Seymour Hersh

An excellent analysis of his methods and history by Rael Jean Isaac.

The defects with these three stories encapsulate all that has been wrong with Hersh's journalism throughout his lengthy career. Anonymous sources that cannot be checked. Directly reversing what really happened. (One might think Hersh had factual dyslexia if the reversals were not so consistently in the service of his far left ideology.) Dark charges based on a crazy patchwork of suppositions. For anyone familiar with Hersh's earlier work, his article on the Bush administration's being taken in by false documents is especially outlandish because Hersh has repeatedly been taken in by con men peddling sensational phony stories.
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Hersh is an ideological yellow journalist. With his tenacity, lack of scruples, narrow vision, and white hats versus black hats view of the world, he might, in an earlier era, have been a successful police reporter particularly in the earlier journalistic world described by Ben Hecht, where letting the facts interfere with a sensational story was a mark against you (indeed, Hersh started out as a police reporter in Chicago). But Hersh is unable to handle complicated material, unable to understand or analyze policy issues. He never seems to have heard of standards of evidence. Unable to sift out the wildest, most absurd allegations, he tosses them into the pot, as long as they contribute to his being able to say "the target is destroyed."