Seymore Hersh is a name that instills fear -- or at least indigestion -- in Washington politicians. Hersh is one of the top investigative reporters in the US, and although he is quite old, he still continues to publish books and articles with explosive content. He recently published a 20,000-word article in the New Yorker condemning the Gulf War hero General Barry McCaffrey for unnecessarily killing Iraqi soldiers.
Hersh staked his claim to fame by breaking the story of the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War. He later wrote a book exposing Henry Kissinger's abuse of power entitled, The Price of Power, and an expose?of Israel's nuclear weapons program called Samson's Option. Both books were on bestseller lists.
Hersh's career was almost done in after he published The Dark Side of Camelot two years ago, however. The book portrayed the relationship between President Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe from the first person, despite the fact that many of the documents he used were proven by experts to be false. He was set upon by all sides after the book was published, and compared to the author of the (later revealed as a fake) Hitler's Diary.
Hersh was awarded a Pulizer Prize for his muckraking, and has set the standard for investigative reporting for the past 30 years. His heroic journalistic record is a legend among reporters in the US. Hersh planned to expose the dark side of Kennedy in the The Dark Side of Camelot, but inadvertently exposed his own unflattering side in the process. He tumbled down from the clouds, out of grace.
Old reporters don't die, they just fade to silence -- for a while. Hersh's latest piece on the dirt of the Gulf War reinstated his reputation, and catapulted him back onto the journalistic stage. Still, McCaffrey has denied the story, and Hersh has a record for employing questionable standards, so the stage is set for a battle. Perhaps the question of historical truth will have to be decided in a court of law.
Another famous US reporter who has also published fabulously popular books of investigative work is Bob Woodward. He earned his fame for his reporting on the Watergate scandal, and each of his books have made the best-seller charts. Veil revealed the inside story of the CIA under director William Casey, while Woodward's Agenda chronicled the chaos in policymaking in the White House soon after Clinton took office. Both books were highly acclaimed, but, like Hersh, Woodward's recent book Shadow was mauled by critics.
Woodward and Hersh are both accomplished investigative reporters, skilled at digging up dirt. They interview hundreds, if not thousands of people for each book. Woodward, however, has always protected the names of people he interviews, while Hersh makes their names public. Woodward's Shadow listed no names, but portrayed every telephone call, every meeting, every scene in the first person, as if he were actually there. Even changes in the weather or a person's expression or furniture arrangement were portrayed in a realistic, lifelike manner. No wonder some people say he is the father of "bullshit journalism."
But Woodward and Hersh are paragons of their profession because they are unafraid of power, tenacious in their resolve to reveal the truth, and committed to putting history together from its pieces. Politicians in the US have to be on their toes at all times with reporters like Woodward and Hersh on the prowl.
In Taiwan, alas, there are no investigative reporters like Woodward or Hersh. Scandals of proportions unimaginable to most mortals remain under wraps in Taiwan, and Taiwan has yet to produce reporters who are devoted to carefully unraveling Taiwan's torturously complex and twisted history. Journalism in Taiwan still has a long way to go.
Wang Chien-chuang is president of the Journalist magazine.
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