KU News Release

Reporter who exposed Abu Ghraib scandal to get William Allen White national citation

Seymour M. Hersh

LAWRENCE — Seymour M. Hersh, an internationally acclaimed journalist, will be honored at the University of Kansas as the 2008 recipient of the William Allen White Foundation’s national citation.

The ceremony is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. It is free and open to the public.

Hersh first wrote for the New Yorker in 1971 and has been a regular contributor to the magazine since 1993. His journalism and publishing awards include the Pulitzer Prize, five George Polk Awards, two National Magazine Awards and more than a dozen other prizes for investigative reporting.

In 2004, Hersh exposed the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in a series of pieces in the New Yorker. Early in 2005, he received the National Magazine Award for Public Interest, an Overseas Press Club award, the National Press Foundation’s W. M. Kiplinger Distinguished Contributions to Journalism award and his fifth Polk award, making him that award’s most honored laureate.

“Mr. Hersh is a legend in the field of journalism,” said Ann Brill, dean of KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication. “Presenting him with the William Allen White citation is a true honor for the school of journalism and the University of Kansas. His relentless pursuit of the truth is at the heart of investigative reporting and his work reminds us all of the critical importance of journalism.”

Hersh was born in 1937 in Chicago and graduated in 1958 from the University of Chicago. He began his newspaper career as a police reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago.

While serving in the U.S. Army, Hersh worked on the base newspaper in Fort Riley, Kan., in late 1962. He also worked as a public information officer and wrote speeches for the general. After serving in the military, he worked for a suburban newspaper and then for United Press International and the Associated Press until 1967, when he joined the presidential campaign of Eugene J. McCarthy as speechwriter and press secretary.

In 1969, he exposed the My Lai massacre and cover up during the Vietnam War. His work earned him the 1970 Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting. Hersh joined the New York Times in 1972, working in Washington and New York. He left the paper in 1979 and has been a freelance writer since, with two six-month stints on special assignment to the Times’ Washington bureau.

Hersh has published eight books, most recently “Chain of Command,” which was based on his reporting for the New Yorker on Abu Ghraib. His book prizes include the 1983 National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times award for biography and a second Sidney Hillman award for “The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.” Hersh also has won two Investigative Reporters and Editors prizes, one for “The Price of Power” in 1983, and the other for “The Samson Option,” a study of American foreign policy and the Israeli nuclear bomb program, in 1992. In 2004, Hersh won a National Magazine Award for public interest for his pieces “Lunch with the Chairman,” “Selective Intelligence” and “The Stovepipe.”

Hersh is married, has three children and lives in Washington, D.C.

The William Allen White Foundation trustees chose Hersh to receive the citation, presented annually since 1950. KU’s journalism school is named in White’s honor. White (1868-1944) was a nationally influential Kansas editor and publisher. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923 and posthumously in 1947.

Other notable recipients of the William Allen White citation have included James Reston, 1950; Walter Cronkite, 1969; Arthur O. Sulzberger, 1974; James J. Kilpatrick, 1979; Helen Thomas, 1986; Charles Kuralt, 1989; Bernard Shaw, 1994; Bob Woodward, 2000; Molly Ivins, 2001; Cokie Roberts, 2002; Gerald F. Seib, 2005; and Gordon Parks, 2006. A list of past recipients is available on the journalism school's Web site.

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