Julian Assange and the end of American Democracy w/Chris Hedges & Stella Assange (Part 1)

when did you get here last night yeah from from Newark okay yeah but it was fine I don't take the night flights you don't sleep on the flight okay you don't sleep well and if you're gonna get up and work I've found I mean I did when I was a foreign correspondent I get on anything um I mean one of the things I want to talk about and that it's something you know more intimately than I do but it's one of the things that is aside from the fact that I'm a journalist just published classified information I mean we have just as that but one of the things that's Disturbed me from the start is how the all of the international bodies and the legal entities that have gone after Julian have broken their own rules yes that and it's so blatant and that's what I find kind of incomprehensible because it's public it's not a secret and then there's many secret stuff they've done too of course but you know revoking political Asylum allowing British police to go in on Sovereign territory charging him under the Espionage Act when he's not an American citizens recording his meeting with with his attorneys I mean any one of these things in a normal legal procedure would have seen the case dismissed and yet they keep doing it and doing it the you know I sat in in London I can't remember it was with barits or when I was here and then watched covered it online but it's in those details that the judicial farce is exposed and it and and it's not just one egregious violation it's repeated violations and aside of course from what they're doing to him personally that and the the failure on the part of the public and in particular the press to react with the kind of outrage because if they eviscerate the rule of law it's not just going to be for Julian you know there's they set those kinds of precedents and they and if they're allowed to get away with it with anyone it's dangerous that's what you know that's what for me and is just so frustrating but don't you think they're deliberately dismantling yes oh you want to of course that they're dismantling yes they are but they're dismantling right in front of us and we're just watching and I mean I'm talking about the broader public and not reacting yes of course that is the goal uh and and so you know we're in in a way that that passivity makes us complicit in what is ultimately our own enslavement I mean this is all of course even Beyond Julian as a person and as a as a journalist and that's what you know having followed this case for several years and as you know I was very close friends with Michael Ratner which is how I met Julian because I would come to London with Michael I can't I I I'm just kind of mystified at how people can't see where this is going to lead I think they're maybe afraid I mean I I I can't explain it otherwise or maybe uh they don't really want to believe that it's happening uh but I think I think it's because they have a demon so after 9 11 because I speak Arabic and spent seven years in the Middle East we demonize Muslims in the United States I don't know how it was here but you know it was real really awful and and and and there were all sorts of cases like this case of fights I don't know if you know that case so he this he was a so what what happened after 9 11 is and of course they were serving the interests of Israel is they went after Muslim groups and individuals in the United States who were outspoken about Palestine so the Holy Land Foundation my good friend Samuel Aryan wonderful man but these were articulate effective and um and and they charged them under terrorism laws and again with Sammy it was like Julian it was a completely fabricated case and of course where did they it was crumber it was yes so in the eastern district of Virginia so I watched them do it and with with Hashmi he had been a really charismatic Palestinian activist I don't think he's Palestinian I think he's Pakistani but he was at Brooklyn College and then he I think he was at the London School of economic or university of London or something and they were just determined to get him and his roommate had sent you can't make this stuff up waterproof socks I don't even know they existed or something to Pakistan to give to Al Qaeda we're not talking about AK-47 or anything and had used his phone to like and so they nailed him on that and they brought him back and they held him in the MCC in New York for I think it was 23 months in isolation and by the time he got under Sam's under special administrative measures so no communication I mean either we you know they had secret evidence that they used against him that even his lawyers weren't allowed to see by the time he got into court he was a zombie right and so I watched that happen and I and of course I said and you know that they are doing exactly what they're they're setting legal precedence by which or precedence by which they can strip us of any legal protection and and again it was actually not just watched passively by the American public but cheered on because they had demonized the Muslims and I think they've done a pretty effective job of demonizing Julian and so and that's how they always do it because they will demonize a particular group then strip all legal protections from that group yeah and now of course you see I don't know if you've been following cop City in Atlanta where the police have are building this we can only kind of paramilitary compound with like shooting ranges and all sorts of stuff helicopter landing pads I mean this is urban domestic Warfare and so there have been heavy protests in Atlanta but they're charging all these people with the terrorism laws animal rights activists are getting charged now with the terrorism loss Eco activists or so yeah so that's the Playbook that they they Mount as they did with Julian a very vicious black propaganda campaign and and then