Speech in Times of War: the Israel’s Assault on Gaza
Guest: Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported from more than 50 countries. He spent 15 years at The New York Times as a foreign correspondent and bureau chief and is the author of several books, including his latest The Greatest Evil Is War. He has taught at Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, The University of Toronto, and in the New Jersey prison system. He is the host of the show The Chris Hedges Report.
Statements Below from Maximilian Alvarez, Editor in Chief of the Real News Network and Chris Hedges, host of The Chris Hedges Report
Statement from Maximilian Alvarez, Editor in Chief of the Real News:
I can’t speak to Chris’s reasons for doing so, or to the motivations of any outlet that accepted his version of events without bothering to ask me/TRNN about it, but in his public statements he is grossly misrepresenting the situation and our last conversation. Contrary to his original statement on Thursday, I never said, implied, or indicated in our final conversation that TRNN couldn’t continue being a production and copublishing partner of The Chris Hedges Report because I had some issue with Chris’s reporting on Gaza, Israel, Julian Assange, etc. That is completely false, and I’m glad to see that anyone who knows anything about me, TRNN, our team, and our reporting knows that we have covered these issues from a critical perspective long before Chris, and we will continue to do so. It’s unfortunate to see that Chris apparently cared so little about the rest of our team and the work we’ve been doing that he could convince himself that he was somehow the only person at TRNN covering these stories, which he was demonstrably not, and that we’re somehow moving away from that coverage, which we are not.
What actually happened and what I actually said is all there in the statement I put out on Friday: https://therealnews.
As anyone who listens to Chris’s speeches and interviews knows, and as he has told me numerous times, he feels he has a moral duty to say what’s in his heart about Biden, Trump, the 2024 election, and how people should vote. And that is the one etched-in-stone rule for nonprofits, and the consequences of violating it pose severe, even mortal, risks to an organization like ours. And TRNN’s own longstanding editorial code of ethics prohibits us from campaigning, lobbying, or advocating for/against candidates for elected office in their professional capacity representing TRNN, or while using TRNN’s resources. Chris knows that. Our whole team knows that.
I made the same commitment to Chris a long time ago that I’ve made to all our journalists: I won’t censor them and their journalism. And I understand that he feels a moral obligation to address how he’s voting and/or how others should vote if and when the topic comes up, especially as the election gets closer. Even though Chris and I were trying to keep that separate from the show itself and his coverage for as long as possible, we acknowledged that the topic is going to inevitably come up in relationship to virtually any news story he covers and he’s gonna need to be free to say what’s in his heart. So I freed him to do that and offered to help him find a more suitable outlet to help him produce and copublish the show. Chris needs to be free from the constraints of a nonprofit to say what he needs to say throughout the election season and beyond. That’s what I told him, that’s what I reiterated in the statement. That’s it, plain and simple. Everything else is either rumor and speculation.
Lastly, as I made clear in the statement; I never “fired” Chris because he was never an employee (all his money comes from Substack and will continue to); I never “canceled” the show because it was never a TRNN-only show to cancel (that’s why all episodes are freely available on his Substack and the show will continue without us); and I never “censored” him (in fact, I released the show back to him so he wouldn’t feel like he had to censor what he wanted to say because the show would be copublished on a nonprofit news platform).
Statement from Chris Hedges, author and host of The Chris Hedges Report:
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.
Photo credit: Wikimedia
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