In his latest New Yorker entry “Preparing the Battlefield” [in Iran] Seymour Hersh seems to be competing for a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest numbers of anonymous sources in one article. The first sentence alone presents a trifecta of the unnamed: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.”
They are never identified.
It goes on in a similar mode for the next seven pages almost to the level of self-parody. So I have some questions for The New Yorker editors. How do you fact-check Hersh and do those methods coincide with your overall policies (if any)? Do you know the names of his anonymous sources? Have you queried those sources to see if the writer fairly represents their opinions or to discover whether they are disaffected civil servants with an ax to grind? When dealing with an issue as incendiary as war with Iran, it should be standard journalistic procedure to do so. I would hope the editors of The New Yorker agree readers deserve a high level of transparency on such life or death issues.
In general mainstream media outlets are rather opaque about their fact-checking, particularly regarding their “anonymous source” standards, even though it is those sources who are most useful to a writer who wishes to manipulate the facts. Until those standards are made clear in a public manner and in a way that readers can feel confident they are being followed, articles like Hersh’s must be read as fiction. And not very good fiction at that.
UPDATE: Ron Rosenbaum analyzes Hersh’s (spotty) track record.
I have no doubt whatsoever that all of the quotations in the Hersh article are correct. Go to any large organization and you will find plenty of people who will say that the boss is a nut, nobody listens to me, the policies are disastrous, the cafeteria stinks,….
Oh, Hersh… hasn’t he been making the rounds of the college lecture circuit, telling tales of ghastly atrocities committed by American troops in Iraq… (quick check of my archives)
Why, yes he has. More here –
http://www.ncobrief.com/index.php/archives/memo-see-more-harshly/
Honestly, why he has any journalistic credibility at all these days is a wonder for the ages.
They might be correct, or Seymor might be making it all up. It is not as if anyone is actually fact checking this stuff.
When reading Seymour Hersh I distrust, then verify; Once verified…wait, that never happens.
Some stories are just too good to check. Haditha ? Yup. Bush TANG and AWOL ? Yup. Kerry medals ? Nope.
Where’d your old website go? All my links to it have gone down a black hole. Scary stuff.
The moment I saw the byline — Sy “I can certainly fudge what I say” Hersch — I surfed away.
TO: Roger L. Simon, et al.
RE: How Very Odd
I’m reading Tom Clancy’s Executive Orders and I’m suddenly reminded of the way ‘reporters’ comport themselves there.
Indeed, they do better there than at the New Wanker, based on this analysis. But that was…what…twelve years ago?
I guess thinks have gone down-the-proverbial-slipper-slope since then.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Wait, didn’t this putz put out a story 1 year ago talking about the “immenent” Bush invasion of Iran? Hey Sy,how did that work out for you? Hows that one going? Did the NYtmies ever read the one about the “Boy that cried wolf?
I certainly hope we’re running covert ops in Iran. It would be irresponsible to ignore the threat of nuclear-armed mullahs. People who don’t want overt war with Iran (like me) should welcome covert operations.
Do not question this Giant of Journalism.
The Great Seymour can pull anonymous sources right out of… thin air! Why, he makes up a dozen new ones every morning before breakfast – just to stay in practice!
When the Jourlnalism Shield law passes we can -ALL- make up crap and post it… No judge or other oversight (Senate version)… What a wonderful world it will be when any idiot can spn a scenario and sprinkle “anonymous sources” like egg shells in powdered eggs to add authenticity.
Establishment Media have demonstrated that Fact Checking interrupts the narrative… AP and Reuters will spread enemy propaganda as facts…enemy agents will become stringers for Big Name Media and the public shrugs…
I am glad I am a blogger-albeit a slightly read one- when the Shield Law passes, I will be unstoppable and uncheckable-!
Not to dismiss lightly the arguement (not the silly comments) presented: it is possible
that the magazine in fact got names etc that the author and the magazine prefer not to be made public. After all, the New Yolrker has a fine and long tradition of fact checking. This is not to say that they did collaborate in the manner I suggest but rather the argment about fact checking might be too dismissive and not correct.
I am not sure.
At least these “reports” (per CNN) keep Hersch entertained and away from serious business. Could you imagine if his interests leaned towards climate change, energy, immigration or N. Korea? Hell, he might precipitate a war!
As I understand it, the press did not uncover the prison atrocities at Abu Ghraib. What they uncovered was the Army investigation of these atrocities, complete with supporting pictures. These pictures went on to inspire any number of suicide bombers. My question: what purpose was served by the publication of those pictures? The guilty were going to be charged and steps were taken to stop the practices. Would revelations of torture at the Hanoi Hilton have diminished in any way Hersh’s support for the North Vietnamese?
Good questions, Roger, but don’t hold your breath waiting for answers. In the media, USA/Israel-bashers, and lefties in general, get a bye.
Here’s how Fox reported it:
“Late last year, Congressional leaders agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, and charges that the administration is running ‘cross border’ operations into Iran, The New Yorker magazine reported.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,373407,00.html
So, Congressional leaders agreed to fund both:
1) a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, and
2) charges that the administration is running “cross border” operations into Iran.
