Journalist Seymour Hersh knew of but didn't report on the domestic abuse at the time - a fact he later regretted.

Famed journalist Seymour Hersh recounted in his memoir the time he learned former President Richard Nixon had beaten his wife so badly that she had to be hospitalized.

Hersh didn't report on the incident at the time -- a fact he later regretted.

In 1974, he writes, Hersh heard that Nixon’s wife Pat was in hospital after being punched by her husband. It was not an isolated occasion. He did not report on the story, he told Nieman Foundation fellows in 1998, because it represented “a merging of private life and public life.” Nixon didn’t make policy decisions because of his bad marriage, went the argument. Hersh was “taken aback” by the response from women fellows, who pointed out that he had heard of a crime and not reported it. “All I could say,” Hersh writes, “is that at the time I did not—in my ignorance—view the incident as a crime.”

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