Seymour Hersh's career deserves to be celebrated. Here is a journalist who exposed the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, the secret US bombing of Cambodia, CIA's Operation CHAOS, the Watergate Scandal, and the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib during the US war on terror. When we meet him in Cover-Up, a documentary directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, he is sometimes seen speaking with a source about the Gaza situation. Hersh, in other words, is still active, still hungry for good investigative journalism. He is in his late 80s, but his spirit remains young. There is a sharp, authoritative tone in his voice, one that seems to have developed over years of working on stories that demanded urgent attention. This confidence contrasts sharply with his early naivety: as a young man, he was so inexperienced that when his girlfriend told him her father had said, "The President is an asshole," he was completely baffled. That 19 or 20-year-old Hersh didn't know one could speak in that way about the President.
Hersh always knew he was a good writer. But it was only at a junior college, when he wrote an assignment where the students were required to compare any British novel with any American novel, that he was "discovered" by his teacher. Hersh, then, was sent to the University of Chicago, and suddenly his horizons broadened. Books had already taught him how to think; now, after briefly working as a copyboy at the City News Bureau of Chicago, he was promoted to be a crime reporter. When Hersh talks about his early days and how he got into journalism, it feels as if he was, from the beginning, meant to have this career. Some people are so talented that things seem to align in ways that help them reach their destination. And given how assertive and abrasive Hersh is, he seems well-suited to his job. When asked why his father chose him to run the store rather than sending him to college (his brother was encouraged to pursue higher education), Hersh says he was considered the best man for the job because of his pizzazz. He just knew how to talk to people.
That quality, I assume, must have certainly helped him gain his sources' confidence. On top of that, Hersh was the kind of journalist who pressed for the truth to come out in the open. No wonder he is revered by some and criticized by others. Hersh himself has no problem acknowledging his shortcomings, his flaws. He is aware of his own limitations. Poitras and Obenhaus, overall, do a fine job of providing us with a complete picture of this person. If I have a complaint, it's related to their filmmaking style, which is utterly conventional. It mostly feels as if the filmmakers stitched together archival footage and recorded Hersh's voice in a studio to play it in the background. This severely undercuts the documentary's power, making the whole project appear safe, neutered, and digestible. The voice Poitras and Obenhaus use to tell this story doesn't match the voice of their subject. Cover-Up, as a result, is merely serviceable, leaving you wishing for a documentary with the originality, daring, and passion of a journalist for whom risk-taking was second nature.
Final Score- [5.5/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times
Release Date: December 26, 2025, on Netflix.