Cover Up, Poitras, and Seymour Hersh

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/we-need-more-seymour-hershes

https://pilgrimunderground.blogspot.com/2026/02/ritter-russia-and-hersh.html

This post is simply a follow-up or supplement to my recent piece on Scott Ritter and Seymour Hersh. This article provides some additional commentary on the Cover-Up documentary and the importance of Hersh's reporting on My Lai.

It's ironic that Hersh couldn't get published in the major newspapers in 1969 and over forty years later he would find himself more or less back in the same spot - the difference being the Internet Age affords more possibilities.

I thought the comments regarding Hersh belonging to another age were also worthy of some additional reflection. It's true and in some respects Hersh is like a living relic - a type of journalist that belongs to another era when newspapers were king. We have more information available to us today and news is almost instant and yet something tremendous has been lost. The journalism today is often lacking and frankly the audience that's actually able to read and work through such pieces seems to be shrinking by the day. Newspapers are collapsing and the world of journalism is in something of a free-fall. It must make Hersh's head spin to remember what things were like forty and fifty years ago.

I was glad to see the article cites Aaron Maté's dispute with Poitras over Hersh's comments (or retractions) on Syria. Maté has spent a considerable amount of time on this issue, challenging the official narrative. Hersh's final fall from Establishment grace occurred during this period - his questioning of the Bin Laden assassination narrative, the Syrian Civil War, and the Wikileaks scandal.

The article was entertaining and informative and having already seen the movie - I appreciated it all the more.

Hersh is obviously no Christian and that seems somehow especially sad to me as what hope can he possibly have. I don't think someone would need to explain to him the nature of human depravity and the corruption that characterizes this world. But it would seem he still places his hopes in the values of democracy. One would think by now he would be a complete cynic. But I suppose if he abandons his faith in humanism - what is left but utter despair?

We of course have an answer and Christian ethics would certainly value the tenacity and truth-telling convictions of a journalist like Hersh - or should. But sadly, the Church continues to sell-out and cut Faustian bargains in the quest for power. As such, the Church ends up being the subject of such journalistic exposés - rather than the author of them. May they continue. Though it is grievous to see the Church caught in the net of corruption, the truth needs to be told and the false Christianity that dominates the scene must be called out.