Seymour Hersh, the American investigative journalist and winner of a Pulitzer prize, rebuilt a part of the of young journalism students’ lost enthusiasm during his one hour keynote speech at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia. Young aspiring journalists frustrated about not being able to get a job in this profession remembered what drove them to the journalism school and that they still want to change the world.
A theatre packed with young people many minutes before the start. People at the front door still trying to get inside and not being allowed to. There are no more seats. And the theatre has 4 floors, besides the ground floor. One would think that this is the scene of an American rock star’s concert in the small city of Perugia. And maybe this is what Seymour Hersh, the 72 years old American journalist winner of a Pulitzer prize is for the hundreds of young journalist students gathered in Pavone Theatre in the fourth day of the International Journalism Festival. They all welcomed him with applauses. During his speech, Hersh asked many times the young audience not to applaud him. “I freak out when I hear applauses. Because the American journalists applaud after our President’s speeches. Can you imagine that?”
The young journalists couldn’t actually imagine what Hersh was about to tell them. He talked about the story that gave him worldwide recognition in his early thirties.
In 1969, Seymour Hersh exposed the story of the massacre from the Vietnamese village My Lai, where 555 unarmed civilians, according to the American journalist, were killed by US soldiers. “I was in the young [military} forces, so I learnt how to kill in the army. And I also learnt something else: it is not about the flag, it’s about your buddies. You kill and get killed. Your buddies get killed.”
“I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer!”
The investigation that Seymour Hersh conducted got him to be able to explain why the young soldiers from the unit that arrived to My Lai did what they did. “Between January and March 16th 1968 around 90 boys from this unit died or were wounded by snipers or landmines, without seeing the enemy, face to face. And they were ready to kill.” Seymour Hersh discovered that the night before the massacre from My Lai the soldiers were told that they will see the enemy the next day. And that night they smoked joints and got drunk. “But they all woke up at 3.30 and they got on choppers and they went to the village thinking they will die, they will kill and be killed. When they walked in the village they only found all people, women and children. And they put them in 3 ditches and they began to execute them. Hours and hours.”
Hersh got to his young audience. The aspiring students were listening to him and they could actually imagine the scene described by Hersh thanks to the details he was giving and the dynamic he was putting in his phrases. And he went on. He told the story of a Vietnamese child that survived because his mom had put him under her stomach during the shootings in the ditches. “And he began to crawl from the bottom of the ditch, full of other people’s blood, to the top. And then he got to the top and he ran off. In that moment, one of the leaders of the assault, lieutenant Calley told Paul Meadlo, an uneducated boy from Indiana that had fired bullet after bullet: “Plug him!” And Meadlo couldn’t do it”, explained Hersh. So the lieutenant Calley did it himself: he shot the little boy.
Seymour Hersh was a freelancer when he started investigating the My Lai case. He was earning 150 dollars a week for his articles. He decided to find some of the soldiers from the unity that went to My Lai. After making hundreds of phone calls, he finally found Paul Meadlo’s mom, somewhere in Indiana. And he went to see her and Paul, who was back in the United States. According to Hersh, Mrs. Meadlo was an uneducated woman who had let her boy go to war at 16. “When I asked her if I could talk to her son, she said she wasn’t sure Paul wanted to talk to me. And then this Southern uneducated woman added: “I gave them a good boy and they sent me back a murderer!”
35 years later, the now well known and senior Seymour Hersh was investigating what happened in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. And the most important information came to him during a live radio show where Hersh was discussing about Abu Ghraib. A woman called to say her daughter had been part of the unit that took the photos of the horrors in Abu Ghraib. And her daughter had came back completely changed from Iraq, after working in this prison. The American journalist got the whole story during a dinner with the woman. “The girl came back home two months before the story about Abu Ghraib exploded in the media. And she left her parents and her husband and she moved to another State. But she left her computer in her parents’ house. And her mom went through her files in the computer and she discovered 80 pictures from Abu Ghraib. And there was this picture that become iconic afterwards with this naked man standing behind the bars, holding his hands back, being surrounded by 2 threatening German Sheppard dogs, without being able to put his hands where he wanted to”, told Seymour Hersh to his young audience in Italy. According to him, the rest of the picture show that the dogs did eventually bite the man in a terrible place. And there was blood all over. The lady gave the pictures to Hersh without asking for any money, although she could have easily sold all for many hundreds of dollars. And she also told the journalist that, after coming back from Iraq, her daughter had started getting tattoos from the bottom up until her neck. “It was like she was trying to change her skin”, the mother told Hersh.
“The mainstream press is a loser”
These two stories made Seymour Hersh a reference name in the American and international journalism. He is one of the most awarded American investigative journalist and author. Hersh has worked for United Press International, Associated Press and The New York Times. Now he is a regular contributor to the weekly magazine “The New Yorker” on military and security matters. “ I am part of the mainstream press. And we are on our way out. Because we can’t communicate to your generation. The mainstream press is a loser. And not only because of the economic issue. They lost their way with Bush, they still deal with the president as a movie star, they are still supporting Afghanistan, if you read the editors’ pages”, pointed out Hersh. He expressed his hopes, in front of hundreds of students who had came to listen to him, that if a social revolution is going to happen, it will be made by the young people, by the new generation, and not by his colleagues from The New York Times or The Washington Post.
The American journalist told the young people interested in making part of the next generation of European journalists that he is sometimes called a vaccination for the mainstream press. Because, unlike most of his colleagues, he doesn’t just report what the political American or world leaders tell. He takes the time to look at things. He works 3 months sometimes for a story that he publishes. Hersh obtained the 2004 George Polk Award for Magazine Reporting given annually by Long Island University to honor contributions to journalistic integrity and investigative reporting. This was his fifth George Polk Award, the first one being a Special Award given to him in 1969. Hersh detailed in his articles the military and security matters surrounding the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. In 2004 he wrote an article where he alleged that Vice President of the USA, Dick Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, circumvented the normal intelligence analysis function of the CIA in their quest to make the case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
In his vivid speech given in front of so many young journalism students, Seymour Hersh criticized the way the mainstream press reflects nowadays what the political leaders do and how they just follow what the politicians say, terrified by the economic crisis. And that is because in the newsroom those who get promoted are the safe journalists, not those ones who will launch themselves into getting to the bottom of things.
“Change is gonna come!”
From his point of view, the ex-president George W Bush and the Vice President, Dick Cheney are a criminal enterprise, that permitted so many war crimes in the Middle East. Hersh called Bush the most radical president the United States ever had.” I would call him a Trotsky and a believer in a permanent revolution, but he wouldn’t understand a word. And after 9/11, my colleagues from the press got in line, they followed, they were loyal. It was shameful”, said Hersh.
He also warned the next generation of journalists not to let themselves fooled by the appearances. He underlined that everybody is in love with Obama while he is planning a war in Afghanistan. And Hersh believes that there is no chance in hell for the Americans to win that war. Mainly because they are stepping on one of the main value of the Arab world: the pride. Plus, according to Seymour Hersh, the war the Americans do it’s the same as any other war: always brutal, always murderous, always horrible.
“I am here to tell you that change is gonna come. And it’s not going to come because of politicians. It’s going to come from you and the stories you write”, concluded Hersh in his speech given at the International Journalism Festival. And he is one big supporter of the young generation that is expected to bring the change. Few hours after his speech, in the press center, a girl was wondering where she was when the American journalist went to lunch and to drink with a bunch of journalism students participating at the event in Perugia.
