In a recent article on the group blog Obsidian Wings, Moe Lane’s article Verify first. Then we’ll see about trust. stirred up some little comment storm followed by apologies all around. In the post Moe criticizes legendary journalist Seymour Hersh’s use of anonymous sources in his recent article The Gray Zone
Moe writes:
In my opinion Hersh is an aging hack justly afraid that if he publishes his sources the public would twig right away to the fact that this article was a typical Dizzy City smearjob ‘supported’ by the allegations of people that you wouldn’t trust to walk your dog properly. That’s my operating theory – and I’ll note right now how easy it would be to prove me wrong: Hersh can do that handily by publishing his sources. Let’s decide for ourselves, shall we?
In the Comments area reader Hal takes Moe to task:
Right. . . So I can assume you’ll apply this high standard to *every* reporter? Geesh. This is a time honored tradition in reporting, with damn good reasons. I agree it would be far better if everyone would speak out in the open. But this is a complete fantasy world and everyone knows that.
Further on down in his response to my question about journalistic authoritativeness, Hal wrote:
Until you have more sources you trust, you can’t really be sure. But we live in an uncertain world. It kind of freaks me out as an anti-war person to be saying this given the fact that we went to war on the argument that “we can’t wait until we’re sure”, but we live in a world where we can never be sure.
But rather than attack Hersh’s information on his past record, the information is attacked merely because it’s unsourced – oh, and that Hersh guy is a political hack. Fair enough, as it means we need to find out about this. But anonymous sources don’t – in any way – prove the information is false.
This is an excellent answer and Hal is right. Anonymous sources are not ipso facto prove that information is false. Or true, for that matter. But the central question is: does Seymour Hersh meet the standard that Hal has set?
In his article King Sy’s Mistakes, Scott Shuger analyses Hersh’s factually incorrect report of the war in Afghanistan. In the article Seymour Hersh Has Record of False Claims, Bad Journalism, Yated Ne’eman criticizes Hersh’s coverage of Israel. And in Sly Sy: A journalist’s latest tricks – Seymour Hersh, Jonathan Miller identifies are number of problems with Mr. Hersh’s reporting including:
His methods came under severe criticism following the publication of his 1997 bestseller The Dark Side of Camelot and its negative portrayal of John F. Kennedy. While conducting his research, Hersh came across what looked like his biggest scoop since My Lai: a cache of unknown JFK documents offering apparent proof of an affair with Marilyn Monroe, among dozens of other tantalizing factoids. Hersh gained access to them through Lawrence X. Cusack, a man who claimed his father was a lawyer for Kennedy. The papers eventually were shown to be forgeries-Cusack is now in prison-but Hersh refused for months to disbelieve them, coming up with desperate rationalizations for skeptics who wondered why documents containing ZIP codes were dated before ZIP codes even existed. Hersh was so eager to get his hands on the papers, he wrote a letter to Cusack stating that he had “independently confirmed” the relationship between JFK and Cusack’s father. This was a lie. “Here is where I absolutely misstated things,” testified Hersh during Cusack’s trial. Assistant U.S. attorney Paul A. Engelmayer accused Hersh of playing “a little fast and loose with the facts.”
Ultimately Hersh stepped back from the brink. He tried to develop a television documentary about the JFK papers, and his partners were able to prove convincingly that they were fakes. The final version of his book did not cite them. But critics complained about the material he did use, because of its thin sourcing and its treatment of speculation as fact. “In his mad zeal to destroy Camelot, to raze it down, dance on the rubble, and sow salt on the ground where it stood, Hersh has with precision and method disassembled and obliterated his own career and reputation,” wrote Garry Wills in The New York Review of Books. Conservatives enjoyed the controversy, because it involved liberals attacking each other and made JFK look bad. Yet Wills was essentially correct in his assessment.
These aren’t isolated instances.
Now my point is not that these journalists are more credible than Mr. Hersh. My point is that journalists are human beings and come fully equipped with opinions, attitudes, and agendas. And that includes Seymour Hersh. So everything they write should be met with a certain level of skepticism, especially when what they write has no verifiable facts and instead relies on unnamed or untraceable sources. Reading articles labelled as fact as The Gray Zone was should not require discipleship—you shouldn’t need to have unswerving faith in the writer.
So just as Mr. Hersh believes that government officials should be held to a higher standard, I believe that journalists should be held to a higher standard. Keep the opinion and unverifiable sources in the Editorial section. That the opinions and unverifiable sources may later be verified doesn’t matter one bit.
If I’m not mistaken the use of unnamed sources by Woodward and Bernstein was partially buttressed by information from other sources. And most of the critiques of Hersh have not been based solely upon the fact that he used unnamed sources once in awhile, but that he uses them extensively to play a critical role in his analysis. And you are right to point out his track record, because about the only thing a reader may have to go on with an investigative piece in which such sources play a critical role is the even-handedness and honesty with which that reporter has dealt with other investigative pieces in the past.
To Hal’s comment:
I’d say that one must first make a decision about what sort of consequences for mistakes you’re willing to accept. That determination will lead to a decision about whether you adopt an “innocent until proved guilty” or a “guilty until proved innocent” hypothesis test. If the consequences of an erroneous acquittal far outweigh the consequences of an erroneous conviction then you have to choose a “beta decision method,” in which you presume guilt.
The Atta/Iraqi intelligence connection is a case in point. Knowing only that Atta appeared to have been in Prague at a time when a witness placed him in a meeting with the head of Iraqi intelligence the critical operational question is whether this was before or after the risks associated with the meeting had been dealt with. After Saddam had been deposed and Atta had already done his worst the risks associated with the assumption that no meeting took place are minimal, so it’s safe to adopt that as the operational assumption. The same would not have been the case prior to the Iraq War, however.
I don’t think people understand this aspect of decision-making and investigative method very well. Clearly Sy Hersh doesn’t understand it. He guesses right sometimes, and sometimes not. But he doesn’t make any conscious or reasoned approach to the choice of which sort of hypothesis is more appropriate, nor to most investigative journalists. They simply don’t use a method. Basically, they just take a whack and hope they hit something.
Basically, they just take a whack and hope they hit something.
And for journalists there’s a minimal downside risk in that approach. What can happen if they’re wrong? They print a retraction.