they're allowed to create these mechanisms by which nobody has any rights at all and and and by the time people wake up it's too late I mean you know it's that famous Nemo or quote first they came for the Jews but I wasn't a Jew I mean but it is you know it's like that I think well it also creates the mechanisms as you said like and the and the energy that goes into creating I don't know a whole Machinery behind going after um the perceived threat yes well that's right it's fear yes that's right and then and then once that one threat is overcome then that has to go somewhere and so it gets redirected to some yeah that's right but although I think reading the CIA which is a state within a state you know it's not even accountable within the Congress and there was a few years ago Feinstein after the torture was exposed tried to do a congressional report and there was this really revealing moment I'm no fan of Feinstein but she was at that moment trying to do the right thing and she came out and she was just Ashen um and and I can't remember the exact words but it's something like you know we can't take on these people because they had they had bugged all the computers and the Congressional office they they destroyed information and and I think it was that moment where she personally realized that we we can't control there's no regulation there's no oversight there's no control and uh unlike the church and the pike committees that in the middle 70s had exposed the crimes that was it that that moment is gone and I think that Vault 7 because of this kind of Imperial attitude on the part of the CI where they can do anything because the CIA we have 17 intelligence communities in the United States I mean the CIA as an intelligence organization is kind of redundant right um and what it has done is transformed itself into a paramilitary or especially after 9 11. so it's and it's completely in the dark I mean it has its own drones and special forces units and having had friends who served in Afghanistan and Iraq um these people create more problems than they solve because they'll go in on extraction and night raids and anger an entire Village and then the next day the Rangers will go through the village and they open Firearms I mean they're counterproductive and I think that what happened with Vault 7 is that you now have incredibly powerful organization that is in essence a paramilitary organization with you know huge resources and and that exposure of Vault seven they're not used to being monitored exposed in any way I think the anger I think it was more visceral I think the anger within the CIA was ran really deep and you know again I haven't talked and spoken to anyone in the CIA but my guess is that at that point they laid down the law we're getting Julian um that's my my guess I think it's all been because Biden no matter who's in the office Obama you can't at this point you know they talk about the dark State I mean these are the you know the figures like Biden are the puppets in the military you know the U.S military has not been audited for a decade I read somewhere we spend more on Military bans than we do on the state department I mean again it's a it's it's like ancient Rome I mean it's it's its own entity almost severed from the government right um but that's how I read what happened after Vault seven when did you first meet Julian so I was very close friends with Michael Radner who we lost sadly we were really good friends for many years and he of course after 2010 and the Iraqi warlogs went came to London and asked for meeting with Julian and according to Michael uh you know he they said we think they're going to come for you and Julian said why um and he said because that's how they work and we think they're going to charge you under the Espionage Act right because until that point there had been no well it was only on this was 2010 right yeah Obama came in what early 2009 he started yeah 2009. and it was under the Obama Administration that um the Espionage Act started being used he used it flagrantly against whistleblowers and we have to draw a distinction because Julian is the first journalist charged under the Espionage Act so you had Daniel Ellsberg and these kinds of figures but going back to 1917 the Espionage Act was primarily an instrument to destroy the left so it was uh they shut down the Socialist Publications under the Espionage Act the masses and I think appeal to reason they put Debs in prison the Socialist candidate I think he was actually imprisoned under the Sedition Act which was kind of a twin act they did the deportations of Emma Goldman and uh and it's always been an instrument that's been used to destroy the left but it was as I have this I believe this is right that between 1917 and the Obama Administration it was only used three times against whistleblowers once against Ellsberg and that case collapsed because they invaded his psychiatrist office and all this kind of dirty tricks I think another case was was afterwards pardoned it was really yeah it was not used it wasn't and Obama I mean Obama's assault on civil liberties was worse than bush and he went after anyone who leaked kiriaku and all sorts of others and that of course is the lifeblood of Journalism so we need people on the inside with a conscience who are willing to share information about malfeasance crimes lies that the government is committing that's how we do our work and because of wholesale surveillance um and that's why Snowden fled they they know immediately who's connecting with journalists right and I've been visiting and I just I visited and I write letters to Daniel Hale this is just a really sad story this young Air Force officer with Incredible integrity and courage and saw that in the Drone attacks it was up to 90 percent of the victims were civilians including children and and then he was sitting in these rooms where the Drone operators had this jocular