Talk:Seymour Hersh

message: I have removed this content  because it implies some sort of fault in the work was behind the rejection. No such explanation, or indeed any explanation, has been offered by the two publications  - so such a thing cannot be implied. Moreover, what sources that do exist give alternative reasons, including reasons that have nothing directly to do with the article's content, see  and  and others. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 19:48, 5 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deleting weasel wording 

message: The "family jewels" article that led to the creation of the Church Committee (currently tucked away in the bibliography and the See Also section) is extremely important, and deserves some detail in the selected stories category. I know the obvious answer here, as with so many other talk page complaints, is "so do it yourself", but a more experienced editor could do an infinitely better job than I could. On the off chance that someone actually reads this: any thoughts? -165.234.252.11 (talk) 20:08, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Glaring omission 

message: I've removedthis entire paragraph from the My Lai section, for reasons which I will explain below:
::Hersh had been directed to the Calley court-martial by Geoffrey Cowan of The Village Voice and later remarked, "Yeah, part of me said, 'Fame! Fortune! Glory!' The other part was very pragmatic [in thinking] about, 'How are you going to prove this?http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yB9JUEIHlmw|16:06 A critical attitude to Hersh perceives him as the mere instrument by which the My Lai massacre became public knowledge and a part of the machine with which the army built its case against a scape-goat. According to this view, Hersh served in this way to shape the memory the military wanted—an exceptional atrocity, an anomaly, that was dealt with.Hersh on My Lai transcriptMy Lai and Sy Hersh reappraisalNick Turse the nation My Lai month
My reasons for removal are as follows:
# The contributor who created this paragraph is a User:Sayerslle, who has been permanently banned from Wikipedia for sock puppetry and tendentious editing related to the Ghouta chemical attack in Syria. He added the paragraph on April 13, 2014, and no one seems to have seriously examined it since. The background of the contributor would not be worth noting if the paragraph in question was reasonable and reliable, but it is not.
# Most of this paragraph is just a poorly-worded expression of an opinion attributed to "a critical attitude to Hersh," which I believe is merely user Sayerslle's way of smuggling in his own opinion of Hersh. This "critical attitude" belittles Hersh as "the mere instrument by which the My Lai massacre became public knowledge" and as part of a U.S. military propaganda "machine." I'm sure there are many opinions of Hersh and his work, and this "critical attitude" may be one of them, but it is certainly not the most prevalent opinion about his My Lai reporting. There is no reason to mention it in this article unless we want to provide a larger compendium of opinions about his reporting. Moreover, the citations provided do not provide much evidence even for the existence of this "critical attitude." The only source cited that expresses an attitude along these lines is an obscure blog named "Linux Beach" written by someone named Clay Claiborne, a self-proclaimed "revolutionary Marxist." One of the other sources cited in the paragraph is a Youtube video that has been taken down so it is no longer available, and the other cited sources don't make anything resembling that appraisal of Hersh's reporting.
# There are a couple of factually accurate statements in the opening sentence of this paragraph which I considered including but decided were better left out. Geoffrey Cowan was indeed the source of the tip that led Hersh to his story, and the On The Media transcript does quote Hersh saying that when he first got the tip, "part of me" was thinking about "Fame! Fortune! Glory!" However, these details about the origins of the My Lai story are not terribly important and therefore don't belong in an encyclopedia article. Hersh's statement about "fame and glory" sounds to me like an offhand, slightly self-deprecating appraisal of his internal mental processes, and in any case this was only part of his motivation for reporting on My Lai. If the article is going to seriously examine his motivations, it would also have to explain why he persisted in pursuing the story at considerable personal effort and expense even after it had been turned down for publication by major media outlets.
-- Sheldon Rampton (talk) 13:44, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Your reasoning is good and I support your edit. The first source would likely not be allowed per WP:COPYVIOEL and the third source can be rejected per WP:BLOGS. The second source - the transcript - could possibly be preserved in the EL section; however, I agree with you that it was cherry-picked. The fourth source is reliable but it only states that he broke the story. -Location (talk) 15:14, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  My Lai 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I removed a paragraph which paraphrased Hersh's claims on Erdogan's support for al-Nusra and ISIS without clarifying them to be purely his opinion. It cited an article from MintPress News (an openly pro-Assad source) to show that Erdogan let jihadis into Syria. This sounds like partisan, agenda-driven writing. I'll go through the entire article in more detail to make it more objective; if you have issue with me removing the paragraph for now, you can refer to it here. I'll be following the page. Ignostic199 (talk) 14:49, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I appreciate your interest in improving Hersh's article, there is plenty of room for that. I'm not protesting your first removal, just raising a couple of general and a couple of specific points. Sourcing and attribution is key to improving the article. Including POV material, especially Hersh's, is fine and actually necessary in many instances. Just get the best source available and make clear who is making the claim. As for the comment above, Erdogan has supported al-Nusra in the past, and Turkey's border was wide open to foreign jihadis to enter Syria. That's fact, not an opinion. There are good independent, reliable sources for that. Using MintPress News is controversial, and a substitute should be found if available. But if not, or in situations of providing POV claims and attribution, it is usable. Smearing it as openly pro-Assad does not help. It might favor Assad over the rebels, but that does not mean it is banned from use as a source. - Mnnlaxer | talk | stalk 16:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for the comment. I understand the need to improve the article according to those guidelines. Will be looking through it in detail soon and will use your advice Ignostic199 (talk) 15:51, 19 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Syrian civil war 

