The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning former New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson on the collapse of journalism, the digital sewer and the new dark age.
The Chris Hedges Report with Pulitzer-prize winning former New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson on the collapse of journalism, the digital sewer and the new dark age.
The media landscape in the U.S. is collapsing as journalism outlets at the national, state and local levels close or gut staff. One-third of the country’s newspapers have shut down and two-thirds of its newspaper journalists have lost jobs since 2005. An average of 2.5 newspapers closed each week in 2023, compared to two a week in 2022. The decimation of local news outlets is even worse, where papers are closing and layoffs have been nearly constant. In the last two decades nearly 3,000 of the country’s 9,000 newspapers have closed and 43,000 newspaper journalists have lost their jobs.
“But as they disappear, so does the core of journalism, reporting, especially investigative reporting.”
Independent journalists, like Greenwald, Taibbi, and Shellenberger are thriving, and still speaking truth to power, despite the efforts of the security state to censor them. The old platforms are dying as the population realizes legacy media has been lying to them for decades. Who wants to pay to be brainwashed by the Intelligence Community?
I wanted to be a journalist when I was 22, and Ivy grad, in 1984. Now I can only say good riddance when mainstream media cuts jobs and even closes. If only the New York TImes would close. After 2016 the liberal media made their sole and exclusive mission to be anti-Trump - and to disparage Trump voters. They were cheerleaders for the Ukraine War, and now are apologists for the war in Gaza. They called the lab leak theory a racist conspiracy theory. They didnt blink an eye when the 98% effective covid vaccine ( NY Times headline) turned out to not prevent infection or transmission of covid..They barely report on Assange or Snowden.
The conservative media allowed itself a little more curiosity about certain subjects, but Fox fired Tucker Carlson, their most popular host for heretical views. The WSJ asked a few tiny questions about covid policies, and a few legitimate questions about climate change policies, but fell in line with the neo cons when it came to foreign policy.
The list of the failures and betrayals by the MSM goes on....
I am not a radical but I say, tear this house down, blow this system up, and build something new.
Keep building alternate systems & watch the old empire crumble no demolition required; Congress leads that. Every dollar is a vote flee the big FED banks for Credit Unions, boycott Amazon, Google, Starbucks et al and shop local for as much as possible. :~)
Jenny, Do yourself and everyone else a favor: Cancel any subscription you have to WAPO. You're only contributing to the control of the oligarchical class. I used to take that paper... like 25 yrs ago. It was going in the shitter then---so I cancelled. I can only imagine the garbage and predictive programming they peddle now. If you're worried about having nowhere to spend your money, then just send more to Chris.
You won't find it there. Pull the plug. If you found this site, then you have the means to find 'the news'. That usually means pulling from many different (and usually free) sources. IMO, thats the way of the world right now...and probably a good thing--despite what Hedges and his guest think. You shouldn't have to have your information spoon fed to you from a single source...you actually have to work to find truth from a variety of sources. Most are too lazy to do that. Be the exception.
trust is the most essential ingredient when it comes to the press. You do not have to be right all the time, but acknowledging the need for correction speaks volumes. Using CIA and FBI agents who historically lie and deceive says it all.
Do a Google search for the primary shareholders of the four big media companies that own 80% of all the media in the country. Do the same for big tech.
What comes up is Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street. Together these three multi-trillion dollar Wall Street firms that manage the assets of the globalist billionaires have controlling interest in almost every wire, channel and frequency that pumps information into the heads of the population.
After your COVID big-pharma money making orgy, make pre-bets on green sustainable energy alternatives and synthetic meat, and then pump the propaganda machine to push the climate crisis mythology, and pay off puppet politicians like Joe Biden to do your policy bidding... thus forcing tectonic market changes that help those bets pay off. No matter that China benefits and the US working class gets shafted again... as long as the investment markets keep throwing off returns all is well in the one-percenter land of managerial and administrative elites!
The corporate media has just become a propaganda machine for the globalist establishment. Journalistic principles are not even considered. There is no more professional journalism role. The analogy is like one respected attorneys becoming a bunch of ambulance-chasing injury claim pimps.
The fix will require a revisit of anti-trust rules to include calculating cross ownership. Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street all own shares of each other, and when together they own 25% of a corporation, they in fact are a singular power over that corporation.
We also need to stop allowing so much corporate consolidation. Small independent media has been destroyed by the competitive practices of the bigs while the bigs destroy the very market that independents used to thrive in.
Capitalism as designed is a social system as much as an economic system. The way forward is more Jefferson and less Hamilton... more support for small and independent and fewer massive Wall Street powered mega corporations that collude with politicians to make a mess out of everything.
