PressEthic

While searching for examples of media bias to bring to class, I came upon the provocative left-wing journalist Seymour Hersh. Hersh is too openly biased to work as an example of the subtle, insidious bias the we are trying to ferret out. But his unorthodox methods are nonetheless worthy of scrutiny.

Hersh became a darling of the far left during Vietnam with his coverage of the My Lai massacre, a particularly bloody exploit of the American military during that war.

He currently writes for the New Yorker where he has published several highly critical (to say the least) articles about the war in Iraq over the past several years.

I don't want to test the verity of his statements or attempt to examine his motives. That would take too long. I only want to highlight his strange habit of declining to name the vast majority of his sources.

In his most recent New Yorker expose, Watching Lebanon, this practice is abundantly employed.

Hersh makes statements like (all italics are mine):

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to a Middle East expert with knowledge of the current thinking of both the Israeli and the U.S. governments, Israel had devised a plan for attacking Hezbollah—and shared it with Bush Administration officials—well before the July 12th kidnappings.

The Middle East expert said that the Administration had several reasons for supporting the Israeli bombing campaign.

The United States and Israel have shared intelligence and enjoyed close military coöperation for decades, but early this spring, according to a former senior intelligence official, high-level planners from the U.S. Air Force—under pressure from the White House to develop a war plan for a decisive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities—began consulting with their counterparts in the Israeli Air Force.

“The big question for our Air Force was how to hit a series of hard targets in Iran successfully,” the former senior intelligence official said.

“The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits,” a U.S. government consultant with close ties to Israel said.

Earlier this summer, before the Hezbollah kidnappings, the U.S. government consultant said, several Israeli officials visited Washington, separately, “to get a green light for the bombing operation and to find out how much the United States would bear.” The consultant added, “Israel began with Cheney. It wanted to be sure that it had his support and the support of his office and the Middle East desk of the National Security Council.” After that, “persuading Bush was never a problem, and Condi Rice was on board,” the consultant said.

The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was “the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran.”

I realize that I have listed alot of these mystery quotes, maybe more than was necessary. But the point is, I didn't list even a quarter of the ones in the article. Hersh goes on and on like this, quoting unnamed sources in almost every paragraph, and he is making some pretty big assertions. He is telling us no less than the US government is planning - is itching - to attack Iran. This is big news folks. If only Hersh could coax some of these ghosts out of the shadows, he'd have one hell of a scoop.

What do we make of this method? Is Hersh protecting his sources, or is he making them up? It's impossible to tell. Doesn't this destroy his credibilty?