message: I just removed this from the My Lai section:  As far as I can see, it has nothing to do with Hersh. If I'm wrong, please restore it! BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:13, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interviews with My Lai Veterans 

message: Here's the current sentence
"He later became a correspondent for United Press International in South Dakota"
I think the article should specify that it was in Pierre, the capital of South Dakota---he was covering the legislature.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.127.187.130 (talk) 17:17, 16 July 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  South Dakota 

message: The fourth paragraph of the Syrian civil war section is a big mess.  I've explained the problem here.
I also notice that none of the references in the first paragraph mention Hersh.  That seems strange for a BLP. SashiRolls  t ·   c 20:15, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
replies: text:   thank you for fixing part of your mistake, but the sources in your topic sentence also refer to bin Laden.  Note the publication date in particular of the second article which predates the 2017 article by two years. I still don't understand how you could have made this mistake. SashiRolls  t ·   c 21:01, 22 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Confused paragraph 

message: I have placed a tag on this section:
* Some of these are assessments of Hersh's work, some are criticisms and some are Hersh's comments on events. Lumping them under this heading is inappropriate. It would be better to include these in a chronological description of Hersh's work. Items that provide a general assessment can be placed in an Assessment section. 
* Where are the positive assessments of Hersh's work? Why is he such a highly decorated journalist?
Burrobert (talk) 15:15, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Controversy/criticism section 

message: The article says the Hersh family dry-cleaning shop was in the Austin neighborhood.  Both Hersh’s own memoir (“Reporter: A Memoir”) and a nostalgic city tour with a Chicago Tribune reporter (“The Muckraker,” June 25, 2004) place the shop on the South Side, specifically at 4507 S. Indiana Ave. 2600:1702:4610:3470:5CCB:9182:7E4A:D321 (talk) 04:42, 6 April 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chicago Locations 

message: This article towards the end, where current articles written by Hersh are reported, are skewing towards a blatant bias that seems to be perpetuated by parties who have financial or political gain to suppress information. Hersh is a highly awarded journalist, renown for uncovering government ops to propagate social support for things such as war. The label "conspiracy" needs to be removed to maintain impartiality. 124.148.174.167 (talk) 02:33, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The claim is contained in reliable sources so cannot be ignored. Perhaps we should include Sy's response - "I don't care". Burrobert (talk) 04:13, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

text: I have redacted part of 184's comment above per WP:BLP. While it's fine to challenge a source, this should be done based on evidence problems with the sources such as whether the source has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. It should not be based on random insults. Nil Einne (talk) 09:57, 9 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  The label is perjorative and biased. It's another example of how Wikipedia is unreliable on anything or anyone controversial. 2605:59C8:47E:4210:C5D3:3E09:47E:991E (talk)  — Preceding undated comment added 18:40, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

text:  We have whole academic articles about Hersh as conspiracy theorist, see Culloty 2021 "Evaluating conspiracy claims as public sphere communication" . Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:17, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  is the standard, not just . How wide is the use of that label for Hersh? (That's not a rhetorical question, I don't know the answer, but I think the answer will decide the issue.) Levivich (talk) 17:14, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  Just a note that the article does not currently call Hersh a conspiracy theorist and there is no open proposal to do so. IP wants to cut what we do have which doesn't say that. On the question that's actuary being asked describing Hersh's work as conspiratorial, questionable, or pushing conspiracy theories is pretty much universal for the most recent sources, for example Snopes from yesterday "His later work, however, has been controversial and widely panned by journalists for promoting conspiratorial claims that hinge on dubious anonymous sources or speculation." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:18, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

