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"...and in 1979 published a flawed but enormously informative book" ... what, did your copy have a bad binding? "Citation needed" is a bit weak of an excuse for what comes across as a -- to say the least, POV -- gibe. And it clashes on many levels (logically, aesthetically) with the subsequent "enormously informative".... Or maybe the thought is that the "big book" is flawed because it is just that: enormous? Anyway, the wording seems... oh, I don't know... flawed. - Michael ( talk| contrib) 11:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
This incident is reported in Neil Sheehan's "Bright Shining Lie" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kukec ( talk • contribs) 18:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Surely Halberstam's article should contain refrence to his story on Thích Quảng Ðức's self-immolation. Ka5hmir 09:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Are we sure this is correct? "He was a passenger in a car broadsided by another vehicle--ironically driven by a journalism school student--while making a left turn across opposing traffic..." Where is a source for the information that the driver of the car that hit him is a journalism student? In the linked articles, it says "The driver of the car carrying Halberstam is a student at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley..." and this " Acker would not release further details of the accident." Is this an error or is there a source?
---CNN ( http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/23/halberstam.death/index.html) agrees that the driver of the hit car was a graduate student, not the driver of the car that broadsides them. Newtman 04:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
"Cars turning left at the intersection onto Willow Road may proceed only when they have a green arrow." So either the car in which Halberstam was driving, or the car that hit him, appears to have run a red light. Which was it? Badagnani 00:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
So, what was the verdict? Or are they still studying it? The guy who was driving is still alive, isn't he? Badagnani 05:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The journalism student was the driver and was found to be at fault in early 2008. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 5 days in jail and 200 hours of community service. The article has been updated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.224.238 ( talk) 02:43, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Isn't saying someone is American the same as saying they are European? America is not a country and American is not a nationality, the term refers to two continents and three geograhic zones in the western hemisphere.----wsb05/21/2007
Nonsense! "American" is commonly (nationally and internationally) accepted as a term for a citizen of the United States. I am not bothering to look up a reference. LAM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.224.238 ( talk) 02:47, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Curious why someone inserted "criticism" of Halberstam's work by an author who is a known revisionist historian who can't even get a job in El Paso? Mark Moyar has published a book that tries to argue that Vietnam was a conflict that could have been won (debatable), denigrates the ingerity journalists who were actually there (Halberstam, Sheehan, etc), and defends Ngo Dinh Diem as a "wise and effective leader". This is really fringe stuff, and it's no wonder this guy can't get a job. If there is genuine criticism from credible sources, let's put it in. But not from some right wing hack who is going to be writing another revisionist tome about how great Iraq was 20 years from now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.21.29 ( talk • contribs) 03:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Moyer is not the only guy who thought that Halberstam's dispatches influenced Kennedy’s actions: In Vietnam, he gave generous coverage to the Buddhist protests against the Diem regime, and I think he saw the Buddhists as something like the southern blacks and Diem as something like the southern segregationists. Kennedy resented Halberstam's coverage, but it probably contributed to Kennedy's authorizing, or failing to prevent, the November 1963 coup in Vietnam, in which Diem and his brother were murdered. Michael Barone. David Kaiser also made a similar case about Halberstam's influence on state department officers Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman, and how it shaped Washinton’s attitudes on the coup. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 20:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Interesting that on the one hand, Halberstam supposedly influenced Kennedy's support for a coup, and on the other Kennedy asked the NYTimes to fire him? Don't get it. Kennedy wants to fire the guy, but is so impressed with his journalism that he turns around and order the CIA to support a coup? That's just ridiculous. The historical research overwhelmingly documents the Diem's horrible oppression of his own people, and Mr.Halberstam and his colleagues helped policy makers aware of the problems. But to suggest as Mr.Moyar does that "Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow inadvertently caused enormous damage to the American effort in South Vietnam—making them the most harmful journalists in American history." is just so downright misleading and hyperbolic, it's really hard to take this guy seriously. To add to that, the guy only has one peer reviewed article in the literature, had a hard time finding a job at a respectable institution, and both of his books were panned by real historians. This guy reminds me of those Discovery Institute "scholars" who try to publish stuff on Intelligent Design. They simply aren't taken seriously by their peers in the academic community. As for Michael Barone, he's another conservative! And for him to suggest that the work of these reporters led these politicians by the nose is poppy cock. President Kennedy had a very able and astute Ambassador in the form of Henry Cabot Lodge, who was able to see quite clearly that the Diem regime was nothing more than a corrupt class of elites with fascist impulses who were not interested in liberal democracy. And who is David Kaiser? I mean, you need to come up with some better stuff. Mark Moyar is not a serious historian. I'm sure there is legitimate criticism of Halberstam's work, but let's not use the discredited accounts of a revisionist historian with a right wing agenda.
