This journalist uncovered America’s greatest abuses. Could he do the same today?
A new documentary, ‘Cover-Up,’ shares the inside story of Seymour Hersh’s scoops
Pulitzer-winning journalist Seymour Hersh is the subject of Laura Poitras’ Cover-Up. Photo by Brad Barket/Getty Images
By Olivia Haynie September 4, 2025
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When documentarian Laura Poitras first asked to make a documentary about Seymour Hersh in 2005, the celebrated muckraking journalist said no. But 20 years later, after more of his anonymous sources had passed away, he discussed his life and career with Poitras, known for the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour.
Cover-Up, co-directed by Poitras and Mark Obenhaus — who previously worked with Hersh on the investigative documentary Buying the Bomb — debuted at the Venice International Film Festival this week. It dives into the stories behind some of Hersh’s most notable scoops: the cover-up of the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, the hush money provided to the Watergate burglars, and the torture at Abu Ghraib.
Primarily relying on interviews with Hersh, as well as archival broadcast and interview footage, the film underscores how journalism can hold governments accountable. For Hersh, a journalist’s commitment to uncovering the truth supersedes the law and even national security — a mantra also seen in Poitras’ Snowden documentary.
That position wasn’t always appreciated. We hear the blowback in one frustrated, anonymous phone call to Hersh — he received many — characterizing his reporting on the Iraq War as anti-American fuel for terrorists. Another caller into one of Hersh’s C-SPAN interviews accuses the journalist of being a communist and suggests he be shipped off to Havana.
The retrospective of Hersh’s career in Cover-Up feels particularly pertinent in a moment when concerns about protected independent journalism are on the rise. President Donald Trump’s push to delegitimize legacy media — in addition to his administration’s cuts to public broadcast budgets and lawsuits against outlets it believes cover it unfavorably — have made a hostile environment for the kind of news Hersh was famed for breaking. Internationally, with Israel’s refusal to let foreign journalists into Gaza independently, the press has felt stifled.
Some of the footage in Cover-Up feels like it belongs to the modern day. In one clip, Nixon’s Attorney General John N. Mitchell accuses The New York Times of never publishing a single true story, a line oft-echoed by Trump.
The film’s discussion about the centrality of photographic proof to Hersh’s stories also calls to mind current debates over photos of starving children in Gaza. When the news about My Lai was first reported, few in the public wanted to believe such an atrocity was possible. But as more soldiers came forward and the visual evidence mounted, the atrocities were undeniable. Similarly, Hersh argues the photographic evidence was the only reason his reports on Abu Ghraib were taken seriously.
Photographs of starving children in Gaza have become crucial evidence for those accusing the Israeli government of committing a genocide in the region. But some have charged, without citing evidence, that the images don’t come from Gaza; pointed to preexisting conditions in some of those photographed; or claimed the photographs are being faked altogether. Unlike when Hersh was reporting on My Lai and Abu Ghraib, the current prominence of AI adds another layer of suspicion in a climate already distrustful of the media.
Later, the film explicitly touches on Gaza when Hersh gets a call from a source there. Still reporting on his Substack, Hersh has been writing about the ongoing war. The source asks to only be identified “as a researcher” and shares images that allegedly show Israeli military plans to target civilian areas for attack.
Hersh describes the weight of witnessing history, telling Poitras that every day of reporting on the massacres in Vietnam “was another 30 years of life on my shoulders.” This will resonate for many journalists, but even audience members outside of the news world will feel the burden.
The nearly two-hour-long film almost has a hopeless feeling to it. It starts with mass murder and rape in Vietnam at the hands of trusted officials, and ends with widespread torture and sexual assault in Abu Ghraib. Despite the power of Hersh’s reporting and the justice it brought — although some would argue not enough — corruption never ceases.
At the end of the movie, Poitras asks how, nearly 70 years into his career, Hersh can stand to keep writing about such atrocities? His answer is simple: “You can’t have a country that does it and looks the other way.”
The New York Film Festival will screen Cover-Up on Wednesday, Oct. 8 at 6 p.m. and Friday, Oct. 10, at 9:15 p.m.