contempt you know killing they knew they were killing children and they were calling them pint-sized terrorists and I mean it was just sickening and and he exposed that and he's now sitting in Marion Illinois in a high security used to be the highest security prison in the country now we have adx Florence Colorado but they have them in one of these management control units which replicates I mean he has no and it's in the middle of nowhere so if I visit I have to fly lie to St Louis and drive three hours down to Illinois in the literally these cornfields I mean because of course they don't want you to to visit um so in order for us to do our work we need people like Daniel Hale and it was really Obama who shut down any of that connection uh and I can't remember it's either nine or eleven times he used it and so I still have friends of the New York Times who do investigative journalism but they have told me repeatedly that there is no investigative journalism now within the government with the inner workings of government because everyone's too frightened to talk because they they're they can immediately be traced so the last readout of any kind of exposure of the the uh the crimes the criminal activity of power comes through people who are like Chelsea Manning or Snowden who have access to documents uh and will leak them or hackers like Jeremy Hammond who when and I sued Obama in 2012 over section 1021 of the National Defense authorization act which he signed at midnight at on the last day of 2011 hoping no one would notice which overturned the 1878 posi Comitatus Act which prohibits the government from using the military as a domestic police force and in section 1021 it actually said that people are allowed to be held without habeas corpus without due process until quote unquote the end of hostilities which is just in a more I mean it's really a terrifying kind of almost orwellian and I sued him in federal court nobody thought we would win including Michael Ratner and and we just got this judge and we won and then of course it was Obama he freaked out they freaked out they had the NSA lawyers in her Chambers an hour after the ruling demanding she issued a temporary injunction which meant that if American citizens were being held in guantanamo-like conditions anywhere in the black sites around the world this was against the law and you know I and the lawyers were kind of curious we wondered why were they so why did they respond with such alacrity well because they were holding probably Afghan you know dual National Iraqi whatever um and uh sheep to her credit and she's no longer on the on the southern district she went back to Private Practice she refused so then they went to the Appellate Court so in the American system you have the federal court then you have the Appellate Court which is a panel of Judges who review it and then your last chances of the Supreme Court so they went to the Appellate Court that was a Friday they went to the pelcourt on Monday morning and they lifted the conjunction in the name of National Security right the problem with and this gets back to Julian is the law was so black and white that this was such a clear violation they didn't know how to rule and so they didn't rule they just waited and waited and waited months and I had been one of the plaintiffs in Clapper versus Amnesty International which did get to the Supreme Court where journalists had challenged the government about surveillance because we can't work obviously we can't if we're being surveilled as well as people who are trying to reach out to us and there was a incredible line because this was before Snowden where the government lawyers assured the court that if any journalist was being surveilled we would tell them yeah I mean was patently absurd but the court bought it and then rather than hear the Merit of the case the Appellate Court said I didn't have standing that's the way they always get rid of you right you don't have a right to bring the case they said Hedges doesn't did not have standing to bring in Clapper versus Amnesty International therefore he doesn't have standing in Hedges versus Obama and they threw it out we filed a cert to go to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court didn't take it so it's law it's law but you know having been involved this kind of detail and having done the kind of work albeit on a much smaller level as than as Julian did uh and having watched all of this process uh it has really been the death of investigative journalism now now they will leak you they you know the other things about leaks as you know is that governments will leak all sorts of Highly classified material that makes them look good so it's not that you don't get leaks right of Highly classified but it selective leaks that uh that they want out and uh and so now it's over I mean the the and that's really frightening it means there's no power is in no way accountable there's no transparency and and we know history has taught us that when that kind of secrecy is imposed on autocratic power it just it abuse grows upon abuse grows upon abuse and and that is why they're just determined to crucify Julian that's the the crisis that we're in we've lost the ability to know what power is doing well I have I have this feeling that in order to establish the Baseline you would have to give a history lesson yeah because for example the use of the Espionage Act you have to understand that it wasn't used for almost 100 years against against whistleblower as a journalist against whistleblowers and journalists and there was a shift with Obama yeah that opened the doors to maybe one day the Espionage Act being used against Publishers in the same way that it was now being used against whistleblowers and the way it was using being used against whistleblowers as was as if they were spies to begin with so there was a progressive yes that's right shift and that's that's