I wonder how much those charges are going to cost the taxpayer, and why would Bush want to fund them?
Doesn’t have have enough bad publicity on his plate already?
Look hard enough and I’m sure Hersch must get more than a couple of checks from some Soros affiliated organization.
The guy is a hack living in he 1970′s.
Seymour Hersh has predicted 4 of the last 0 invasions of Iran.
Tom W.
The Fox report was a report on what Hersch wrote. That was their source. It is so noted in your link. So, it cannot be taken as confirmation of Hersch.
Rick
Anonymous sources for Sy? You don’t say? If it weren’t for anonymous sources, he’d have none at all.
“Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources.”
Sigh. So Bush or Cheney and the J… neocons managed to get Congress — with Democrat majorities in both houses, and Harry “We’ve Lost” Reid and Nancy “the Scarecfrow” Pelosi running the place — to agree to a major escalation of covert operations, and kept it secret until now?
Truly, the Force is strong in this one.
Mr Hersch was previously a major source of acid indigestion to me and the primary reason I stopped reading that magazine some time ago. It did not leave a void in my life… Sometimes you just have to treat a troll to a dose of massive indifference instead of feeding the ego by reacting.
People actually *read* the “New Yorker?” Who knew?
That’s Popeye Pelosi.
Are you so desperate for ad revenue that you have to allow solicitation from a group asking us to join with Al Gore (and millions of others) to battle the “climate crisis”?
Who you sell your ad space to affects your credibility.
Um, Roger, shouldn’t you be a little carefully where you throw stones? You happen to run a glass house of a media organization that spews all manner of unsubstantiated rumor, innuendo and ad hominem attacks without any though whatsoever given to factuality.
Whatever you might say about Hersch and/or their New Yorker, their worker is incomparably more factual than what can be found on Pajamas Media.
I suggest you try a little of your own medicine, Roger, and get to work taking out the trash around here.
It’s an abiding strength of the American Republic that bastards like Hersh live on, untarred and feartherless, free to commit treason, safe as Mugabe in his armoured palace, lunatic as Theodore Kaczynski, mad with rage at his country. Why is this man still at large?
RIGHT … So Barack Obama, on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, and Pelosi and Reid and Boxer and Feinstein and all the rest just rolled over for GWB.
Or … Bush showed them intel intercepts of Ahmadinejad and friends joking about nuking NYC. And threatened to make it public.
Heck, most of America would figure Iran has it coming, for 1979-80 as well as a laundry list of terror against us since then.
Yeah, I’d love to see Barack Obama say “Hands off Iran! Let them get nukes! NYC must die!”
Eric J, you are absolutely correct. Hersh shouldn’t have one iota of credibility on the subject. Is there any other career where you can be wrong–and not just wrong, but devastatingly wrong–and still hold a job after numerous such failures? I guess only writers at the New Yorker and government employees have nothing to fear. In any other field, Hersh would have filed for unemployment years ago.
I buy it for the pictures.
The fact is that journalists are usually obliged to protect the identity of their sources to obtain insider information. Wad Deep Throat identified by Woodward and Bernstein? I think not, for obvious reasons.
You may distrust Hersh’s reporting but you have no basis for saying his sources are fictitious. Editors of leading publications are seldom gullible fools. They clearly trust Hersh’s authenticity.
You are well entitled to take the opposite view, but the fact that his sources are unnamed is not relevant.
He stands or falls on his reputation and track record.
How often does one get to assail others in anonymity?
I absolutely despise “anonymous” sources.
Whenever I read Hersh I am compelled to think that those who cannot substantiate what they write as fact ought to be imprisoned.
Come on, it’s summer, it’s The New Yorker.
They never pretended to be CBS,CNN, The New Republ…..oh…..never mind.
isnt covert ops supposed to be seceret shoot this idiot
The article assumes that “escalation of covert operations against Iran” is a bad thing.
So according to Hersh the US has special ops troops running around Iran. I would be very surprised if the Pentagon would take such a risk, given what the Iranians would do if they got hold of a US soldier, dead or alive. The risk is too great. And based on events in Iraq and Aghanistan, the likelihood is that some US troops would have been killed or captured by now. The fact that the Iranians aren’t parading any captives or bodies suggests that Hersh is lying again.
Hey wingnuts, why not try a little research before spouting off about the New Yorker’s anonymous sources? You might not look quite as ridiculous.
The New Yorker’s fact-checkers – “about 20 young employees in their twenties, who specialize in a variety of fields and who care” – make the magazine unique as it relates to what has recently become a burning issue in American journalism: over-reliance on unnamed sources, a hot subject in the wake of The New York Time’s failure in its coverage of the war in Iraq, due to reliance on unnamed administration sources who claimed that Iraq was in possession of weapons of mass destruction.
“Seymour Hersh writes about intelligence for us,” says Remnick, “and he often quotes from sources without attribution. But as editor, I know exactly who each of these sources is. And the fact-checkers will speak with the sources and will ascertain that they stand behind the words. When Hersh speaks with a source, he will ask him if he is willing to speak with the fact-checkers.”
