In an ideal world, a robust democracy is one in which the press is free and fearless. However, almost every government tries to control the media.
After the advent of social media, there is the crisis of fake news; and with troll farms in existence, trust in the press has eroded. The Netflix documentary, Cover-Up, directed by Academy Award-winner Laura Poitras and veteran filmmaker Mark Obenhaus, arrives as a call to arms. The film is a meticulous 117-minute investigative work that chronicles the sixty-year career of Seymour “Sy” Hersh—the man who, perhaps more than any other journalist in American history, has made it his mission to expose what the powers that be try to hide.
In the era before cellphones and the internet Hersh (and others of his generation) had to chase up leads in person, and type their copy on heavy manual typewriters. It required making cold calls, cultivating sources, taking copious notes and Hersh, who made a career out of getting people to divulge information, tells the directors that he doesn’t want to be psychoanalysed. “I barely trust you guys,” he says, with the same bluntness famously made Richard Nixon refer to him as a “son of a bi***h.” Yet, through Poitras’s patient probing a candid portrait emerges, of a man who refused to give up.
The film traces Hersh’s journey from a young reporter covering the police beat to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who broke the My Lai Massacre story in 1969. Through a dense thicket of archival footage and never-before-seen personal notes, Cover-Up illustrates how Hersh operated—mainly by mistrusting the official record, and peeling away the layers of obfuscation to get to the truth.
What makes Cover-Up more than just a biopic is how it uses Hersh’s career as a mirror to reflect the evils of American institutional violence and the impunity taken for granted by those in power in the government and the military.
He scooped the My Lai massacre, in which innocent Vietnamese people were shot dead—“even babies”—not by rogue soldiers, but by orders given by top brass; he reported on Operation Chaos—the CIA’s illegal domestic spying programme. He shamed the US by getting stomach-turning photos of prisoner abuse in Iraq. People spoke to him because they trusted that he would do the right thing.
The film does not shy away from the low points in Hersh’s career, when he was nearly fooled by forged letters, and put his credibility at stake. This kind of establishment-baiting journalism, obviously takes a personal toll on the man.
The appeal of Cover-Up, even for those not in the media, lies in its stark comparison between the golden age of investigative journalism and our current politically motivated media landscape. In his time, an expose in a major newspaper could trigger a Congressional hearing. There may have been threats made and bribes offered, but by and large, the media could function without fear.
“We’re a culture of enormous violence… and as importantly, a culture of denial,” says Hersh in the film. Maybe it’s time for a shake-up, if not a total rehaul of the system, so that democracy may function the way it is meant to.
Cover-Up
Directed by : Laura Poitras, Mark Obenhaus
On Netflix
