{"id":11454,"date":"2024-09-04T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2024\/09\/04\/investigative-journalism-seymour-hersh-my-lai-massacre-vietnam-war\/"},"modified":"2025-03-18T15:01:42","modified_gmt":"2025-03-18T15:01:42","slug":"investigative-journalism-seymour-hersh-my-lai-massacre-vietnam-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2024\/09\/04\/investigative-journalism-seymour-hersh-my-lai-massacre-vietnam-war\/","title":{"rendered":"How investigative master Seymour Hersh broke the story of the My Lai massacre"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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After six days crossing the Soviet Union on the Trans-Siberian railway, I stumbled from the chill of a winter evening into the warmth of The New York Times Moscow bureau. The fragrance of home cooking filled the upstairs office in a rundown building near the Kremlin and Red Square.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Bill Keller<\/a> \u2013 a star foreign correspondent who would go on to become the newspaper\u2019s executive editor \u2013 sat at a broad desk that evening in 1988 as his colleagues\u2019 young children careened around the cluttered office from an adjoining apartment. He kindly loaned me a desktop computer to file a freelance story that I had reported for The Times.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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As I typed, I overheard Keller chuckling about a reporting tactic that he had used that day. \u201cI pulled a real \u2018Sy Hersh,\u2019\u201d he told an editor on the phone. I didn\u2019t catch the particulars, but I certainly knew the name Seymour Hersh<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The legendary reporter is best known for breaking the story of My Lai<\/a>, a massacre by U.S. soldiers that triggered global outrage and stoked opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. The story was such major news that I remember being horrified as a 12-year-old kid who was just starting to follow national events.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The quick summary of what Hersh uncovered:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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On March 16, 1968, Second Lieutenant William L. Calley Jr., a 24-year-old Army platoon leader, had led about 100 men of Charlie Company into My Lai (pronounced mee LYE<\/em>), a hamlet in South Vietnam. The Americans, angry that numerous members of their company were being killed or maimed in the heavily mined area, suspected that anyone found in the village, even women and children, might be Vietcong enemies. Calley told his men to enter the village firing. Soldiers bayoneted old men, shot women and children in the back of the head, raped and killed women and girls, and ordered villagers into an irrigation ditch to be machine-gunned.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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For exposing the massacre, Hersh won the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting<\/a>. Calley, who maintained during a trial that he had only followed orders, was convicted of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. He served just three years of house arrest and barracks confinement after his conviction was overturned.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Enduring craft lessons<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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I knew most of that story when I made my way into The Times Moscow bureau all those winters ago. But what I overheard there, from Keller\u2019s phone conversation, illustrated how tricks of the trade pass from one journalist to the next. Techniques filter through generations, linking denizens of the hot-type and pay-phone era to reporters who take laptops and cell phones for granted.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Two of my journalistic heroes \u2014 Keller, who would win the 1989 Pulitzer for international reporting<\/a> for stories from and on Soviet Russia, and Hersh, who would expose abuses by U.S. soldiers at the Abu Graib prison in 2004 during the Iraq war \u2014 employed tactics that remain relevant today.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Hersh started as a copyboy and reporter in Chicago, served in the Army and began covering the Pentagon in 1965 for the Associated Press and other news organizations as he honed his investigative skills. After his Vietnam scoop, he reported on the Watergate scandal in the 1970s for The New York Times.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Hersh has a penchant for dramatic detail. A review in The Guardian<\/a> of his 2018 memoir, \u201cReporter,\u201d said that detail swamped the narrative \u201clike creeper clambering over an ancient Mayan ruin, and for the reader, hacking through it is completely exhausting.\u201d (Here\u2019s a 2019 Nieman Storyboard of tips gleaned from Hersh\u2019s memoir<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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At 87, Hersh continues wearing out shoe leather as an independent journalist published on Substack<\/a>. Last year he probed the sabotage of Russia\u2019s Nord Stream Pipeline<\/a>, contesting a version of events reported by The New York Times.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Over the years Hersh\u2019s reporting has sparked lawsuits and controversy. His methods, at times, have drawn criticism from some of today\u2019s journalists who find them ethically problematic. But the same Guardian reviewer who found his memoir writing wordy had praise for his relentless reporting: \u201cHere is journalistic tenacity of a kind that, social media being what it is, is close to nonexistent today.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Tips, tenacity and resourcefulness<\/h2>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n
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This past August, after The Washington Post reported that Calley had died<\/a>, Hersh wrote a piece titled \u201cTracking down Lieutenant Calley. How I learned the story of the My Lai massacre.\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Hersh\u2019s account shows how a dogged reporter can turn the vaguest of tips into a blockbuster story that can change the course of history. Here are some lessons that emerge from his article about finding Calley:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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