Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

One thing clear about this book is that writing a newspaper story is easy. Yes, it’s easy, but only if you have all the information you need to write it. And that’s the rub as Hersh shows in his memoir. On so many of his memorable stories such as the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, and the various missteps of the CIA, the difficulty was gathering all the facts in spite of our own military and government trying to hide these stories from seeing the light of day. There’s a lot of leg work involved in gathering such facts including the knack of knowing just where to go and who to talk with. Hersh clearly mastered these techniques early in his career and put them to good purpose like the Mai Lai story which won him a Pulitzer Prize.
When all the facts are gathered and the writing commences, what’s the next step? Convincing your editor that you have the complete story and the newspaper won’t be sued for libel is a start. Many times in his career Hersh’s editor decided to kill the story or save it for another time. Perhaps it was for the best but only history can give a clear answer to that conundrum.
There were many occasions when Hersh tried to learn the facts for his story but was deceived by high-ranking military and government officials. Henry Kissinger and Dick Cheney are two examples who are exposed in this book. The cynic in me believes that this ugly habit of hiding important information from the American public is still going on today in our own Federal government. One has to wonder: Will they ever learn?
On a personal note, I learned a lot about the business of print journalism. When I was a boy my father was a reporter for the East St. Louis Journal and the St. Louis Globe Democrat. Later in his career he was the editor of Midwest Labor World, a house organ for the Teamsters Union. Thanks to Hersh’s book I have a much better understanding and appreciation of what my father did in those days.