“How America took out the Nord Stream pipeline”

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi... goes over how his more recent work verges on conspiracy theory.

That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story purportedly relied on two distinct sources, and yet his Nord Stream story purportedly relies on only a single anonymous source, should be a significant red flag here. I have no reason to doubt that Hersh heard the quotes in his Nord Stream story from at least someone in government, but that source's motivations and truthfulness were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting.

> were not independently verified even, by his own admission, by Hersh. And that's just... not credible reporting

since by his own admission, [what you said], that is credible reporting.

it might not be a credible source or story

No, credible reporting includes verifying what sources say. Hersh is transparent about not verifying, but he continues to present their statements as fact. That's not dishonest, but it's not a standard of reporting anyone should accept.

I have to disagree. The very first line in https://www.spj.org/ethicscode.asp is "verify information before releasing it." Disclosing that there is only one source is a first step, but an insufficient one. And the tone of the article, from the headline onward, reports not only that "a source said X" but presents "X" as factual. That's simply not a credible practice.

you're suggesting that the ethics code requires you to state how many sources you verified with, and the number Hersh reported is too small a number. (you're going to deny you suggested that, but just keep reading, there's a point here)

I suggest that the ethics code says don't report facts as facts that you haven't verified as facts, but if you say "I could not verified this and I heard it from one source" you are within the code. "Sources in the Administration" often report things to reporters, and most of what they say can't be verified, it can only be echoed by more than one person. And if a reporter has a relationship with one leaker who has been reliable, you're claiming they can't use that, and I'm claiming they can and do. Sure, verify what you can, but being an honest reporter is what is required, not certain fact patterns.

Yes, in a deep dive publication like the New Yorker, they will often kill certain facts or an entire story if it cannot be corroborated, but that doesn't define journalism.

Can you name a single news org or reporter who does not engage in that practice?

> That even that inconsistent Bin Laden story

Worth noting that both the White House and the New York Times walked back inconsistent claims they made in the days after bin Laden's death. So the White House and Times were self-admittedly inconsistent about it. If Hersh is inconsistent it is in that light.

Hersh pokes holes in different points of the official narrative. Particularly the idea no one high up in the Pakistani government knew bin Laden was in the compound. Contradicting the White House, but very convincing to me and others.

However, to be fair to you, Hersh goes into a great deal of detail about the initial intelligence, the raid etc. Was any part of that wrong or inconsistent? It's hard to know. He didn't just make a few statements but went into a lot of detail. So there could theoretically be inconsistencies in Hersh's reporting about it too, since he covered so much ground. It is hard to know though. You just take what the White House said, what Hersh says, what the Pakistani press says and try to figure out what actually happened.

The sun? The onion ?

Thanks for that angle. The desire to repeat ones brightest hour can certainly be a strong force and might lead even the most careful astray when a big scoop like Abu Graib makes all further successes seem trivial. I'm not suggesting that he personally made it up, but his desire to believe could be spectacularly strong, turning him into an instrument that is easy to play by people with an agenda.

But I'm biased as well, my desire to believe is strong, only that I'm in team "'t was an inside job" so my bias is in clear opposition of these claims (but in limited to speculation, I find "Russia jumped from excuse to excuse to keep the pipelines closed anyways, so the only immediate winners of the explosions were people in Moscow who felt threatened by some real or imagined "make money not war" faction" logically compelling, but that's all there is, I guess, strongly, but can't claim to know)

Did you see Zero Dark Thirty?

If so, do you trust it to be accurate?

It's not fair to compare anyone else to "the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered coverage of breaking national, international, and local news events ... maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires"

https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...

That's hairsplitting. If you report something that some anonymous guy said as fact, without being able to verify anything, it's not credible. To be credible, one needs to provide some, you know, credits. Some evidence of why it's true. With all love of everybody around to say "without evidence" on anything they disagree with, somehow when there's a case when somebody literally says something without any evidence, we're supposed to just take it as fact? No way.

Does Zero Dark Thirty claims to be a factual description of the events, or a work of fiction?

It is a dramatization of the hunt for OBL. It elides names, sources and methods for obvious reasons. The larger shape of the story aligns without how the administration and CIA claim the search and assassination of OBL played out. It is alleged that the CIA cooperated heavily with the filmmakers. This would make sense given the amount of torture apologia that is in the movie.

It is true, they have trillions of subscribers.

> the only immediate winners of the explosions were people in Moscow

Come on now. I get the desire for people to believe their own government could just never possibly engage in this kind of skullduggery (at least, not until they're comfortably removed from the incident in question by many decades and can safely file it under "well we don't do that kind of thing anymore"), but the idea that the Russians were the only ones with motive?!

Given the circumstances, which were Russia refusing to send meaningful amounts down those pipes anyways, yes. Next best candidate would be some rogue group refusing to accept that all their preparations were made pointless for the time being.

> It is alleged that the CIA cooperated heavily with the filmmakers.

I'm sure if they did, that was with the sole purpose of ensuring maximum factual accuracy, and no other purpose whatsoever.