I would call this just muckraking's newer, even more cynical, market capitalist face, re Seymour Hersh:
"...Hersh's work, from 1969 until today, illustrates what has happened to the United States in the last half century. The Vietnam War convinced young Americans who had believed their country could do no wrong that it could do no right. It accelerated an attack on all institutional, intellectual and moral authority. The new generation, generation X, that grew up in that atmosphere, is even more cynical than its elders, and tens of millions of Americans now have no trust in government at all. And that, in turn, makes government impossible. That is the legacy of the new tradition of investigative reporting as an end in itself, not designed to uncover a specific abuse or serve the greater good. The American people have lost the capacity to tell a good military operation, or a good public official, from a bad one." DK
Terms search: Drew Pearson fallacy, fallacy, Lorch, Fountainhead
"...And that leads me to my broadest point: Hersh's insistence that the details of the killing had to be altered so as to absolve US soldiers and the US government of a charge of murder. I do not believe there was anything they needed to be absolved of. This was not murder, it was an act of war against a man who had carried on war against the United States and killed more than 3000 Americans. Taking him into custody would have given him an opportunity to speak publicly to the world, and would surely have provided a pretext for more terrorist attacks designed to free him...." DK
With this passage, I quite agree.
"...Hersh's work, from 1969 until today, illustrates what has happened to the United States in the last half century. The Vietnam War convinced young Americans who had believed their country could do no wrong that it could do no right. It accelerated an attack on all institutional, intellectual and moral authority. The new generation, generation X, that grew up in that atmosphere, is even more cynical than its elders, and tens of millions of Americans now have no trust in government at all. And that, in turn, makes government impossible. That is the legacy of the new tradition of investigative reporting as an end in itself, not designed to uncover a specific abuse or serve the greater good. The American people have lost the capacity to tell a good military operation, or a good public official, from a bad one." DK
Terms search: Drew Pearson fallacy, fallacy, Lorch, Fountainhead
"...And that leads me to my broadest point: Hersh's insistence that the details of the killing had to be altered so as to absolve US soldiers and the US government of a charge of murder. I do not believe there was anything they needed to be absolved of. This was not murder, it was an act of war against a man who had carried on war against the United States and killed more than 3000 Americans. Taking him into custody would have given him an opportunity to speak publicly to the world, and would surely have provided a pretext for more terrorist attacks designed to free him...." DK
With this passage, I quite agree.
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