COVER-UP (co-dir by Laura Poitras & Mark Obenhaus, w/ Seymour Hersh, Netlix, 115mns, USA)

COVER-UP, for this writer, is the first necessary movie of 2025. 

It's a documentary about, and with the participation in interviews of, investigative reporter Seymour Hersh who has broken stories from the 1968 Vietnam Mai Lai massacre to the 2000's Abu Grahib Iraq prison tortures. If the documentary is presenting its most recent footage correctly, it appears Hersh is currently working on stories about Israel's potential war crimes in Gaza.

Hersh is 88 years old.

Something happened to American cinema in the 1980's that accelerated in the 1990's and feels full blown in the 2020's-a retreat from dangerous topical work.

Of course there have been masterpieces. Of course there have been hard hitting movies. But our culture, as a whole, feels like it wants to celebrate past accomplishments without sticking its neck out in the present for potential progress.

We can see it in the behaviors of companies, universities, media. We can see it in the behaviors of ourselves. 

This documentary, directed by Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus, feels like its trying to make this very point. 

Hersh now-the dogged reporter as lion in winter

Hersh has doggedly, not always accurately, not always delicately, pursued stories of abuses of the system.

Certainly investigative reporters are still doing this but one wonders, or maybe more accurately, one hopes, there are young Seymour Hershes investigating dangerous stories now. Determined to bring them to light.

This doc is not perfect. It's heavy on admiration and light on critical distance from its subject. Hersh is a controversial figure who has reported on stories where he only had 1 source or ran with a story that may have needed more time, more research, more verification.

And its possible he's reported and published stories that were not true. Even the Seymour Hershes of the world can get caught on the wrong side of the octopus of facts. 

The movie touches on this but almost out of necessity. It could have used more critical pushback on Hersh if only to fortify the integrity of the piece as a whole.

But its portrait of the importance of investigative journalism, especially when the truths uncovered will be unpopular or resisted by the public, is essential.

Maybe that's a better way to say it, COVER-UP feels like the first essential movie of 2025.

We live in a time that feels like it wants to just give up the ghost and let everyone comfort themselves with their own facts. If only because such an approach pays better.

But the discomfort of facts is a cornerstone of democracy.

Hersh’s first big breakthrough reporting was uncovering the Mai-Lai massacre during the Vietnam War.

It's almost tragic to see a time when an antagonistic reporter like Seymour Hersh and an institutional gatekeeper like CIA director William Colby would gladly share a stage together in a debate in front of managing editors.

A debate that may have led partially to Colby's firing by President Gerald Ford.

This isn't to glorify a past that never existed-the press and government have always had it out for each other. But maybe to highlight a still present (if tenuous) truth we're in danger of losing.

Seymour Hersh, for all his myriad idiosynchrisies and flaws, believes in the country enough to take it to task for its abuses. 

And that means he stuck his neck out and risked a lot.

Are we so risk averse and scared a culture that we don't dare do the same?

And if we don't do this, will we still have a functioning democracy?

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club