why Julian was surprised when Michael rottner told him that that um he thought that the U.S would would try to try them under the Espionage Act after he had published because it was unprecedented because you know the first amendment is clear yeah and the first amendment is really a revolutionary instrument and it is the gold standard in the world and I think perhaps culturally we are used to there being this gold standard and through American cultural projection which is what I I grew up with I was born in the 80s you know very clearly uh the idea of um I don't know liberal Democratic Western freedom is um attached to this idea of freedom of expression um and uh a press that is courageous and brave and and Powerful in the sense that it is it is able to expose power and so on and then with what's been done to Julian because it's been so protracted we're in a completely different uh um information and um security environment as in the the powers of the security state are far greater and have eroded all these other rights that came you know I think they have on the one hand the the US Constitution um and then you have the universal Declaration of Human Rights and these things that were strong strong underpinning to Western democracies for a long time that's kind of how Wikileaks was born out of this kind of environment but then since the surveillance state has become so powerful and um you know there's been a an ability to control Communication in such an aggressive and invisible manner in the 12 or the 13 years since Wikileaks published this we're in completely different environments so people who knew the before um on the one hand we have like an information Gap with people who don't follow things so quick clear so in such detail but also a knowledge like a historical knowledge Gap so although we can see this progression this rapid progression into like a totalitarian not just authoritarian but like really aggressively accelerating I think into a totalitarian um environment for for many people who are you know just a bit younger than me they don't see it yeah because they don't have that reference well and also because that it's hidden I mean so you know you're never going to get it trying to do four minutes on CNN which is all someone like me would get when I used to get on CNN well when I work for the New York Times They Don't you know I used to say the real motto of the New York Times is do not significantly alienate those on whom we depend for money and access so as a reporter for the times if you if you wrote stories that harmed your access to the powerful you were harmed professionally yeah so would that happen like before the article was published or no you would write articles that would you could alienate the powerful occasionally but if you made a habit of it the powerful would I mean I can give an example like so after I covered the war in Yugoslavia and then I covered the Dayton peace agreement and so I was on the ground and I fully understood that the Dayton peace agreement had just Frozen the conflict it wasn't it was just it was kind of uh but you know was the absence of War it wasn't a peace agreement because all of the killers and the Warlords were still in control terrorizing their own people in town throughout Bosnia and I started to write that and Clinton was running part of his re-election campaign was on how he brought peace to Bosnia so sandyberger who was the head of the National Security Council he they went after me big time and the way they do it is they have lunch with a publisher and they start badmouthing you and uh and then the editors get they they see the editors and they get uncomfortable so uh you become a kind of management problem if you I think the only thing that saved me and allowed me to spend as long as I did with the times is that I would put myself in really extreme situations like Sarajevo that nobody else wanted to do when I volunteered for Sarajevo the executive editor said well I guess the line starts and ends with you because by the time I got there 45 journalists have been killed um and then I didn't have to interview officials because I was on the street I mean like when I covered the first Gulf War I didn't go to press conferences with Schwarzkopf I hardly interviewed anybody over the rank of Sergeant you know I hung out with Lance corporal so I was a Marine Corps and so that kind of saved me um but yeah if you and and the other thing about it is that The Closer geographically you get to the centers of power so I was overseas but if you're in Washington or New York then the less tolerant they are about your confronting Powers so that a journalist overseas that is trying to write a narrative which is almost always in conflict with the official narrative is not only at war with whatever Administration is running the country but their Washington Bureau that makes their their journalism is contingent on them you know doing lunch so you're battling this goes has always been true you take the great reporters on Vietnam it was they were battling the Washington Bureau their own Bureau as much as they were battling uh you know the people running the war so uh yeah that's that's so so an elite publication like the times is very obsequious to power and will cater to power and you know I don't know if I've told you but I heard after the publication of the warlogs why did these papers like the guardian has been awful or the times why did they turn on Julian I would tell you the story I said no you don't understand they hated Julian from the moment he released that because the and the only reason they ran it is because if they didn't they would have been exposed he shamed them into doing their job and they loathed him for that but that doesn't matter anymore right it doesn't matter anymore well I think they don't mind being ashamed you mean they don't have any shame they don't have any well yeah they don't have any shame