Spanning over six decades, Seymour Hersh’s career is nothing short of extraordinary
Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s Cover-Up is a political thriller documentary exploring the legacy of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.
Spanning over six decades, Hersh’s career is nothing short of extraordinary.
Hersh broke some of the most important stories of the last half of the 20th century. He uncovered the massacre of Vietnamese civilians, the torture of Iraqi prisoners and Joe Biden’s sabotage of peace in Ukraine.
His reporting consistently takes aim at the ruling class of the United States, in the Oval Office and corporate boardrooms alike.
At 88, he remains a tireless chronicler of the United States’ atrocities, documenting the genocide in Gaza and Donald Trump’s murderous rampages at home and abroad.
Cover-Up interweaves Hersh’s present-day reporting with highlights from his professional and personal history.
Through the lens of his journalism, our current political moment is in conversation with the long and bloody history of US imperialism.
The violence of the contemporary global order is contextualised as the product of a repeated cycle of atrocities, lies and impunity.
Missing crucially from this cycle is the supposed role of the fourth estate.
Cover-Up is a damning indictment of legacy news organisations such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
But the documentary’s bleak outlook also extends to Hersh’s style of independent journalism that survives in niche corners on the internet. It ends on the release of William Calley, the lieutenant who ordered the My Lai massacre.
Hundreds were murdered and Calley spent just three days behind bars. Here, Cover-Up underscores the consistent failure of Hersh’s reporting in delivering accountability and justice.
Today, as the ruling class unleashes its naked barbarity across the world, professional journalism’s mantra of speaking truth to power proves woefully inadequate.
The “post-truth” era of Trump, Elon Musk and Nigel Farage highlights more so than ever the crisis liberal journalism finds itself in.
Hersh’s lifetime of work reveals the political function of untruths and the falsehoods disseminated by imperialists and far right demagogues.
It is not hapless “misinformation”, it is conscious propaganda with agendas set by the ruling class.
Anti-imperialist journalism cannot contend simply with truth-finding missions.
Its role must be to agitate for material struggles against capitalism and imperialism rooted in movements and workplaces.
- Available on Netflix now
The cover-up that paved the way for water privatisation
On 6 July 1988, tens of thousands of residents of Camelford, Cornwall, became victims of the largest mass poisoning in British history.
Mouth ulcers, rashes, vomiting and diarrhoea plagued residents. They had ingested water contaminated by a concoction of aluminium, lead, copper and zinc.
This was unleashed when a replacement driver dumped 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate into the wrong tank. But he was working within a system riddled with catastrophic flaws.
A 2012 inquiry into a death linked to the poisoning found that the water authority “gambled with as many as 20,000 lives”.
The new BBC documentary Poison Water captures the horror.
South West Water Authority’s phone lines were inundated with terrified calls. But authorities maintained the water was “perfectly safe”, even suggesting residents mix it with orange squash to mask the foul taste.
The mistake was discovered within two days. Yet the water authority kept the public in the dark for another 16 days.
The interviews are devastating to watch. The 38-year fight for justice has worn the residents down.
The documentary does well at giving a voice to victims and a breakdown of the events. But it skims over the systemic factors that led to the poisoning and the subsequent bungled response.
It only briefly mentions that costs were being slashed in preparation for privatisation. Executives stood to gain massive pay increases if the planned sell‑off went of the water corporation through.
The poisoning wasn’t a “hiccup” in capitalism, but a feature.
When there is a choice between people’s health and profit, bosses prioritise profit.
We see the same pattern today. The Camelford cover-up is the precursor to the current sewage crisis—companies dump filth into our rivers whilst hiking bills.
But additionally, the glacial response is an example of a strategy of “Deny, Delay, Defend.”
Regardless of how flagrant the crime, the ruling class will deny the truth and delay justice. They will bank on the hope that they can financially or physically outlast the victims in a war of attrition.
Justice for Camelford means ending the system that made the cover-up profitable.
Ken Knight
- Available on the BBC iPlayer now
Avatar: Fire and Ash
The latest production in the Avatar franchise, Avatar—Fire and Ash, came out last month. Like its predecessors, it is visually stunning, presenting a feast of vibrant images.
The film reintroduces us to the planet Pandora, home of the Na’vi people. They are very much in harmony with their world and in relative harmony with other indigenous species.
All is not well however, as the Na’vi must contend with rapacious colonisers from Earth. Driven on by the powerful corporate entity, the Resources Development Administration (RDA), they are intent on plundering Pandora for its natural resources.
Having suffered setbacks in previous campaigns, the RDA received reinforcements. Under the command of Colonel Miles Quaritch—Stephen Lang—they prepare for an offensive.
Their preparations are enhanced by the discovery of a disaffected tribe, the Mangkwan.
Quaritch strikes a deal with the Mangkwan, providing them with arms and promises of territory in return for their assistance.
The scene is set for a titanic showdown as the Na’vi must unite with the other species. They seek to draw upon the spiritual assistance of their planet‑mother, Eywa, to provide that unifying force.
There have been criticisms of the film series and its creator, James Cameron, principally for his use of Maori and South Seas peoples’ body art. The depiction of the Mangkwan tribe have been criticised for drawing on historic images of native Americans.
However, the theme of the film is the ruthlessness of the colonisers. It is not difficult to see the struggles of the film’s indigenous peoples in that context.
It allows viewers to draw certain conclusions about where the sympathies of the film makers lie. In the age of Donald Trump and Elon Musk, that is important.
Rebecca Philpot
- In cinemas now
