2005 Carey McWilliams Award

In honor of a major journalistic contribution to our understanding of politics.

Award Committee: Timothy E. Cook, Louisiana State University; Christine A. Kelly, William Paterson University; Steven L. Livingston, George Washington University, Chair

Recipient: Seymor M. Hersh, The New Yorker

Citation:  Seymor M. Hersh was born in Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago.  He began his career in journalism in 1959 as a police reporter for the City News Bureau. He later became a correspondent for United Press International.  In 1963, he became a Chicago and Washington, DC correspondent for the Associated Press.  Five years later, Hersh was hired as a reporter for The New York Times Washington Bureau where he served from 1972 to 1975 and again in 1979. 

In 1968, a division of American troops led by Lieut. William L. Calley Jr., entered the village of Son My (called My Lai 4 on the soldiers' maps) where they killed approximately 500 villagers, all of whom were unarmed, many of them women and children. The following year, Seymour Hersh, then a 32-year-old writer in Washington, received a tip that an army infantry officer was to be court-martialed for the murder of civilians in Vietnam.  He found Lieut. Calley held in a military prison in Georgia and convinced him to describe what happened in My Lai 4.  Although his story was rejected by several magazines, his account of My Lai eventually ran in thirty-six newspapers, including the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe and the London Times. 

In the past year, Hersh has written a number of pieces for The New Yorker detailing military and security matters surrounding the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent occupation.  In May 2004, Hersh published a series of articles describing and showing with photos the torture by US military police of prisoners in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. As with his reporting on My Lai, Mr. Hersh's reports of Abu Ghraib helped clarify the nature of war and the consequences of power abused by military authorities.

For his work, Mr. Hersh received the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting, the prestigious George Polk Award, and a host of other awards.  The American Political Science Association's McWilliam's Award contributes to the recognition Mr. Hersh so well deserves for his career as an investigative journalist.