because for example take the Twitter files um but the Twitter files were the Twitter files were more nuanced and and opaque perhaps I think even to this day would be pretty hard to ignore what Julian released it was so cataclysmic so huge so important and and people forget not just in terms of exposing U.S lies and crimes but around the world I mean Haiti was convulsed by those Revelations which there was traffic that that showed how the U.S embassy was working with the Haitian government because there are all these sweatshops and to to suppress the minimum wage I mean you know stuff like that you know part of the quid pro quo let's talk about the CIA the quid pro quo is that you will you will do the Dirty Work to destroy journalists who Expo so like Gary Webb I don't know if you know about Gary Webb so Gary Webb I think he was with the San Francisco Chronicle one of those papers in California and he exposed the the that hole and I was in Central America at the time that whole CIA relationship where they were supporting the contras under the table and and selling cocaine and actually shipping cocaine to the states flooding neighborhoods in Oakland and stuff with it well Gary Webb was destroyed by the Press because what happened was the CIA held briefings and I know the reporter from The New York Times went to the briefing and uh discredited the reporting and the the times never went and a good reporter would go out and re-report it he would go out check the sources go and try and find out follow the trail that Webb followed that's a good reporter that didn't happen so the Washington Post the Ellie they all piled on web and they didn't actually report they went down there they went down to Langley they got a background briefing and they and of course he killed himself so it's it's a very I mean papers like the times are you know their uh their relationship to power is um I mean they consider themselves part of the elite power system and they don't want to lose that perch at the same time they're trying to position themselves as adversarial journalists and it does it has and probably less power now with the diffusion of media but when I was overseas you know I used to work overseas when I didn't work for the New York Times so I'd have to call 30 times for somebody calling back you call once sometimes they call you back right and the pro the funny part about it having I began as a freelancer and then eventually worked for the paper in Dallas is that these times reporters would come down and have all this access and they thought it was them it wouldn't them it was the institution they weren't particularly good reporters necessarily um so you know I was good friends with Sydney schanberg saw The Killing Fields that was the movie about Sydney and death prawn I also know but I remember Sydney saying to me once and Sydney was pushed out of the times because after although he won the pool at certain came back he saw how the Developers were driving the working class of middle class out of Manhattan and destroying rent control and he started writing about it and all the rich friends of the publisher got angry right and the and the and the executive editor started calling him Sydney my little commie and and eventually was pushed out of the paper and worked for the Village Voice but I thought Sydney gave me the best description of how the times or papers like the times he said well we may not make things better but if we do the our job to the best of our ability we stop things from getting worse and I think that's a good definition of the commercial press and this gets back to Julian because all of the great advances in journalism have come from the non-commercial press that has going back to that shamed the way Julian did shame the traditional press into doing their job so I write for sheer posts this is Bob shears website which he pretty much funds from a social security check but you know he's one of the legendary journalists he was the editor of ramparts magazine which was the leftist magazine in the 60s and he broke cointelpro he that iconic picture of the little girl in Vietnam running naked down the road that was first in ramparts and in and if you look at the Inception of the war in Vietnam the coverage was all cheerleading and it was Publications like ramparts in the same way that we saw with Julian that forced these people against their will but Bob Bob was a at the time of the Iraq were a columnist at the LA Times they fired him because of his opposition and I also got pushed out of the times for my opposition of the war um uh and so that's you know Julian has done what you know great journalists I remember once working for the time some intern you know really went to Harvard or something said well who do you think the best reporters in the country are I said well I could tell you about you would have never heard of them he said they don't work for us no they don't work for you they don't work for us and so I mean this is of course why I admire Julian so much I mean that that's what great journalism is and I worked on the inside of the Beast I mean and I and with all with the limitations of that and I was you know finally willing to become a management problem and get pushed out um but you know I know how the system works and that without figures like Julian the you know the system is morally bankrupt well it's very interesting what you just explained because I think I kind of imagined it being a bit like this um when the story broke about Mike Pompeo making plans asking for the CIA to kind of outline how they would kidnap rendition or even kill Julian in the embassy and the story broke in 2021 so this was after after the initial extradition case and so on and it was three National Security reporters at Yahoo news investigations unit and it was really detailed and you know you look at these reporters and they've they have a track record of um uh you know with