The statement being made in the Wikipedia article is that Mark Moyar said this, not that any of it is actually true. Thus, the burden of proof has quite easily been met. If the article were itself to claim that Halberstam printed false information, the burden of proof would obviously be a lot higher. As to whether others agree with Moyar's view of Halberstam, two have been named on this discussion page alone - Michael Barone and David Kaiser. The Amazon.com review page for the book also lists positive reviews from over 30 other people, including Mackubin Thomas Owens, Max Boot and Jim Webb. It's doubtful that any of them (let alone all of them) fundamentally disagree with the claims about Halberstam presented in the book. Korny O'Near 15:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to criticism, or saying that he was influenced by Pham and his reporting influenced Kennedy's decision to go to war, which by itself doesn't even seem like criticism to me. The thing that set me off was the "one of the most dangerous journalists" thing, which just seems like immature name-calling. And, apart from that, saying that he was persuaded to write Pham's lies about Diem just doesn't seem to have the support from anyone other than Moyar -- and even if it did, the fact that Diem and his buddies were doing such bad things out in the open should be used to balance Moyar's opinion that it was all due to Pham's lies. What Diem was doing was bad enough without Pham to make it worse, and like Pham said way after the fact, he didn't risk lies because it would have endangered his cover. I wonder where Moyar gets the story in the first place; too bad he doesn't say in his article. ← Ben B4 13:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
There has been no substantial contribution to this Talk page since August 2007 (immediate above, now section 7.1), or 75 months ago! ( diff 2007-08-10 to 2013-11-01)
The page is not so long (or so active!) that it should be archived, afaik. Hereafter the history from 2013-11-01 will show whether anyone has inserted comment above. -- P64 ( talk) 18:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
My complex revision today is substantial only regarding the first part of its edit summary, the portion underlined here:
The second part of that refers to my insertion at the end of External links:
(There now 48 catalog records, a number that I did not specify as the third template parameter value.)
Regarding Pulitzer Prize(s) the official website shows DH a winner only "for International Reporting" in 1964, only a finalist for later books ( Search: halberstam). In today's edit I ignored the finalists, provided an official reference for the 1964 prize (multiple locations), re-arranged the specification of prize for International Reporting (multiple locations), and made this change in section Criticism:
Because DH himself, at least, was a PP winner only as war correspondent, not for subsequent work.
All the rest is insubstantial. Within references, date locations and formats are now consistent. I didn't make a decision about authorname format —firstlast or lastfirst— simply moved author names to the front (along with mdy publ dates).
-- P64 ( talk) 18:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
As it is currently presented, this article on David Halberstam is extremely unbalanced, and unfair to him with regard to the war in Vietnam. Here I'm concentrating on the Marguerite Higgins criticisms, but also see the discussions of Mark Moyar above in the talkpage section titled Criticism.
First, the Vietnam section of the article begins with these two sentences:
I have now added a citation needed tag to the second sentence, not because I dispute the assertion, but simply because it is presently uncited. My real objection is that in context it is extremely prejudicial, giving the impression that Halberstam relied primarily or even solely for his reporting on information fed by a secret North Vietnamese agent.
This impression is then reinforced in the Criticism section, where Marguerite Higgins
The unbalanced opinion? tag is mine. Marguerite Higgins was indeed a very famous and respected war correspondent from WWII and especially the Korean War, as well as in Vietnam; and I suspect her name may lend her opinion more credibility than those of the other two people cited for criticizing Halberstam, both of whom could be characterized as right-wing zealots. The giveaway for Higgins is in the opening: "... [she] was the staunchest pro-Diệm journalist in the Saigon press corps ...". Then: "She claimed they had ulterior motives, saying "reporters here would like to see us lose the war to prove they're right." I have no idea of Higgins' politics, but her very strong sense of American patriotism and rightness cannot be in doubt:
Then in 1950, shortly after being assigned to Tokyo as bureau chief, North Korea invaded the South, and
Patriotic, self-confident, with extensive experience of the horrors of aggression and war - and proud. Higgins must have felt disdain and even horror of these young men, inexperienced in war, who had the temerity to sit in their hotel rooms and undermine the American military efforts and morale. This is all perfectly understandable. Higgins may also have been jealous to some extent, accustomed to being THE leading voice in war reporting, and now overshadowed by upstart David Halberstam in the New York Times.