text:  The only uses of the C word in the current article are in the title of a book and a quote "Hersh has appeared increasingly to have gone off the rails. His stories, often alleging vast and shadowy conspiracies, have made startling — and often internally inconsistent — accusations, based on little or no proof beyond a handful of anonymous 'officials'." Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:21, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I did notice that. I guess if someone at some point wants to add the label "conspiracy theorist", they can make the case that it's "widely used" at that time? Levivich (talk) 17:22, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  If only because these are WP:RS which have a clear policy of not making ad hominems attacks, like we do they try to critique the work not the individual. We probably should have something in WikiVoice about his more recent publishing being less reliable though. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:28, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

text: "Hersh hasn't been a journalist in decades"? If the "s" in "decades" means two or more of them, then you're claiming that Hersh ceased to be a journalist no later than February 2003, more than a year prior to his widely heralded coverage of the Abu Ghraib prisoner torture scandal for the New Yorker. Even the people most dedicated to smearing Hersh's recent journalism don't usually set the timeline this aggressively! 75.100.42.217 (talk) 16:59, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Generally sources note that piece as his last good work, Snopes for example "Hersh's most notable work has exposed government and military abusers and cover-ups, and his past work has revealed U.S. military abuse. He uncovered the U.S. military's role in the My Lai Massacre — work that won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1970. He described the U.S.'s role in a covert bombing campaign in Cambodia. He reported on the U.S. military's mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during the Iraq War. His later work, however, has been controversial and widely panned by journalists for promoting conspiratorial claims that hinge on dubious anonymous sources or speculation. " Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:03, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: If the 4/30/04 New Yorker article on Abu Ghraib is his last good work, and he ceased to be a journalist on 5/1/04, then the period during which he hasn't been a journalist has been roughly 18 years and 9 months. Aside from the slightly tongue-in-cheek semantic point about "decades," the more serious point here is that the sources who've dismissed his recent work as fringe conspiracy theorism are often the same ones (if not literally the same people, then people at the same outlets and institutions) who were similarly dismissive toward his earlier "good" work at the time it was originally published. One interpretation might be that Hersh's work over time transformed from good serious investigative journalism to bad unserious conspiracy theorism; another might be that there was no transformation, and those denouncing Hersh's work today are wrong in similar ways and for similar reasons as those who previously denounced it during the 1970s-2000s. 75.100.42.217 (talk) 17:34, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: The difference is that we have WP:RS that say "Hersh's work over time transformed from good serious investigative journalism to bad unserious conspiracy theorism," (I assume you're being a bit hyperbolic) we don't have any that say there wasn't a transformation or that those denouncing Hersh's work today are wrong in similar ways and for similar reasons as those who previously denounced it during the 1970s-2000s. You would need to present a reliable source which said that in order to make that argument. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:43, 11 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Here's the Yale historian and 2020 Pulitzer winner Greg Grandin making more or less exactly that point in The Nation, during the fallout from Hersh's 2015 reporting on the bin Laden raid: There’s a standard boiler plate now when it comes to going after Hersh[...]: establish Hersh’s “legendary” status [...]; invoke his reporting in My Lai and Abu Ghraib; then say that a number of Hersh’s recent stories [...] have been “unsubstantiated” [...]; question Hersh’s sources; and then, finally, suggest that Hersh has gone “off the rails” to embrace “conspiracy theories.” (Ellipses to shorten the quote by omitting references to the specific examples under discussion; you can read the second paragraph of the linked article to see that I'm not distorting Grandin's point by omission.) Obviously any tinfoil-hatted conspiracy nut can claim to be telling dangerous truths that the mainstream political/media establishment doesn't want people to know about, but it certainly helps Hersh's case that even those who dismiss his work today still acknowledge that he has a long and venerable track record of doing precisely that. 75.100.42.217 (talk) 01:32, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pushing the slander to front and centre. Labelling Hersh a Conspiracy Theorist is inaccurate. 