with sources inside the CIA and so on and pompeo's reaction to it was to effectively confirm it because he then went out and said that the sources and there were over 30 of them should be prosecuted under the Espionage Act and of course you only get prosecuted under the Espionage Act if the information is authentic right so huge story and you couldn't imagine a more interesting newsworthy story than this one right because uh a journalist inside an embassy with political Asylum uh CIA had planning asking his his staff to to come up with sketches and options um it was quite detailed I mean weren't they going to land on the roof or something or yeah yeah there was there was huge detail and um then it didn't get re-reported it wasn't well it did by the guardian actually eventually got re-reported by the guardian but the New York Times didn't touch it the Washington Post didn't touch it and I was actually in I brought it up on the BBC on a radio interview that was live and the interviewer said oh um but the CIA has denied it and I I said no they haven't they haven't denied it they they haven't commented and Pompeo effectively he just he just confirmed it um and then it was just like they were given this this talking point that they had nothing to base it on because I then after the interview I went back and I I you know verified that the CIA had not denied it the one time the New York Times Did report this um Pompeo murder plot was after the defense filed the story in the evidence in the extradition case so that gave them an excuse to be able to report it but before that uh it was incredible I mean there was no there was no mention of it but they needed this court document in order to reference it so this showed to me that they that it it was that they needed this excuse that's exactly because it was clearly newsworthy that's right well they didn't really want to go have to report it because they didn't want to run in they want to shutter their sources with the CIA I mean they're it's a very delicate dance that you play and and and there are you know reporters within institutions like the New York Times all they do are fed you know that especially the Washington Bureau they're just fed crap I mean they don't actually report anything and they're held in very high regard by the institution right so when I covered after 9 11 I covered Al Qaeda I was based in Paris and French intelligence did not want the Americans to invade Iraq so they had given me at the highest levels I had complete carte blanche at the counterterrorism office run by this crazy Corsican and but I could go in and just ask I mean I would I covered Richard read the shoe bomber I and the Brits weren't giving me anything they were awful and I would just go and they go okay get the files and you know I'm looking at pictures of Richard Reed walking out of the brexit mosque and you know all this kind of stuff and and uh and the French knew that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and the French unlike the Americans actually had human assets inside of al-Qaeda with the Americans didn't have any it was all electronic eavesdropping a lot of which they couldn't read by the way yeah it was interesting so they knew chatter they could pick up chatter but they couldn't as it was explained to me they used to code it in pictures I don't understand any of this stuff we have to call Julian and ask him but they would code the messages and pictures but so they they knew something was happening but they couldn't read it the Americans and I would go back to New York now remember they were the New York Times at the time was uh you know a full partner in the lie that Saddam Hussein was had weapons of mass and all this kind of stuff and so I had really good actionable intelligence and I was just dismissed oh that's the French that's what you know no literally Lewis scooter Libby who I actually you know I went to prep school with them that that he told us Dick Cheney told us and they didn't it was like their ears were full of wax right they were so they went after Judy Miller who's loathsome but it was an Institutional failing they didn't want to hear it and and and add a time of kind of national crisis whether that's real or manufactured the Press always falls into line traditionally it goes all the way back to the Crimean War it's every press has done it and that's the role the times was playing so even though I had better intelligence uh it was dismissed in the name of racism because we were you know we we didn't eat french fries in America the time we ate Freedom fries and stuff like this I mean it was so childish and I just wanted to go back to Paris and well you know part of the problem is that the U.S I'd say the the anglo-american Press but mainly the U.S press drives a narrative for European press at least and so I was speaking to some European press and I was telling them this Inc this story about Pompeo um you know having his whole CIA deployed to bring down Julian and Wikileaks and even plan to rendition an extraordinary rendition from the UK there were there was mention of black sites and how the indictment had come after these plans because they then confronted with this problem that well what if we kidnap him and then there's no indictment so that came you know that was the sequence and this is the um the proof that this is a political if you needed more evidence but that this is a politically motivated prosecution and the answer was well but the thing is the New York Times hasn't reported it you know the Washington Post and and so on and so their view from from very mainstream uh newspapers was that well it may be true but because the New York Times hasn't reported it then we're not going to report it either it's worse than that it's because the New York Times hasn't reported it didn't happen right so when I worked for smaller papers let's say go back to the Warren Salvador when I was working