PULITZER WINNER HERSH DAMNS TV NEWS COVERAGE AND NY TIMES

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has unleashed a broadside of criticism against members of his own profession, maintaining that when it comes to covering the Obama administration “they are more than obsequious.” In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Hersh singled out the news coverage of NBC and ABC, saying that their news bureaus ought to be shut down, and his old alma mater, the New York Times, which, he said, spends “so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would.” Ninety percent of editors at newspapers should be fired, he added, to make way for journalists who could then get back to their principal duty to become unpopular messengers of truth. Hersh had high praise for whistleblower Edward Snowden, who he maintained, had changed the debate over government surveillance and secrecy. “But I don’t know if it’s going to mean anything in the long [run] because the polls I see in America — the president can still say to voters ‘al-Qaeda, al-Qaeda’ and the public will vote two to one for this kind of surveillance, which is so idiotic.”