-476: Was frequently invited to speak on the rights of the mentally ill and the need for proper facilities for their accommodation, care and treatment. Nellie Bly , another yellow journalist, used the undercover technique of investigation in reporting Ten Days in a Mad-House , her 1887 exposé on patient abuse at Bellevue Mental Hospital, first published as a series of articles in The World newspaper and then as
22950-546: Was hired by The New York Times as an investigative journalist at the paper's Washington bureau. After the June 17 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington and the emergence of the Watergate scandal , the Times sought to catch up with the reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein at The Washington Post , who broke several stories in 1972 linking the break-in to
23103-581: Was internationally published. On the same day, photos of the massacre by Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle were published in the Cleveland Plain Dealer , causing outrage among members of Congress and the public. The reporting was now being followed by The New York Times and the Post , and was covered on the CBS and NBC national nightly news. Hersh next interviewed Paul Meadlo, a soldier who admitted that he had killed dozens of civilians on
23256-648: Was not killed and his body handed over, or killed in a staged U.S. drone strike. Hersh's article stated that a drone strike was the raid's original cover story before one of the Black Hawk helicopters crashed and was demolished, which was impossible to hide. Investigative journalist Investigative journalism is a form of journalism in which reporters deeply investigate a single topic of interest, such as serious crimes, racial injustice , political corruption , or corporate wrongdoing. An investigative journalist may spend months or years researching and preparing
23409-495: Was to obtain information about alleged abuse of inmates. When articles and accounts of the experience were published in the Tribune , it led to the release of twelve patients who were not mentally ill, a reorganization of the staff and administration of the institution and, eventually, to a change in the lunacy laws. This later led to the publication of the book A Mad World and Its Inhabitants (1876). From this time onward, Chambers
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