The WP article on Higgins goes on to say
Now 50 years later it's pretty hard to find good cites for what Halberstam actually did in Vietnam; the only one I've found so far is in the Academy of Achievement biography, which merely says he "found another story when he followed the troops into the field." I have no idea about either Sheehan or Arnett, but it has always been my understanding that Halberstam in fact spent considerable time traveling all around Vietnam, accompanying troops on missions, and interviewing anyone and everyone that he could, both American and Vietnamese, including peasant farmers and villagers. He did not just sit in his Saigon hotel room typing seditious lies fed to him by a North Vietnamese secret agent.
Halberstam was a generation younger than Higgins. He had no direct experience of WWII or Korea.* His mindset was certainly different from hers; his own experience was in covering the developing Civil Rights Movement in the South. He was never an anti-war activist, but unlike Higgins he had learned to question authority, and to see other sides of an issue. So it's only natural that what these two correspondents saw and heard, and integrated into their understanding of the war, was very different from each other's. This is not to say that one was right and the other wrong.
This is the problem with the article as it presently stands: Higgins makes accusations that are left entirely unanswered and unexplained. I've discussed Higgins at length here, because she is a deservedly well-respected war observer and correspondent - she isn't a fruitcake with a right-wing agenda. But as it stands at present, none of the criticisms in this section are responded to at all, leaving a badly unbalanced article. Milkunderwood ( talk) 08:01, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
I removed the following sentence fragment from the section: deriding them as "typewriter strategists" who were "seldom at the scenes of battle." The citation listed did not support the content. I tried google searching the phrases and came up with no original source. I also searched her book "Our Vietnam nightmare and again could find no trace of the quotes. If someone can provide the source then by all means add the material back in. ~ Alcmaeonid ( talk) 22:57, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
David Halberstam article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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"...and in 1979 published a flawed but enormously informative book" ... what, did your copy have a bad binding? "Citation needed" is a bit weak of an excuse for what comes across as a -- to say the least, POV -- gibe. And it clashes on many levels (logically, aesthetically) with the subsequent "enormously informative".... Or maybe the thought is that the "big book" is flawed because it is just that: enormous? Anyway, the wording seems... oh, I don't know... flawed. - Michael ( talk| contrib) 11:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
This incident is reported in Neil Sheehan's "Bright Shining Lie" — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kukec ( talk • contribs) 18:39, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Surely Halberstam's article should contain refrence to his story on Thích Quảng Ðức's self-immolation. Ka5hmir 09:41, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Are we sure this is correct? "He was a passenger in a car broadsided by another vehicle--ironically driven by a journalism school student--while making a left turn across opposing traffic..." Where is a source for the information that the driver of the car that hit him is a journalism student? In the linked articles, it says "The driver of the car carrying Halberstam is a student at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley..." and this " Acker would not release further details of the accident." Is this an error or is there a source?
