Charles on… anything that comes along

When I was getting a job on Business magazine, now defunct, I was asked by its editor to name three journalists I admired. One was Jeremy Warner, who at the time was facing jail for not revealing his sources on a story. (He’s still City editor at The Indie.)

Had I known about Seymour Hersh, I’d have nominated him instantly. He found out about and revealed the massacre at My Lai in Vietnam, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize.

He’s the sort of journalist one aspires to be: self-effacing, in that he doesn’t want to be part of the story, he wants to report the story, and he wants to report the stories beneath all the flotsam and jetsam to find what’s really going on. His New Yorker articles are examples of terrific journalism: he talks to people, he doesn’t accept stuff at face value, and he inquires about what’s really happening on the ground.

And of course he revealed what was going on at Abu Ghraib prison. It is and was horrific, and in this clip (requires Real Player) he tells the ACLU there’s worse to come. Such as the video’d sodomy of children imprisoned with their mothers.

I’d bet on his being correct.

Thanks to Neil Mc for the pointer. Hersh starts speaking at 1hr07, and continues to 1hr40 or so. The grisly stuff is at about 1hr31. But listen to it all. Especially if you’re a journalist. And wonder: could I ever have gotten that good?

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