By Chris Hedges / Substack
I have received hundreds of messages of support, including over 400 on Substack alone, since my show was canceled by The Real News.
More than 100 of you became paid subscribers.
I cannot answer you all individually, but each message, each new subscription, means I can go on.
I write and broadcast for you. I see myself in you. I refuse to dumb down anything to reach a wider audience. I do not try to be entertaining. I assume, like me, you love books and the world of ideas, the nuances and complexities that make up the human condition. I assume you care about the truth. I assume you seek to create a world that is just, a world where our primary concern is for the vulnerable and the oppressed, a world where exploitation, including of the planet and animals, is a sin. I assume you refuse to march to the cant of the crowd. I assume you are willing to sacrifice for what is right, even at the cost of your comfort and career.
Bless you all.
There is less and less space for dissent. The courageous students in our universities show us this. There is less and less room to write the truth. I have clashed with institutions before, most notably The New York Times, where I was pushed out for denouncing the invasion of Iraq, and Truthdig, where, after I organized a strike of all but two of the staff to protest the ousting of Truthdig editor Bob Scheer by the site’s wealthy publisher, the strikers were fired. This act of defiance meant a nearly 50 percent drop in my income.
The principal funder of The Real News, T.M. Scruggs, once demanded Bob Scheer delete from ScheerPost a column I wrote defending the writer Alice Walker from charges of antisemitism. When Bob refused, Scruggs said he would no longer support ScheerPost, of which he was a major donor. His animus towards me, also apparently driven by my critiques of the Democratic Party and support for third party candidates, did not go away once RT, where I hosted a show, was shut down, my six years of archives were disappeared from YouTube, and I arranged to move to The Real News.
Although Max Alvarez at The Real News insists that the reason for canceling the show was that it jeopardized his nonprofit status, I find it hard to believe that Scruggs’ hostility towards me did not play a significant factor in his decision. Scruggs, according to Alvarez, has made it clear that if The Real News does anything, in his eyes, that contributes to the election of Donald Trump, he will pull the funding. This is an inverted way of saying, support Joe Biden and the Democrats. That such a stance is anathema to journalism is obvious.
I did not endorse Dennis Kucinich in the last show I did on The Real News, but he is running for Congress in Ohio as an independent, and is critical of the two ruling parties. I did not violate guidelines for nonprofits. Nevertheless, the episode with Kucinich was removed from the site, and immediately afterwards my program was terminated.
The model of wealthy people and corporations owning and funding news organizations does not work. The wealthy patrons who own sites such as Salon or Truthdig, or control sites such as The Real News, or the corporations that own news outlets such as CNN and MSNBC, too often interfere in ways that cripple honest inquiry and reporting.
As A.J. Liebling said, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one.”
I am fortunate in having Substack, but most important, I am fortunate in the support of all of you. Without you, I could not do my work.
I will resurrect my show on an independent platform, although it will take a few weeks to set up.
You make all this possible. Thank you.
NOTE TO SCHEERPOST READERS FROM CHRIS HEDGES: There is now no way left for me to continue to write a weekly column for ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show without your help. The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Bob Scheer, who runs ScheerPost on a shoestring budget, and I will not waver in our commitment to independent and honest journalism, and we will never put ScheerPost behind a paywall, charge a subscription for it, sell your data or accept advertising. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.
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Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
He was a member of the team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for The New York Times coverage of global terrorism, and he received the 2002 Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism. Hedges, who holds a Master of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle and was a National Book Critics Circle finalist for his book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for the website ScheerPost. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University and the University of Toronto.