Mark Hemingway: The assassination double standard

In March of last year, New Yorker journalist Seymour Hersh dropped a bombshell that a “covert executive assassination ring” had been run out of Vice President Cheney’s office.

Of course, Hersh has long had a “loose relationship with literal truth,” according to a 2005 article by Chris Suellentrop in New York Magazine. Columbia Journalism Review once offered this pointed critique of one of his books: “Hersh’s attributions generally fall short of normal journalistic yardsticks. More important, many of his conclusions are weakly substantiated by his research and highly questionable.”