Henwood vs. Cockburn

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Nov 11 07:48:07 PST 1999


Carl Remick wrote:


>Frankly, Cockburn's self-congratulatory postures as a hairy-chested
>journalist were bewildering in his reply to you. You'd think he was
>Hemingway joining in the liberation of Paris, or something. Maybe
>I've been missing his best stuff, but lately Cockburn's reporting
>from the field seems to have focused mainly on the perils of
>cannabis cultivation. That's surely a risky business with all those
>thuggish paramilitary antidrug forces around, but as a reportorial
>beat it's scarcely on a par with confronting death squads in U.S.
>client states around the world.

The measure of authenticity isn't what you do or think, it's where you live apparently. As for his research techniques, his own remarks at a memorial for Andrew Kopkind tell it better than I could (and this is from memory): "Andy was a real journalist. He'd talk to people, ask them questions, write down their answers." The clear implication being, of course, that that's a practice foreign to AC.

Doug



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