Journalist+Biography



Kayla Billingsley Media studies 16 December 2010 2nd hour ** Seymour **** Hersh ** Seymour Myron Hersh was born on April 8, 1937 to Yiddish speaking Lithuanian parents in Chicago. He grew up and graduated from the University of Chicago holding a history degree in his hand. He worked for a few years until he was accepted into the University of Chicago Law. His time there however was short for he was soon expelled due to his poor grades. Flunking out of school is how he got started in journalism. Having hated law school, flunking out was one of the best things to happen to him. In 1959, Hersh started out his journalism career as a copy boy who quickly worked his way up to police reporter in Chicago for City News Bureau. He then worked for I. F. Stone who inspired his later work in journalism. This is where he started to get his investigative edge. A story while working for I. F. Stone caused a falling out between the Associated Press and Hersh when AP refused to run a story on the government's work on chemical and biological weapons. Hersh left and was later offered the position of being the press secretary for Senator Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign in 1968. After leaving McCarthy’s campaign, Hersh became a freelance writer about the Vietnam War. In 1969, and Army lieutenant was court marshaled for killing innocent civilians in Vietnam known as the Mi Lai Massacre. Hundreds of civilians in Vietnam we slaughtered by US soldiers in March 16, 1968. William Calley was convicted of accounts of brutality and was punished by a life sentence that was served by house arrest. Hersh broke the My Lai story on November 12, 1969 and it was published in national magazines all over the country with graphic photos. His career really began to take off at that point. His story on the Mi Lai Massacre hit at least thirty three different newspapers and that in turn won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. He later published two books on the Mi Lai Massacre; //My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath// in 1970 and also //Cover-up: the Army's Secret Investigation of the Massacre at My Lai 4// two years later. Mi Lai is his most popular accomplishment. That story set the scene for his whole career to come. Hersh was hired as a reporter for The New York Times in 1972 where he served four years on and off. During that time, Hersh planned on publishing a story on the Project Jennifer; a CIA project in which they planned on recovering a sunken soviet sub from off the Pacific Ocean floor. The government however slowed down it release saying that they couldn’t have the information released while they were in the middle of the operation and that it would caused an international incident. It was later published in the New York Times in 1975 and picked up by the Los Angeles Times. It is unclear whether or not any action was taken by the soviets after the release of the information. He won many awards including National Book Critics Circle Award and the Los Angeles Times book prize for his work on his book //The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.// And then in 1986, his book //The Target is Destroyed// Hersh suggested that the Soviet shooting down a Korean flight late in 1983 was due to both bad “Soviet incompetence and United States intelligence operations intended to confuse Soviet responses,” (Seymour) On August 20, 1998, Hersh criticized the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory, the largest pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. US missiles struck the facility killing one working and wounding eleven more. And with Al-Shifa being the largest producers of medicines for Sudan, many other people died from not having the adequate medicines needed to live. After everything that happened with September 11, 2001, Hersh focused his stories on the Middle East. He described in 2002 how the US government had been planning invasions on Iraq since the gulf war. In 2004, he told of the mistreatment of detainees by the US military police near Baghdad. January 2005, he told about how the US was leading covert operations to identify possible attack targets in Iran. And then he described how the Bush Administration planned to conduct an air strike on Iran. In August 2006 Hersh claimed that the White House allowed the Israeli government to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon. Still alive, he isn’t uncovering stories as often any longer but journalism is in the blood, and that desire to get the truth never dies. As long as he lives, Seymour Hersh will work to uncover the truth. Works Cited "Biography: Seymour Hersh." //Spartacus Educational - Home Page//. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. . "Famous Journalists." //The Write Site Homepage//. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. . Landau, Saul. "Seymour Hersh - Journalist and Writer - Interview | Progressive, The | Find Articles at BNET." //Find Articles at BNET | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics//. Oct. 1998. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. . "Seymour Hersh." //Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia//. Web. 16 Dec. 2010. .