The Listening Post

Seymour Hersh: Challenging the Bin Laden story

What the coverage of the Bin Laden story reveals about journalism in the US; plus, Cuba’s changing media scene.

Since the story of the killing of Osama bin Laden broke four years ago, there have been varying accounts of exactly what happened, but journalists – and also Hollywood directors – have, on the whole, accepted the narrative presented by the Obama administration.

But four years on, one of America’s best known investigative journalists, Seymour Hersh, has published a report challenging Washington’s version of the story. Hersh’s investigations led him to conclude that it was not the CIA that traced Bin Laden to his compound in Abbottabad, but an officer in the Pakistani intelligence service who gave him up. According to Hersh, the Pakistan government had been keeping the al-Qaeda leader prisoner for five years.

The response has been telling. Instead of using Hersh’s account as an opportunity to revisit the official story, much of the US media turned its attention to Hersh himself and his methods. Does Sy Hersh deserve the scrutiny he has received? Or is this another case of journalists too close to power to question its narrative?

Helping us answer these questions are: Cora Currier, a journalist from The Intercept; Patrick L. Smith, from Salon; Philip Ewing, from Politico; and the author Imtiaz Gul.

Other media stories on our radar this week: The sole surviving cartoonist at Charlie Hebdo has called time on the magazine; Azerbaijan extends the detention of a leading investigative journalist; and a BBC crew are detained while reporting in Qatar.

Cuba: Media in transition

Latin America is one of the regions to which we pay close attention. However, Cuba has long been a difficult country to cover. Ever since the 1959 revolution that overthrew a US-backed dictatorship, obtaining foreign press accreditation has been notoriously difficult.

But a recent diplomatic thaw seems to have put relations between the two countries on a path to recovery. What does this all mean for the Cuban media landscape?

The Listening Post‘s Marcela Pizarro travelled to Havana to find out.

Lastly, the New York-based Youtube channel ‘Barely Political’ has teamed up with comedian Todd Womack to write a rap about fixating on our phones while the world goes on around us. So, if you are watching this on your phone, look up. Our online video of the week.