And in this way The New Yorker’s readers can be sure that the reference to a “highly-placed source” is not charlatanism or deceit?
“Yes, but in terms of the readers, it is still very problematic, and I most certainly prefer to attribute quotes by name. This is not always possible, however. Without unnamed sources we would not have had Watergate.”
Does the fact-checking department of The New Yorker guarantee that what happened, for instance, to The New York Times in the Jason Blair affair (the reporter who was fired after it was revealed that he systematically fabricated articles) will not happen to you?
“I would like to think that the fact-checking department of The New Yorker would be an obstacle to this kind of deception. But we know that Jason Blair was very clever and very crazy. Someone like that could do damage to any publication. I wouldn’t want to sound cocky.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=680598
Seymour Hirsh has made a career out of leaking government secrets. It is an obsession with him. He made his name in the 1970′s by leaking CIA secrets and hasn’t looked back. There are no “unintended consequences” with him. His intent has been and remains to inflict the maximum harm on this nation that he can.
There once was a Hersh named Sy
Who said his “sources” would not lie.
When asked for a name
All that he could claim
That he had on the conference room wall, a fly.
Hersch was the first journalist to claim that there were prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, a totally unverified — Oh wait, yeah I guess he got that one totally right.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894033/
You all aren’t really treating the New Yorker like it’s some kind of news source, are you? It’s a gossip rag for high society and those who wish they were.
On all things Bush, they are preaching to the choir and can be safely ignored.
Thanks, Roger. Your critique allows me to see less Seymour, which is always a plus.
As I recall, Hersh was the guy who claimed that the Korean air liner the Soviets shot down in a panic back in the 1980s was actually a spy plane. Later, when the Soviet Union collapsed and the archives opened up and it was confirmed that the Soviets shot down the jet by mistake, Seymour had long since gone on to his next smear job.
sherlock’s law: Anyone who uses Abu Ghraib to proven their point immediately achieves precisely the opposite.
Looks like the New Yorker’s George Packer has trouble even fact-checking himself.
I read the article just to see what this loose canon was up to. The review is perfectly accurate – Seymore could have done this article in its entirety while in bed playing with his imagination or something. If what he wrote were true (and I am sure there is some obscure basis in fact in that we have brave men working behind the lines in Iran), then Seymore should be shot for treason.
Reis Kash
Hey, Ron:
I checked your link and nothing there says: “Hersch was the first journalist to claim that there were prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib, . . .”
(h/t Rick Caird on checking links)
It would be nice to verify the existance of WMD this time?
Frankly, Sey Hersh’s piece makes him look like a “dup” in a disinformation campaign to have the Iranians wasting resources running all over Iran looking for mysterious unseen Americans. It’s the perfect plot to have Iranians spend more time at home in Iran, rather than doing the “dirty” in Iraq.
The only people I trust less that Seymour Hersh are the editors at the New Yorker Magazine.
They are a disgrace to journalism, intellectual honesty, and blatantly disregard a host of standard journalistic practices in place for many years.
The primary reason to read “The New Yorker” is the cartoons. Seymour’s articles fit right into that catagory.
Seymour Hersh certainly isn’t the only person claiming that Israel and/or the US are threatening to attack Iran. The Israelis themselves have gone out of their way to broadcast their threats, as have some Americans, including John McCain (who famously sang “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of “Barbara Ann”). Do Roger Simon and the various commentators here really believe that there is no threat of a US/Israeli attack?
Hersh’s sources are members of the intelligence community. It doesn’t make him infallible, but his real sin in the eyes of the Pajamas Media crowd is Hersh’s opposition to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq. Hersh thinks the US occupation of Iraq is a disaster. Roger Simon thinks it’s a success. So who has credibility problems?
You may distrust Hersh’s reporting but you have no basis for saying his sources are fictitious.
Sure we do: the people who say “I never talked to Hersh”, the number of times he’s been caught in demonstrable lies, and the even greater number of times he’s written a story saying something was imminently going to happen that then doesn’t.
Then, as several of us have pointed out, there’s the fact that this story is embarrassingly ludicrous on it’s face, seeing as it wants us to believe that Bush made a Democrat Congress secretly fund a covert op.
That’s a veritable laundry list of reasons to think his sources are fictitious, or that if the sources aren’t fictitious, their “revelations” are fictions.
Y’know-NEO may be on to something.
It seems quaint now to recall that during Watergate, when Woodward and Bernstein got a tip from Deep Throat, their editors required *two* independent verifications before publishing it. The MSM has come a long way, baby.
Sigh…
Wow, Rog, your commenters seem to be unanimous in their love for you. Congrats. Must be nice to be the darling of the right wing, every media star’s dream.
As for the editors of the New York, instead of posting this on your blog, why don’t you do some reporting and CALL THEM? Remember? You’re an important journalist (I gather this from your hubris, laziness, and the fact you wear a cool journalist hat in your photo).
You can get back to us, when you actually do some reporting.
Why don’t you call “the New York” and see if anybody answers, timb? Or is that timber?