Neil Sheehan and David Halberstam: Truth Seekers

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Academy of Achievement

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4.6 • 943 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

These two brave reporters risked their lives and their reputations during the war in Vietnam, to reveal the truth to the American people about what was happening there. Both describe here - how and when they realized the United States government was lying about the causes and the scope of the war. And both eloquently explain their views on the role of the journalist as a witness and an adversary of government. Neil Sheehan, who died earlier this month, also talks about his role in exposing the Pentagon Papers in the pages of the New York Times. And he details why he was driven to spend over 13 years writing a definitive history of the war, called "A Bright Shining Lie," which won the Pulitzer Prize. Mr. Halberstam, who won the Pulitzer during the war, went on to write one of the other most important accounts of U.S. involvement in Vietnam: "The Best and the Brightest." (c ) American Academy of Achievement 2021

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi again, it's Alice, and this is journalist Neil Sheehan.
0:07.6	We have a unique law in this country
0:10.5	call the First Amendment of the Constitution.
0:13.0	I have always believed that that place is a duty on the American journalist
0:20.0	to seek out important truths and to get those truths to the public. Now what's
0:27.4	important varies according to the time but you've got to think of yourself as an and you're not an ally of government.
0:37.0	Journalists don't have any friends in government.
0:40.0	You're not a propagandist. You're not an advocate. You're a witness. And you've got to find out the truth of a given situation and then get that truth into print.
0:53.0	Neil Sheehan is the journalist who brought the Pentagon Papers to light.
0:57.0	The secret documents that revealed how three American presidents
1:01.0	had deeply deceived the public about the reasons and the scope of the Vietnam War.
1:07.0	She and died less than two weeks ago at the age of 84, so on this episode we honor his life and his work by bringing you this interview from the Academy of Achievement's archive
1:17.7	We've also got excerpts from an interview with one of his closest colleagues and friends in Vietnam, the iconic war correspondent and historian
1:26.4	David Halberstam.
1:28.4	These two extraordinary journalists wrote what are still considered the two signature books about the
1:34.4	Vietnam War, a bright shining lie by Mr Sheehan and the best and the brightest by
1:40.3	Mr Halberstam. Since we're releasing this episode on Martin Luther King Day, though, we'd like to begin with an
1:46.4	excerpt from Dr King's searing analytic speech that he called Beyond Vietnam. He delivered it in April of
1:54.6	1967 as the war was reaching a fever pitch.
1:58.8	It became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the
2:07.3	poor at home.
2:10.1	It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily
	...

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