---CNN ( http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/23/halberstam.death/index.html) agrees that the driver of the hit car was a graduate student, not the driver of the car that broadsides them. Newtman 04:01, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
"Cars turning left at the intersection onto Willow Road may proceed only when they have a green arrow." So either the car in which Halberstam was driving, or the car that hit him, appears to have run a red light. Which was it? Badagnani 00:07, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
So, what was the verdict? Or are they still studying it? The guy who was driving is still alive, isn't he? Badagnani 05:39, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
The journalism student was the driver and was found to be at fault in early 2008. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 5 days in jail and 200 hours of community service. The article has been updated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.224.238 ( talk) 02:43, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Isn't saying someone is American the same as saying they are European? America is not a country and American is not a nationality, the term refers to two continents and three geograhic zones in the western hemisphere.----wsb05/21/2007
Nonsense! "American" is commonly (nationally and internationally) accepted as a term for a citizen of the United States. I am not bothering to look up a reference. LAM — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.224.238 ( talk) 02:47, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
Curious why someone inserted "criticism" of Halberstam's work by an author who is a known revisionist historian who can't even get a job in El Paso? Mark Moyar has published a book that tries to argue that Vietnam was a conflict that could have been won (debatable), denigrates the ingerity journalists who were actually there (Halberstam, Sheehan, etc), and defends Ngo Dinh Diem as a "wise and effective leader". This is really fringe stuff, and it's no wonder this guy can't get a job. If there is genuine criticism from credible sources, let's put it in. But not from some right wing hack who is going to be writing another revisionist tome about how great Iraq was 20 years from now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.231.21.29 ( talk • contribs) 03:35, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
Moyer is not the only guy who thought that Halberstam's dispatches influenced Kennedy’s actions: In Vietnam, he gave generous coverage to the Buddhist protests against the Diem regime, and I think he saw the Buddhists as something like the southern blacks and Diem as something like the southern segregationists. Kennedy resented Halberstam's coverage, but it probably contributed to Kennedy's authorizing, or failing to prevent, the November 1963 coup in Vietnam, in which Diem and his brother were murdered. Michael Barone. David Kaiser also made a similar case about Halberstam's influence on state department officers Averell Harriman and Roger Hilsman, and how it shaped Washinton’s attitudes on the coup. Torturous Devastating Cudgel 20:48, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
Interesting that on the one hand, Halberstam supposedly influenced Kennedy's support for a coup, and on the other Kennedy asked the NYTimes to fire him? Don't get it. Kennedy wants to fire the guy, but is so impressed with his journalism that he turns around and order the CIA to support a coup? That's just ridiculous. The historical research overwhelmingly documents the Diem's horrible oppression of his own people, and Mr.Halberstam and his colleagues helped policy makers aware of the problems. But to suggest as Mr.Moyar does that "Halberstam, Sheehan, and Karnow inadvertently caused enormous damage to the American effort in South Vietnam—making them the most harmful journalists in American history." is just so downright misleading and hyperbolic, it's really hard to take this guy seriously. To add to that, the guy only has one peer reviewed article in the literature, had a hard time finding a job at a respectable institution, and both of his books were panned by real historians. This guy reminds me of those Discovery Institute "scholars" who try to publish stuff on Intelligent Design. They simply aren't taken seriously by their peers in the academic community. As for Michael Barone, he's another conservative! And for him to suggest that the work of these reporters led these politicians by the nose is poppy cock. President Kennedy had a very able and astute Ambassador in the form of Henry Cabot Lodge, who was able to see quite clearly that the Diem regime was nothing more than a corrupt class of elites with fascist impulses who were not interested in liberal democracy. And who is David Kaiser? I mean, you need to come up with some better stuff. Mark Moyar is not a serious historian. I'm sure there is legitimate criticism of Halberstam's work, but let's not use the discredited accounts of a revisionist historian with a right wing agenda.
The statement being made in the Wikipedia article is that Mark Moyar said this, not that any of it is actually true. Thus, the burden of proof has quite easily been met. If the article were itself to claim that Halberstam printed false information, the burden of proof would obviously be a lot higher. As to whether others agree with Moyar's view of Halberstam, two have been named on this discussion page alone - Michael Barone and David Kaiser. The Amazon.com review page for the book also lists positive reviews from over 30 other people, including Mackubin Thomas Owens, Max Boot and Jim Webb. It's doubtful that any of them (let alone all of them) fundamentally disagree with the claims about Halberstam presented in the book. Korny O'Near 15:57, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm not opposed to criticism, or saying that he was influenced by Pham and his reporting influenced Kennedy's decision to go to war, which by itself doesn't even seem like criticism to me. The thing that set me off was the "one of the most dangerous journalists" thing, which just seems like immature name-calling. And, apart from that, saying that he was persuaded to write Pham's lies about Diem just doesn't seem to have the support from anyone other than Moyar -- and even if it did, the fact that Diem and his buddies were doing such bad things out in the open should be used to balance Moyar's opinion that it was all due to Pham's lies. What Diem was doing was bad enough without Pham to make it worse, and like Pham said way after the fact, he didn't risk lies because it would have endangered his cover. I wonder where Moyar gets the story in the first place; too bad he doesn't say in his article. ← Ben B4 13:29, 9 August 2007 (UTC)
There has been no substantial contribution to this Talk page since August 2007 (immediate above, now section 7.1), or 75 months ago! ( diff 2007-08-10 to 2013-11-01)
The page is not so long (or so active!) that it should be archived, afaik. Hereafter the history from 2013-11-01 will show whether anyone has inserted comment above. -- P64 ( talk) 18:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
My complex revision today is substantial only regarding the first part of its edit summary, the portion underlined here:
The second part of that refers to my insertion at the end of External links:
(There now 48 catalog records, a number that I did not specify as the third template parameter value.)
