Pulitzer prize winner, Seymour Hersh, talks at Pitt Honors College

Investigations begin with skepticism.

“You have to say what is. You have to write… Investigations begin with skepticism.

“You have to say what is. You have to write immediately and take down everything they say and look at it and analyze it,” investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said to a standing-room-only crowd on the 35th floor of the Cathedral of Learning Monday afternoon.

In the one-hour lecture sponsored by the University Honors College, Hersh spoke about his dissatisfaction with the Republican party and the media’s role in today’s cyber world.

“You’re at the right time to change the way we look at things, change the way we look at news and maybe change the ways we look at politicians,” he said, alluding to prospective Republican presidential candidates.

Hersh followed up his afternoon lecture with a 7:30 p.m. talk at Carnegie Music Hall, as the first speaker in the Literary Evenings, Monday Night Lecture Series.

Hersh is most notably accredited with breaking news of the My Lai Massacre, where members of the U.S. military killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians in 1968 during the Vietnam War. In 1970, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting.

Now 74, Hersh has worked for The New Yorker since 1993. It was there he covered prisoner abuse at U.S. military prison Abu Ghraib in West Baghdad.

“If you didn’t see them, you didn’t miss much,” he said at his afternoon talk of the photographs released displaying Iraqi prisoners at the site naked and in humiliating poses. “It was a horrible crime.”

His story took shape after The New Yorker obtained a report by an American Army major, not for public release, detailing lists of wrongdoings to detainees.

Hersh said that the privatization of prisons and violence in correctional facilities — both abroad and domestically — is not a new problem, yet it’s often treated as a non-issue, along with “a lot of non-issues in America.” He cited unemployment among minorities as another example.

“If someone is wrong and it needs to be exposed, why not expose it?” sophomore Tyler Yonchiuk said.

The English writing and communication major, who sat among more than 40 listeners in the audience, said he was struck by Hersh’s confidence behind the podium.

During the question-and-answer session, Hersh labeled himself a Jeffersonian in response to a question posed by an audience member asking if he thought it OK for the government to keep secrets.

Hersh said he’s a staunch believer in the public’s right to know.

“Well here’s the way it really is in the Constitution,” Hersh said. “It’s your [government’s] job to keep the secrets, and it’s my job to figure them out.”

In 1974 Hersh broke a story on the front page of The New York Times about illegal CIA files. He said he had found out that the CIA was keeping files on 100,000 or more Americans whom the organization suspected of being dissidents. Only the FBI is permitted by law to keep domestic files.

“You’ve got to publish that,” he said.

Hersh quelled one audience member’s concern on the moral dilemma journalists face when breaking controversial stories. He said that when he’s writing a story with potentially sensitive content, he often goes to a trusted inside government source first to warn them.

He gave an example of the type of conversation he often has in such situations: “Here’s what you did. There’s no way I’m not writing about it. You better get your people out of harms way,” he said.

As for the aspiring journalists in the crowd, Hersh encouraged them to find truth for themselves through interpretation and scouring research and articles.

“The only truth is one that you come to believe by your own personal experience or your own personal reading,” he said.

English writing professor Cindy Skrzycki arranged Monday’s lecture. Hersh’s topics of discussion and advice dovetailed with the content of two of her Pitt classes, in which she teaches investigative journalism to her students.

“Nothing will surpass hearing Sy Hersh stand in front of you,” Skrzycki said of the face-to-face encounter with the veteran reporter..  

Kelly Posenau, senior and editor-in-chief of Pitt Political Review, said she came to hear the lecture because she heard Hersh’s informal public lectures are rare.

“He’s had a huge influence on journalism,” Posenau said.

“He’s an icon,” Skrzycki said. “His stories had a groundbreaking effect on public policy.”