message: Watching this article develop over the past week, I have some concerns about the direction it's headed that I'd like to raise for discussion. In sum, I've added NPOV and recentism tags:
#The section about Nord Stream (the most recent report) is 3x longer than the one about My Lai and 2x longer than Abu Ghraib. This is not proportional, it's WP:RECENTISM. How long/short each section should be should be in proportion to its coverage in RS, making proper adjustments to fight against RECENTISM.
#The section about bin Laden is even longer
#There shouldn't be a "Controversies and criticisms" section at all, for the reasons stated in the essay WP:CSECTION. Instead, his career and his reports should all be listed chronologically. Both negative and positive reactions about his reports should be included in each section, in proportion to their coverage in RS.
#I've noticed that positive things said by others about Hersh have been removed, but negative things said by others about Hersh keep getting added. I'm not sure how we strike the appropriate balance, but we need some method for determining when we include "so-and-so said such-and-such about Hersh" and when we exclude it.
I just want to note that the problems I see isn't due to any one edit or any one editor; it's the cumulation of different people adding and removing different things (all in good faith), but I think we need to have a larger discussion about NPOV and RECENTISM in this article. Is it just me? Levivich (talk) 16:33, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO the issue is that this article was horribly unbalanced prior to Nordstream and the attention from that is uncovering all these old issues. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:34, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I for one never looked at this article before a few days ago. I guess it wasn't just me, because I see several editors have been improving the article and already some of the things I've raised are fixed. Thank you to everyone! (I am enjoying my newfound power, "Summon Editors".) Anyway, anyone working on this should please feel free to remove the tags I placed whenever they think best. Thanks again, Levivich (talk) 02:33, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  NPOV and recentism tags 

message: RE  I don't have access to that text, can you pull the relevant quote out of the book for us? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:11, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: "And then, on December 5, Life magazine — which had turned down both Ron Ridenhour and Hersh when they sought to reveal the massacres — printed ten pages of photographs. Bodies on bodies lying in ditches in graphic color, all captured by former army photographer Ron Haberle and sold for $20,000 to America’s largest circulating magazine." (Miraldi, p. 34) — Goszei (talk)  18:24, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text:  Perfect. Thank you for catching that! Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:26, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correction  

message: I'm not sure if it's possible to find a better source for this, or if it's relevant, but in regards to Hersh's use of anonymous sources, he himself claims in his memoir that he verifies things by his sources and that even if he had a second source, he would have to pretend it didn't exist.
Perhaps this should be mentioned in the section regarding anonymous sources? 193.183.194.67 (talk) 19:15, 14 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hersh's sourcing 

message: Add this to referenes and link it from the section on the Nord Stream sabotage https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream 88.102.168.240 (talk) 14:17, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done for now: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the  template. Please join the discussion about this in above. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:07, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 15 February 2023 

message: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seymour_Hersh#Killing_of_Osama_bin_Laden
This section is more than 300 words, yet if someone were to read it without prior knowledge of Hersh's reporting on the bin Laden raid, they'd come away with pretty much zero idea what Hersh was actually alleging or why it was so controversial. It's unclear why the section doesn't contain any link to Hersh's LRB article itself (especially when the section explicitly mentions its newsworthiness in having drawn enough traffic to crash the LRB website) but even if there's been some kind of WP editorial decision that directly linking to Hersh's controversial/disputed articles is haram, there are still plenty of mainstream sources that summarize the allegations far more succinctly than this WP article currently does, like this from NBC: The Hersh story says that a "walk in" asset, a former Pakistani military intelligence official, contacted U.S. authorities in 2010 and told them bin Laden was hiding in Abbottabad; that elements of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence agency, knew of bin Laden's whereabouts; and that the U.S. told the Pakistanis about the bin Laden raid before it launched. The U.S. has maintained that it did not tell the Pakistani government about the raid before it launched.
(Including something of this nature would also make clear why the final paragraph of the section is there at all, i.e. as a vindication at least to some extent of Hersh's account, since the mainstream narrative Hersh was disputing was the Zero Dark Thirty version in which the intel came from a lead procured through interrogation/torture of a US detainee and not from the Pakistani walk-in.) 75.100.42.217 (talk) 17:06, 18 February 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added details on the U.S. account of the raid as well as Hersh's alternative account. — Goszei (talk)  12:33, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  bin Laden section poorly descriptive 

message: The current wording makes it look like Hersh even identified him correctly as the General Secretary (communicative/representative function, mostly), whereas he introduces Stoltenberg bombastically as NATO's "supreme commander", which is already counterfactual nonsense. At this point and having the basics all wrong I'd say hardly anyone seriously expected him having more luck when it comes to biographical details. Besides Hersh no longer insists on depending on a single source, instead now spreading the warped post-narrative of it all being just a smart protective "device", and that there were (as usual..) in fact many sources. Just why he would then give up such protection barely a couple days after publishing to my knowledge he did not yet reveal. 82.83.175.52 (talk) 22:32, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:   Jens Stoltenberg 

message: https://americanreveille.com/politics/the-end-is-nearing-seymour-hersh-slams-the-white-houses-wishful-approach-to-ukraine-war/ 96.18.81.28 (talk) 14:35, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a paywalled opinion piece by Hersh and not appropriate for a WP:BLP. It could only be appropriate if this essay were to become extensively discussed in reliable secondary sources. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:39, 23 August 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Latest Hersh reporting on Ukraine/Russia