Photo by Inna Spivakova (inna.spivakova [at] gmail.com)

The mainstream media’s failures in covering the run up to the Iraq war and much of George W. Bush’s presidency have created valuable opportunities for alt-weekly reportage, said Pulitzer-winning New Yorker staff writer Seymour Hersh, who spoke Friday afternoon at the convention’s annual First Amendment Lunch.

“In any market, the daily newspapers are going to be much less innovative,” he said to the roughly 150 conventioneers who’d scored tickets to the sold-out event. “You have a chance to really train and educate a lot of journalists. Your whole contingency is a venue for people who naturally care.”

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In what was ultimately a sober and unoptimistic assessment of the current state of the nation, Hersh, who famously broke the story of the My Lai massacre in 1969, stressed the importance of pursuing hard-hitting stories that the mainstream media sometimes ignores, an ideal for which many alt-weeklies strive. Hersh reported the My Lai story, about U.S. soldiers killing hundreds of Vietnamese civilians, as a freelancer, and most newspapers were reluctant to pick it up at first. But after it was syndicated, it became a fiery national report that helped fuel the American peace movement of the early 1970’s. He said he’s working on a fourth article about Iran, a current topic for which the mainstream media’s coverage has been criticized.

Hersh also railed against the Bush administration and the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he offered a somewhat surprising indictment of Barack Obama, whom he had previously supported.

“I normally would be optimistic about Obama, but he gave a speech that was a nightmare two days ago,” he said, referring to the presumptive Democratic nominee’s controversial speech on Wednesday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in which he pledged his support for Israel and asserted that Jerusalem must remain its “undivided” capital, thus angering many Palestinians. “It’s very depressing because I’ve been a big supporter.”

In the brief question and answer session that followed, Hersh was asked if he thought the war in Iraq was about oil and whether or not he found John McCain to be strange. But his most humorous response came when someone asked him what he thought about former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s new book admonishing the Bush Administration.

“McClellan pissed me off when he was press secretary because he was such a whore,” he said, to bursts of laughter. “So I don’t care about anything he says now.”

AAN First Amendment Chair and San Francisco Bay Guardian Executive Editor Tim Redmond introduced Hersh as “one of the most gracious high-profile journalists you’ll find in New York or Washington,” and as a friend to the alternative press.

“He’s an old-fashioned journalist. His phone number’s listed in the book, and if you call him up to say hello, he’ll talk to you,” Redmond said. “Ever try getting in touch Michael Moore? It’s like trying to get in touch with the Pentagon!”