{"id":43370,"date":"2013-06-19T12:17:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T11:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/michael-hastings-rolling-stone-contributor-dead-at-33\/43370\/"},"modified":"2013-06-19T12:17:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-19T11:17:22","slug":"michael-hastings-rolling-stone-contributor-dead-at-33","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/michael-hastings-rolling-stone-contributor-dead-at-33\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Hastings, \u2018Rolling Stone\u2019 Contributor, Dead at 33"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone<\/em> has learned. He was 33.<\/p>\n

Hastings\u2019 unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone<\/em>, \u201cThe Runaway General<\/a>,\u201d captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort in Afghanistan openly mocking his civilian commanders in the White House. The maelstrom sparked by its publication concluded with President Obama recalling McChrystal to Washington and the general resigning his post. \u201cThe conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be met by \u2014 set by a commanding general,\u201d Obama said, announcing McChrystal\u2019s departure. \u201cIt undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"michaelHastings\u2019 hallmark as reporter was his refusal to cozy up to power. While other embedded reporters were charmed by McChrystal\u2019s bad-boy bravado and might have excused his insubordination as a joke, Hastings was determined to expose the recklessness of a man leading what Hastings believed to be a reckless war. \u201cRunaway General\u201d was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, won the 2010 Polk award for magazine reporting<\/a>, and was the basis for Hastings\u2019 book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America\u2019s War in Afghanistan.<\/em><\/p>\n

Image: Courtesy of Blue Rider Press\/Penguin<\/span><\/p>\n

For Hastings, there was no romance to America\u2019s misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He had felt the horror of war first-hand: While covering the Iraq war for Newsweek<\/em> in early 2007, his then-fiance\u00c3\u00a9, an aide worker, was killed in a Baghdad car bombing. Hastings memorialized that relationship in his first book, I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story.<\/em><\/p>\n

A contributing editor to Rolling Stone<\/em>, Hastings leaves behind a remarkable legacy of reporting, including an expos\u00c3\u00a9 of America\u2019s drone war<\/a>, an exclusive interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange<\/a> at his hideout in the English countryside, an investigation into the Army\u2019s illicit use of \u201cpsychological operations\u201d<\/a> to influence sitting Senators and a profile of Taliban captive Bowe Bergdahl, \u201cAmerica\u2019s Last Prisoner of War.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cGreat reporters exude a certain kind of electricity,\u201d says Rolling Stone<\/em> managing editor Will Dana, \u201cthe sense that there are stories burning inside them, and that there\u2019s no higher calling or greater way to live life than to be always relentlessly trying to find and tell those stories. I\u2019m sad that I\u2019ll never get to publish all the great stories that he was going to write, and sad that he won\u2019t be stopping by my office for any more short visits which would stretch for two or three completely engrossing hours. He will be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hard-charging, unabashedly opinionated, Hastings was original and at times abrasive. He had little patience for flacks and spinmeisters and will be remembered for his enthusiastic breaches of the conventions of access journalism. In a memorable exchange<\/a> with Hillary Clinton aide Philippe Reines in the aftermath of the Benghazi attacks, Hastings\u2019 aggressive line of questioning angered Reines. \u201cWhy do you bother to ask questions you\u2019ve already decided you know the answers to?\u201d Reines asked. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you give answers that aren\u2019t bullshit for a change?\u201d Hastings replied.<\/p>\n

In addition to his work as a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, <\/em>Hastings also reported for BuzzFeed. He leaves behind his wife, the writer Elise Jordan.<\/p>\n

Matt Farwell is a veteran of the Afghanistan war who worked as a co-reporter with Hastings on some of his recent pieces. He sent this eulogy to Rolling Stone:<\/em> \u00a0\u201dMy friend Michael Hastings died last night in a car crash in Los Angeles. Writing this feels almost ghoulish: I still haven\u2019t processed the fact that he\u2019s gone. Today we all feel that loss: whether we\u2019re friends of Michael\u2019s, or family, or colleagues or readers, the world has gotten a bit smaller. As a journalist, he specialized in speaking truth to power and laying it all out there. He was irascible in his reporting and sometimes\/often\/always infuriating in his writing: he lit a bright lamp for those who wanted to follow his example.<\/p>\n

\u201cMichael was no stranger to trying to make sense this kind of tragedy nor was he unfamiliar the emptiness felt in the wake of a senseless, random death. After all, he\u2019d already learned about it the only way he ever deemed acceptable for a non hack: first-hand. In the course of his reporting he figured this lesson out again and again in Iraq, Afghanistan and in the United States, and part of his passion stemmed from a desire to make everyone else wake the fuck up and realize the value of the life we\u2019re living.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did: He always sought out the hard stories, pushed for the truth, let it all hang out on the page. Looking back on the past ten years is tough for anyone, but looking back on Michael\u2019s past ten years and you begin to understand how passionate and dedicated to this work he was, a passion that was only equaled by his dedication to his family and friends, and how much more he lived in thirty-three years than most people live in a lifetime. That\u2019s part of what makes this all so tough: exiting, he leaves us all with little more than questions and a blank sheet of paper. Maybe that\u2019s challenge to continue to use it to write the truth. I hope we can live up to that. He was a great friend and I will miss him terribly.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: Global Research<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33. Hastings\u2019 unvarnished 2010 profile of McChrystal in the pages of Rolling Stone, \u201cThe Runaway General,\u201d captured the then-supreme commander of the U.S.-led war effort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-43370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43370\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}