4 ms·

I think you have to separate Hersh pre-2010 and Hersh after-2010. He was once one of the greatest journalists in the world, but the last decade he has been putt

I think you have to separate Hersh pre-2010 and Hersh after-2010. He was once one of the greatest journalists in the world, but the last decade he has been putting out poorly-sourced, falsifiable garbage. Watch the interview he gave the other day (mentioned in this article) and tell me you walk away from it with more confidence that he's fully "there" as a journalist. He goes on a tangent about how Ukraine is doomed and Zelenskiy is killing his own people by resisting, even though 90% of the country is in favor of fighting to regain the occupied territory. He also doubles down on the ship being, specifically, the ALTA (and not any other ship), but the ALTA has been sitting in a scrap yard for 6 months.

honkler 4y ago
[flagged]
- joshsyn 4y ago
  [dead]
- pvg 4y ago
  Hersh stopped working within journalistic organizations, with their editors, fact-checkers, second-sourcing, etc - the organizations in which all his previous and more credible and verifiable work was done. That's a concrete fact, not 'tribalistic bias'. There's no basis whatsoever for you to attribute skepticism of recent Hersh to it, it's just namecalling.
  - pphysch 4y ago
    According to Hersh, he still does due diligence with editors and fact checking. He just doesn't have the brand sponsorships anymore.
    - mannerheim 4y ago
      And yet, somehow his work ends up error-laden and full of holes. Funny how that works out.
      - pphysch 4y ago
        That's just not true. A handful of bloggers have nitpicked at it using publicly available information. All of Hersh's big stories received the same initial response of derision, going back to My Lai half a century ago [1]. Hersh, believe him or not, is not relying on publicly available information, but confidential sources. [1] - https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1626279696827617290 https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/16262796968...
        mannerheim 4y ago
        'Chlorine is just a gas. It's not a chemical warfare weapon. You smell it, you run away.' Sure sounds like the words of somebody who isn't going senile!
    - graeme 4y ago
      There’s a difference between: 1. Convincing an editor to run your ideas under their masthead 2. Paying someone to edit your work, and running your ideas under your own masthead A newspaper is more than a brand. They put their reputation on the line when they publish. (You can make a good argument that many newspapers have trashed their own reputations, but that doesn’t negate the argument. When you self publish, you have no one vouching for you. Furthermore if you don’t like an editor or fact checker you can fire them)
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Except that it’s legacy media who has eviscerated their reputation in the past decade. Eg, CNN has a lower viewership in the “key demo” than large YouTube news channels.
  - jrsj 4y ago
    Even if he wanted to work within those journalistic organizations and everything he said was true, they wouldn’t publish it. There’s really no other option for him at this point.
    - pvg 4y ago
      The fact they didn't want to work with him, after many years of him dropping huge bombshells they published, the literal foundation of his reputation, says more about his later work than than theirs, no? It's strange to claim his inability to find publishers for his non-verifiable work somehow confirms its credibility.
- mturmon 4y ago
  You're jumping to a conclusion here -- sometimes the journalist does change. Plenty of political journalists go off the deep end at some point in their career. (Prof.) Mark Crispin Miller used to write well-researched essays on the culture of TV, now he believes that Sandy Hook was likely staged and that the standard explanation for 9/11 isn't true. Christopher Hitchens made a significant swerve to the right later in his career. Many colleagues and former friends of Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald feel the same way about what they have done.
  - honkler 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - nkozyra 4y ago
      Gross
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Those last two examples indicate you have a tribalistic bias though: Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald changed their politics which you’re implying impacts their credibility because their friends (fellow members of your tribe) said mean things about that. Further, why is Christopher Hitchens changing his politics relevant to a discussion about journalist credibility — and even mixed into a paragraph about hoaxes?
    - mturmon 4y ago
      > why is Christopher Hitchens changing his politics relevant to a discussion about journalist credibility...? Because, unfortunately to those who admired him, Christopher Hitchens allowed his disgust for Islamic fundamentalism to lead him to credulously advocate for a war that turned out to be based on a series of lies? Lies that he partly saw through, but that he decided to ignore in service of what for him was the larger good? It's an instructive episode.
      - mturmon 4y ago

honkler 4y ago

[flagged]

joshsyn 4y ago
[dead]
pvg 4y ago
Hersh stopped working within journalistic organizations, with their editors, fact-checkers, second-sourcing, etc - the organizations in which all his previous and more credible and verifiable work was done. That's a concrete fact, not 'tribalistic bias'. There's no basis whatsoever for you to attribute skepticism of recent Hersh to it, it's just namecalling.
- pphysch 4y ago
  According to Hersh, he still does due diligence with editors and fact checking. He just doesn't have the brand sponsorships anymore.
  - mannerheim 4y ago
    And yet, somehow his work ends up error-laden and full of holes. Funny how that works out.
    - pphysch 4y ago
      That's just not true. A handful of bloggers have nitpicked at it using publicly available information. All of Hersh's big stories received the same initial response of derision, going back to My Lai half a century ago [1]. Hersh, believe him or not, is not relying on publicly available information, but confidential sources. [1] - https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1626279696827617290 https://mobile.twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/16262796968...
      - mannerheim 4y ago
        'Chlorine is just a gas. It's not a chemical warfare weapon. You smell it, you run away.' Sure sounds like the words of somebody who isn't going senile!
  - graeme 4y ago
    There’s a difference between: 1. Convincing an editor to run your ideas under their masthead 2. Paying someone to edit your work, and running your ideas under your own masthead A newspaper is more than a brand. They put their reputation on the line when they publish. (You can make a good argument that many newspapers have trashed their own reputations, but that doesn’t negate the argument. When you self publish, you have no one vouching for you. Furthermore if you don’t like an editor or fact checker you can fire them)
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Except that it’s legacy media who has eviscerated their reputation in the past decade. Eg, CNN has a lower viewership in the “key demo” than large YouTube news channels.
- jrsj 4y ago
  Even if he wanted to work within those journalistic organizations and everything he said was true, they wouldn’t publish it. There’s really no other option for him at this point.
  - pvg 4y ago
    The fact they didn't want to work with him, after many years of him dropping huge bombshells they published, the literal foundation of his reputation, says more about his later work than than theirs, no? It's strange to claim his inability to find publishers for his non-verifiable work somehow confirms its credibility.
mturmon 4y ago
You're jumping to a conclusion here -- sometimes the journalist does change. Plenty of political journalists go off the deep end at some point in their career. (Prof.) Mark Crispin Miller used to write well-researched essays on the culture of TV, now he believes that Sandy Hook was likely staged and that the standard explanation for 9/11 isn't true. Christopher Hitchens made a significant swerve to the right later in his career. Many colleagues and former friends of Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald feel the same way about what they have done.
- honkler 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - nkozyra 4y ago
    Gross
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Those last two examples indicate you have a tribalistic bias though: Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald changed their politics which you’re implying impacts their credibility because their friends (fellow members of your tribe) said mean things about that. Further, why is Christopher Hitchens changing his politics relevant to a discussion about journalist credibility — and even mixed into a paragraph about hoaxes?
  - mturmon 4y ago
    > why is Christopher Hitchens changing his politics relevant to a discussion about journalist credibility...? Because, unfortunately to those who admired him, Christopher Hitchens allowed his disgust for Islamic fundamentalism to lead him to credulously advocate for a war that turned out to be based on a series of lies? Lies that he partly saw through, but that he decided to ignore in service of what for him was the larger good? It's an instructive episode.
    - mturmon 4y ago