If you acknowledge that mainstream, corporate, and establishment media is mostly propaganda, why is this a bad thing? Real journalism has been mostly dead for decades, and I'd rather live in an uninformed world than a misinformed one. Real news -- people who tell the truth to the best of their ability, know what they're talking about, and get interviews with experts in the relevant fields and get inside information -- are mainly found on podcasts now. Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and Matt Taibbi are some examples of real journalists, none of whom are in mainstream media. That's who I'd be concerned about losing, not these corporate scum who do far more harm than good by their mere existence.
I thought the most telling comment by Morgenson was when she surmised that we were headed back to the dark ages and she was waiting for "someone" to come along and shine a light....etc. What a fool. This indicates the same problem with our politics. Many are waiting for the "right" politician, or the "honest" politician, or the "just" politician to come along and save them (or enlighten them), just like some wait for Jesus to be resurrected from the dead and save them from all their earthly sins. Sorry folks. That person is never coming. All you're doing is what you're government has programmed you to do; that is "wait and see". That's all I hear these days "We'll see". Really? Meanwhile, those oligarchs and their government lackeys (the 1% 'rs) who own everything (including those papers Hedges and Morgenson reminisce about) are driving their trucks to the bank every Friday and depositing large amounts of your debt spending tax dollars into their bank accounts while you stand sentinel for the next messiah. Wake up and take action before its too late. Taking the "wait and see" approach rarely works in your favor. Just as any survival guide will tell you; the proactive approach is the life saving approach. The "wait and see" approach usually results in rigor mortis.
Yes, hyper individualism has created heroes and villains, binary thinking and the search for a strong man. The Lone Ranger. This is a cultural sickness that US capitalism suffers from. And the elites know it and use it for their own self interests.
the problem is not just the loss of syndicated news, the problem also is the polity. There is little critical thinking skills, few people have the patience to read, phones have monopolized life and we are living in a Digital Dark Ages.
The newspapers, etc. have been paid to lie ever since T. Jefferson paid James Callendar to smear John Adams. Additionally, if the Founding Fathers had wanted the newspapers to be the “Watchdogs of democracy” they should have figured out a better business model, instead of making them beholden to sensitive advertisers.
Journalism has always been marginal and in service to wealth. We don’t end up with marginalized group’s poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, climate change, lesser of two evils leading to unspeakable acts against humanity, possibility of nuclear war, etc. because journalists were doing their job. If anything journalism has improved as reporters like Hedges etc are much easier to find and follow without sifting through the infotainment garbage of legacy media.
Chris - the woman had the Wall Street beat - and claims to be an investigative journalist - during the 1980's, the takeoff of Wall Street crime (greed is good and Reagan deregulation) and during the 2007-08 collapse and bailout, yet she says she never had a story spiked and was never told what not to write? Are you kidding me?
I've cancelled my local subscriptions because they are in the pocket of the Defense Dept. (I live in New Mexico). But there are many peace groups around that take up the slack...and they use the internet a lot. Nationally there's Nader, Cook, Taibbi, Hedges (you), Fang, etc. I watch MSNBC, CNN, FOX sometimes for laughs, and sometimes they say something interesting. They're "likable". I pay the cable company, but not much.
It's very hard to keep secrets these days, it's just main stream journalism has been co-opted, and bought out. The small guys out there spread the light.
She lays out at the 40-minute mark, very clearly and concisely, what the stakes are for the great majority of citizens in having-- or not having -- reporters closely and honestly covering our government's key departments.
Thank you Chris. Reporting we can use in our personal lives. One thing I have noticed about reporting in the u.s. and many global news sources. The use the same words when a major event happens, like the Genocide Joe Top Secret Doc. investigation. Every major news report was nearly word for word as though the White House wrote the articles and scripts. I was a Democan't since voting for Jimmy Carter(East Timor : (
however the Russiagate propaganda broke my routine with every major media puppeting the same message. I haven't read the NYT, Wash Post, MSBS, CNN etc. since. I am now better informed with facts. Your reporting, I seldom fact check, I don't have time to read and do the work ha. Why I contribute to Chris's work along with other news sources, GrayZone, Aaron Mate, Katie Halper, Caitlin Johnstone, etc. If you can please support Chris's work and it is work : )
An excellent, informative discussion of how journalism has changed to become diminished and unable to fully and accurately report what is happening on the local, national and international level. What is happening in journalism is just a reflection of what is happening in many areas of our capitalist society where the corporations and the very wealthy control more and more of what is happening!
“But as they disappear, so does the core of journalism, reporting, especially investigative reporting.”