Regarding Pulitzer Prize(s) the official website shows DH a winner only "for International Reporting" in 1964, only a finalist for later books ( Search: halberstam). In today's edit I ignored the finalists, provided an official reference for the 1964 prize (multiple locations), re-arranged the specification of prize for International Reporting (multiple locations), and made this change in section Criticism:
Because DH himself, at least, was a PP winner only as war correspondent, not for subsequent work.
All the rest is insubstantial. Within references, date locations and formats are now consistent. I didn't make a decision about authorname format —firstlast or lastfirst— simply moved author names to the front (along with mdy publ dates).
-- P64 ( talk) 18:35, 1 November 2013 (UTC)
As it is currently presented, this article on David Halberstam is extremely unbalanced, and unfair to him with regard to the war in Vietnam. Here I'm concentrating on the Marguerite Higgins criticisms, but also see the discussions of Mark Moyar above in the talkpage section titled Criticism.
First, the Vietnam section of the article begins with these two sentences:
I have now added a citation needed tag to the second sentence, not because I dispute the assertion, but simply because it is presently uncited. My real objection is that in context it is extremely prejudicial, giving the impression that Halberstam relied primarily or even solely for his reporting on information fed by a secret North Vietnamese agent.
This impression is then reinforced in the Criticism section, where Marguerite Higgins
The unbalanced opinion? tag is mine. Marguerite Higgins was indeed a very famous and respected war correspondent from WWII and especially the Korean War, as well as in Vietnam; and I suspect her name may lend her opinion more credibility than those of the other two people cited for criticizing Halberstam, both of whom could be characterized as right-wing zealots. The giveaway for Higgins is in the opening: "... [she] was the staunchest pro-Diệm journalist in the Saigon press corps ...". Then: "She claimed they had ulterior motives, saying "reporters here would like to see us lose the war to prove they're right." I have no idea of Higgins' politics, but her very strong sense of American patriotism and rightness cannot be in doubt:
Then in 1950, shortly after being assigned to Tokyo as bureau chief, North Korea invaded the South, and
Patriotic, self-confident, with extensive experience of the horrors of aggression and war - and proud. Higgins must have felt disdain and even horror of these young men, inexperienced in war, who had the temerity to sit in their hotel rooms and undermine the American military efforts and morale. This is all perfectly understandable. Higgins may also have been jealous to some extent, accustomed to being THE leading voice in war reporting, and now overshadowed by upstart David Halberstam in the New York Times.
The WP article on Higgins goes on to say
Now 50 years later it's pretty hard to find good cites for what Halberstam actually did in Vietnam; the only one I've found so far is in the Academy of Achievement biography, which merely says he "found another story when he followed the troops into the field." I have no idea about either Sheehan or Arnett, but it has always been my understanding that Halberstam in fact spent considerable time traveling all around Vietnam, accompanying troops on missions, and interviewing anyone and everyone that he could, both American and Vietnamese, including peasant farmers and villagers. He did not just sit in his Saigon hotel room typing seditious lies fed to him by a North Vietnamese secret agent.
Halberstam was a generation younger than Higgins. He had no direct experience of WWII or Korea.* His mindset was certainly different from hers; his own experience was in covering the developing Civil Rights Movement in the South. He was never an anti-war activist, but unlike Higgins he had learned to question authority, and to see other sides of an issue. So it's only natural that what these two correspondents saw and heard, and integrated into their understanding of the war, was very different from each other's. This is not to say that one was right and the other wrong.
This is the problem with the article as it presently stands: Higgins makes accusations that are left entirely unanswered and unexplained. I've discussed Higgins at length here, because she is a deservedly well-respected war observer and correspondent - she isn't a fruitcake with a right-wing agenda. But as it stands at present, none of the criticisms in this section are responded to at all, leaving a badly unbalanced article. Milkunderwood ( talk) 08:01, 26 February 2014 (UTC)
I removed the following sentence fragment from the section: deriding them as "typewriter strategists" who were "seldom at the scenes of battle." The citation listed did not support the content. I tried google searching the phrases and came up with no original source. I also searched her book "Our Vietnam nightmare and again could find no trace of the quotes. If someone can provide the source then by all means add the material back in. ~ Alcmaeonid ( talk) 22:57, 26 August 2015 (UTC)