Reporter: A Memoir by Seymour M. Hersh

 

In a time when their are  facts and something called "alternate facts" buttressed by screaming talk shows and so called guest "experts," what to think of the issues of the day becomes harder and harder.  So called reporters who only use "leaked" information from biased sources add to the fog. Compounding all of this is the fact that during the Vietnam era Seymour Hersh an a number of other young American reporters began telling what was really going on over there and the American people learned that their government was lying to them..... and still does.

Hersh  told what really happened in the Vietnamese village of My Lai. It was a mass murder of civilians by a company of American soldiers.  Later, he  went on to produce important  articles revealing the CIA’s  domestic spying on U.S. citizens, its abortive assassination plot against Fidel Castro, President Richard Nixon’s secret bombing of Cambodia and complicity in the overthrow and killing of Chilean President Salvador Allende, and, in more recent times, atrocities against Iraqi detainees by their American overseers at Abu Ghraib prison. Hersh’s reporting over the past half-century has constituted an alternative history of modern America.

For those of us readers who lived through the era of these past events this book is a worthwhile reminder of what happened. Some of the roots and causes were stemmed later by public outrage. For younger readers the lesson are well to learn and take into account.

Today, this country needs more investigative reporters like Seymour Hersh who speak the truth to power. As the headline on a Washington Post says Democracy Dies in Darkness.   Help shine the light and take time to read a good book........and get involved.

 

Oops! Well I put this book review on the nature blog rather than Troutbirder II.

 Think I'll just leave it here...:)