Independent journalists, like Greenwald, Taibbi, and Shellenberger are thriving, and still speaking truth to power, despite the efforts of the security state to censor them. The old platforms are dying as the population realizes legacy media has been lying to them for decades. Who wants to pay to be brainwashed by the Intelligence Community?
Totally agree. No one in MSM has done investigative work that compares to the three you mention, not in the last three decades.
They are anomalies and in the case of Greenwald very, very questionable.
I wanted to be a journalist when I was 22, and Ivy grad, in 1984. Now I can only say good riddance when mainstream media cuts jobs and even closes. If only the New York TImes would close. After 2016 the liberal media made their sole and exclusive mission to be anti-Trump - and to disparage Trump voters. They were cheerleaders for the Ukraine War, and now are apologists for the war in Gaza. They called the lab leak theory a racist conspiracy theory. They didnt blink an eye when the 98% effective covid vaccine ( NY Times headline) turned out to not prevent infection or transmission of covid..They barely report on Assange or Snowden.
The conservative media allowed itself a little more curiosity about certain subjects, but Fox fired Tucker Carlson, their most popular host for heretical views. The WSJ asked a few tiny questions about covid policies, and a few legitimate questions about climate change policies, but fell in line with the neo cons when it came to foreign policy.
The list of the failures and betrayals by the MSM goes on....
I am not a radical but I say, tear this house down, blow this system up, and build something new.
Keep building alternate systems & watch the old empire crumble no demolition required; Congress leads that. Every dollar is a vote flee the big FED banks for Credit Unions, boycott Amazon, Google, Starbucks et al and shop local for as much as possible. :~)
Exactamundo!!
I am still on WAPO (Washington Post) because I want to see if anything is changing with regard to Dem. elites.
No it isn't.
Today there was a huge segment about Navalny (Russian opposition).
While I am truly sorry he has died I also know that it is not much different in the USA/GB/Europe/Asia.
IF Julian Assange is extradited to the USA he will be dead in 3 weeks.
Snowdon is still living in Russia.
How does the Western Imperialism think they are any different?
Jenny, Do yourself and everyone else a favor: Cancel any subscription you have to WAPO. You're only contributing to the control of the oligarchical class. I used to take that paper... like 25 yrs ago. It was going in the shitter then---so I cancelled. I can only imagine the garbage and predictive programming they peddle now. If you're worried about having nowhere to spend your money, then just send more to Chris.
I do understand BUT I like to know what is going on..............I am nearly at the point to cancel.
You won't find it there. Pull the plug. If you found this site, then you have the means to find 'the news'. That usually means pulling from many different (and usually free) sources. IMO, thats the way of the world right now...and probably a good thing--despite what Hedges and his guest think. You shouldn't have to have your information spoon fed to you from a single source...you actually have to work to find truth from a variety of sources. Most are too lazy to do that. Be the exception.
I understand I am waiting or one last thing to happen then I will be off.
trust is the most essential ingredient when it comes to the press. You do not have to be right all the time, but acknowledging the need for correction speaks volumes. Using CIA and FBI agents who historically lie and deceive says it all.
Do a Google search for the primary shareholders of the four big media companies that own 80% of all the media in the country. Do the same for big tech.
What comes up is Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street. Together these three multi-trillion dollar Wall Street firms that manage the assets of the globalist billionaires have controlling interest in almost every wire, channel and frequency that pumps information into the heads of the population.
After your COVID big-pharma money making orgy, make pre-bets on green sustainable energy alternatives and synthetic meat, and then pump the propaganda machine to push the climate crisis mythology, and pay off puppet politicians like Joe Biden to do your policy bidding... thus forcing tectonic market changes that help those bets pay off. No matter that China benefits and the US working class gets shafted again... as long as the investment markets keep throwing off returns all is well in the one-percenter land of managerial and administrative elites!
The corporate media has just become a propaganda machine for the globalist establishment. Journalistic principles are not even considered. There is no more professional journalism role. The analogy is like one respected attorneys becoming a bunch of ambulance-chasing injury claim pimps.
The fix will require a revisit of anti-trust rules to include calculating cross ownership. Blackrock, Vanguard and State Street all own shares of each other, and when together they own 25% of a corporation, they in fact are a singular power over that corporation.
We also need to stop allowing so much corporate consolidation. Small independent media has been destroyed by the competitive practices of the bigs while the bigs destroy the very market that independents used to thrive in.
Capitalism as designed is a social system as much as an economic system. The way forward is more Jefferson and less Hamilton... more support for small and independent and fewer massive Wall Street powered mega corporations that collude with politicians to make a mess out of everything.
