COMM 337: Objective bio of Seymour Hersh

I had to wade through a lot of biased writing to find it, but I finally located a fairly objective profile of Seymour Hersh, writer for The New Yorker who says President Bush wants to bomb Iran (a charge the White House dismisses but doesn't exactly come right out and deny). It's by Howard Kurtz, media critic for The Washington Post, and it came out in 2004. It only comes to three pages in printer-friendly format, but it says pretty much the same thing as the 20-page Columbia Journalism Review profile I linked below -- Hersh is controversial and opinionated, but he's a tireless reporter and he usually gets his facts straight.

Kurtz, typically, doesn't offer his own opinion. But he quotes two journalists who can offer an informed opinion on Hersh's work:

"A lot of Washington journalists act like hedge-trimmers or pruning shears," says Time defense correspondent Mark Thompson. "Sy is a noisy, smoke-spewing chain saw -- and a relentless stump-grinder, to boot."

Bill Kovach, who once edited Hersh as the [New York] Times's Washington bureau chief, says that "he's maintained a kind of groundfire of anger at abuses of power unlike any I've ever seen."

And how does Hersh unearth his information? "He's relentless," Kovach says. "He's rapid-fire. He asks two or three questions at a time. He just keeps going and going until he gets where he wants to go. He religiously tracks these sources, he talks to them all the time."

You can read Kurtz' article and come to your own conclusion about Sy Hersh, but for my money Thompson's bit about the chain saw has got to be one of the all-time great quotes.