It was a shock to discover yesterday that journalist Michael Hastings, age 33, the person who exposed General Stanley McChrystal’s open criticism of President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, forcing his retirement from the military, had been killed in an horrific auto accident in Los Angeles.
A journalist for Rolling Stone and Buzz Feed, Hastings had reported from Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a man of courage and convictions, and the author of two books on public affairs. It is ironic that he avoided harm in both wars, and was killed in Los Angeles by a traffic accident.
Hastings represented the best in journalism, true muckraking, exposing people in power for their short comings. The potential of his future contributions is impossible to measure! This death really has shaken the journalism community, and the author as well!
I am stunned and am sorry about this. I give sympathies to those who loved him: family, friends, and colleagues who sincerely appreciated him. Michael Hastings was actually a journalist, unlike many of the famed who are Washington establishment, suckups to power, and were insulting (in part due to jealousy) over his 2010 report on former Gen. Stanley McChrystal. What has happened to journalism in America looks all the more hopeless. Mr. Hastings’s death, at age 33, is one more negative sign.