Voting Station

David Halberstam

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Commentator

The Resume

    (April 10, 1934-April 23, 2007)
    Born in The Bronx, New York
    Reporter for the New York Times (1960-67)
    Wrote the books 'The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam During the Kennedy Era' (1965), 'The Best and the Brightest' (1972), 'The Powers That Be' (1979), ''Summer of '49: the Yankees and the Red Sox in Post-War America' (1989), 'The Fifties' (1993), 'Playing for Keeps: Michael Jordan and the World He Made' (1999), 'War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton and the Generals' (2001), 'Firehouse' (2002), and 'The Coldest War: America and the Korean War' (2007)

Why he might be annoying:

    As editor of the Harvard Crimson, he set up a competition between columnists to see who could offend the most readers.
    He had a running feud with the older and more conservative reporters in Vietnam. (For example, Marguerite Higgins said about him and Neil Sheehan, 'These reporters want America to lose so they can be right.')
    One of his frequent sources for information in Vietnam, 'Life' reporter Pham Xuan An, was also secretly a spy for the Viet Cong.
    At an embassy dinner, when a toast was offered to General Harkins, the commander of the American advisory force, Halberstam shouted, 'Paul D. Harkins should be court martialed and shot!'

Why he might not be annoying:

    John Lewis said that when Halberstam was a journalist for 'The Tennessean,' he was the only local reporter who would cover the sit-ins protesting segregation in Nashville.
    He chased off a group of South Vietnamese police who were beating reporter Peter Arnett when they were covering Buddhist protests against the Diem regime (1963).
    He said about attempts by American authorities to prevent reporting on battle losses by the South Vietnamese army, 'You can bet the Viet Cong knew what was happening. You can bet Hanoi knew what was happening. Only American reporters and American readers were kept ignorant.'
    He won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his coverage of the Vietnam War (1964).
    He died on the way to interview Y.A. Tittle (for a book in progress about the 1958 NFC Championship Game between the Giants and Colts) when the journalism student serving as his driver made an illegal turn into oncoming traffic.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 7 Votes: 14.29% Annoying