The documentary that reminds us of the value of journalism
In the recordings of Richard Nixon's White House phone conversations, there is a line in which the US president says, "He may be a son of a bitch and all that, but he's never wrong!" He is referring to Seymour Hersh, one of the key figures in American investigative journalism of the second half of the 20th century, whose influence remains significant today. Hersh is known for his ability to hold power to account, exposing state crimes, institutional lies, and systematic violence. He uncovered the US military's chemical weapons testing. He won the Pulitzer Prize for revealing the My Lai massacre—which the military was trying to cover up—in which US soldiers murdered hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. In the 1970s, he played a crucial role in uncovering the details of the Watergate scandal. New York Times and documented the active role of the United States in Pinochet's coup in Chile. He denounced the media manipulation surrounding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and exposed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in 2004, demonstrating that it was government-sanctioned.
Netflix just released Cover-upA documentary in which Hersh himself reviews his career and explains the circumstances surrounding his most famous reports. Co-director Laura Poitras proposed this project to him in 2005, but Hersh took twenty years to accept. It is not a chronological account of his life, nor does it fall into the clichés of a hagiography. It is an in-depth look at his journalistic work, even including the more controversial aspects of his personality and his most recent and contentious professional period covering Syria. Hersh, now eighty-eight years old, becomes angry during filming because the documentary's directors were able to access some names from his personal notes, even though he himself had authorized them to consult his archive. We also see him working in a more precarious and solitary manner with information about the Gaza war. This is a more isolated Seymour Hersh, with less support from the major traditional media outlets, but one who has lost neither his energy nor his drive to denounce war crimes.
Cover-up It's an excellent documentary for viewers interested in the dynamics of journalism and critical analysis. It serves as an X-ray of Hersh's reporting and inevitably invites reflection on journalism itself. It contrasts the profession, which demands time, commitment, and personal and professional sacrifices, with the political, social, and economic dynamics that grip the media today. The documentary underscores the moral perspective that guides the protagonist. When Hersh denounces the enormously violent culture that characterizes the United States, the documentary's director asks him, "Why do you keep working?" And the journalist replies, "Because you can't have a country that does all this."