for the Dallas Morning News I would report stuff I mean pretty horrible stuff and it made no impact because the times the times had a horrible correspondent who never went out she we she was went to the Embassy and got what she was fed and published it which is not only criminal in and of itself but it hurts real journalists because my even my editors would say well that's not what the times is reporting um and I don't know that the time still has that kind of power I know that when I work for the Times our power was as you said that we set the agenda so for instance I would write a story and then all the big Network CBS ABC NBC the producers who are the ones with the brains would come find me and say well what are you publishing tomorrow where did you go because their editors would read in the morning paper and then tell them to go do it that's how it worked so the circulation of the times when I was there I don't know eight hundred thousand million although you also have the wire service which gets picked up so papers around the country would be running my stories but the real power was that it set the agenda and and and so you're right that if it wasn't in the times in a way it could be ignored or you know as I said it didn't happen and I was I felt that on the other end it was very frustrating and so you know there were even moments when we leaked we gave stuff to New York Times inept New York Times reporters because we were sick of not having any kind of an impact you know you kind of would have to hold their hand um so who sets the agenda now the Press has changed since I mean during my career because at the time the New York Times like the big networks would try and reach a wide audience now they don't make an effort the Press has become completely siled so they cater to a particular demographic whether that's Fox News and you can see it in terms of the percentages of Republicans who watch Fox News of 94 the percentage of Democrats and the figures may be slightly off who watch MSNBC or like you know 90 something percent I think it's 87 percent of Democrats read the New York Times because the model of the press has changed where you're feeding your readers or your viewers what they want there's no price anymore for stuff that turns out to be a lie and in that way the the as bad as the old model was this new model is worse [Music] um because accompanied with this feeding of your demographic what they want you're demonizing the competing demographic so the right media is demonizing liberals Liberals are demonizing the deplorables and that gets to what I saw in Yugoslavia so you had the same thing in Yugoslavia when it broke up you had ethnic entities serbs Muslims croats and they seize their own media Outlets the first people they persecute is not the opposing demographic who in some ways they need in order to build there but people within their own demographic who are actually still trying to report the truth those are the most dangerous and they will destroy them first right and that's what's happening what's happening in the United States is and I don't know about the UK but it's it's similar to that breakdown of Yugoslavia because neither side is rooted in any more in verifiable fact I mean at least in the old days the times was rooted in selected verifiable fact and I will concede that the LIE of omission is still a lie now it's not even rooted in verifiable fact right and I I was walking through Montgomery Alabama with Brian Stevenson the great civil rights attorney half of Montgomery's black and Brian's showing me all the Confederate memorials that have been put up and then he says most of these were put up in the last 10 years and I said that's exactly what happened in Yugoslavia with the economic collapse and breakdown of Yugoslavia and that sense of disempowerment thronement and people retreated into these mythic identities in particular kind of the white supremacy white nationalism that's gripped the states um and that's what happened in Yugoslavia but these are identities rooted in myth they're not rooted in truth right and I think we're very far down that road and the consequences of it are potentially especially since the United States is Awash and weapon automatic weapons is really frightening whether that we already have you know so many mass shootings it's not news and it's mass shootings of like kids in schools and I mean it's just uh yeah you know the the kind of nihilistic violence and then you know as a great sociologist durkheim writes in his book on suicide people who seek the annihilation of others are driven by desires for self-annihilation so these killers go in and it's either suicide by cop or they shoot themselves right and that exposes a very dark pathology within the United States um which the the Press is now contributing to um yes I mean I mean they took mass shootings preventing mass shootings seriously and not just as a I mean there's a political debate about arms control of course but then there's the fact the media the way the media plays those mass shootings that seem to be what's like climate change it is disconnects always a one event that has no connection to anything else you know right so there's no water in Arizona wow isn't that an interesting story and now Madonna is you know I mean so it that's part of this disconnectedness yeah you know which and you spoke earlier about history and there's no context and if you don't have any context it doesn't matter what you report you can't understand it and that that's what's been completely erased from the media landscape any context

Channel: The Real News Network

Views: 158,146

Keywords: real news, the real news, real news network, realnews, the real news network, therealnews, trnn, Julian Assange, Espionage Act, Assange trial, Chris hedges, whistleblower, spy

Id: i4N_P-Xd15E

Length: 48min 25sec (2905 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 13 2023