If you acknowledge that mainstream, corporate, and establishment media is mostly propaganda, why is this a bad thing? Real journalism has been mostly dead for decades, and I'd rather live in an uninformed world than a misinformed one. Real news -- people who tell the truth to the best of their ability, know what they're talking about, and get interviews with experts in the relevant fields and get inside information -- are mainly found on podcasts now. Jimmy Dore, Lee Camp, Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, and Matt Taibbi are some examples of real journalists, none of whom are in mainstream media. That's who I'd be concerned about losing, not these corporate scum who do far more harm than good by their mere existence.
I thought the most telling comment by Morgenson was when she surmised that we were headed back to the dark ages and she was waiting for "someone" to come along and shine a light....etc. What a fool. This indicates the same problem with our politics. Many are waiting for the "right" politician, or the "honest" politician, or the "just" politician to come along and save them (or enlighten them), just like some wait for Jesus to be resurrected from the dead and save them from all their earthly sins. Sorry folks. That person is never coming. All you're doing is what you're government has programmed you to do; that is "wait and see". That's all I hear these days "We'll see". Really? Meanwhile, those oligarchs and their government lackeys (the 1% 'rs) who own everything (including those papers Hedges and Morgenson reminisce about) are driving their trucks to the bank every Friday and depositing large amounts of your debt spending tax dollars into their bank accounts while you stand sentinel for the next messiah. Wake up and take action before its too late. Taking the "wait and see" approach rarely works in your favor. Just as any survival guide will tell you; the proactive approach is the life saving approach. The "wait and see" approach usually results in rigor mortis.
Yes, hyper individualism has created heroes and villains, binary thinking and the search for a strong man. The Lone Ranger. This is a cultural sickness that US capitalism suffers from. And the elites know it and use it for their own self interests.
the problem is not just the loss of syndicated news, the problem also is the polity. There is little critical thinking skills, few people have the patience to read, phones have monopolized life and we are living in a Digital Dark Ages.
The newspapers, etc. have been paid to lie ever since T. Jefferson paid James Callendar to smear John Adams. Additionally, if the Founding Fathers had wanted the newspapers to be the “Watchdogs of democracy” they should have figured out a better business model, instead of making them beholden to sensitive advertisers.
Journalism has always been marginal and in service to wealth. We don’t end up with marginalized group’s poverty, homelessness, domestic violence, climate change, lesser of two evils leading to unspeakable acts against humanity, possibility of nuclear war, etc. because journalists were doing their job. If anything journalism has improved as reporters like Hedges etc are much easier to find and follow without sifting through the infotainment garbage of legacy media.
You are so spot on
Chris - the woman had the Wall Street beat - and claims to be an investigative journalist - during the 1980's, the takeoff of Wall Street crime (greed is good and Reagan deregulation) and during the 2007-08 collapse and bailout, yet she says she never had a story spiked and was never told what not to write? Are you kidding me?
Google Bill Black
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_K._Black
She is part of the liberal class that is disappearing faster than billionaires are minted.
I've cancelled my local subscriptions because they are in the pocket of the Defense Dept. (I live in New Mexico). But there are many peace groups around that take up the slack...and they use the internet a lot. Nationally there's Nader, Cook, Taibbi, Hedges (you), Fang, etc. I watch MSNBC, CNN, FOX sometimes for laughs, and sometimes they say something interesting. They're "likable". I pay the cable company, but not much.
It's very hard to keep secrets these days, it's just main stream journalism has been co-opted, and bought out. The small guys out there spread the light.
Great conversation. My hope is that we are not so much in a reversal as in a conflagration, out of which a phoenix will rise.
I really really hope you are right but you had better follow the money for to see what is actually taking place!!!!
She lays out at the 40-minute mark, very clearly and concisely, what the stakes are for the great majority of citizens in having-- or not having -- reporters closely and honestly covering our government's key departments.
Thank you Chris. Reporting we can use in our personal lives. One thing I have noticed about reporting in the u.s. and many global news sources. The use the same words when a major event happens, like the Genocide Joe Top Secret Doc. investigation. Every major news report was nearly word for word as though the White House wrote the articles and scripts. I was a Democan't since voting for Jimmy Carter(East Timor : (
however the Russiagate propaganda broke my routine with every major media puppeting the same message. I haven't read the NYT, Wash Post, MSBS, CNN etc. since. I am now better informed with facts. Your reporting, I seldom fact check, I don't have time to read and do the work ha. Why I contribute to Chris's work along with other news sources, GrayZone, Aaron Mate, Katie Halper, Caitlin Johnstone, etc. If you can please support Chris's work and it is work : )
An excellent, informative discussion of how journalism has changed to become diminished and unable to fully and accurately report what is happening on the local, national and international level. What is happening in journalism is just a reflection of what is happening in many areas of our capitalist society where the corporations and the very wealthy control more and more of what is happening!