Chris Hedges

Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, author, commentator and Presbyterian minister.

In his early career, Hedges worked as a freelance war correspondent in Central America for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR, and The Dallas Morning News. Hedges reported for The New York Times from 1990 to 2005, and served as the Times Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief during the wars in the former Yugoslavia. In 2001, Hedges contributed to The New York Times staff entry that received the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for the paper's coverage of global terrorism.

After resigning from the Times in 2005, two years after receiving a formal reprimand over public statements opposing the Iraq War, Hedges transitioned into alternative media, serving as a columnist for Truthdig for 14 years, hosting the program On Contact on the Russian state-backed network RT America, and writing extensively on war, corporate power, and American culture.

His books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco. He currently writes a weekly column at Scheerpost and hosts the program The Chris Hedges Report.

Early life Hedges was born on September 18, 1956, in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. His father was a World War II veteran, Presbyterian minister, and anti-war activist. He was raised in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany.

Education Hedges received a scholarship to attend Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. Hedges founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation. He participated in track and graduated in 1975.

Hedges enrolled into Colgate University and, though heterosexual, helped found an LGBT student group. Hedges received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Colgate in 1979. He then attended Harvard Divinity School, where he studied under James Luther Adams in addition to studying classics and Classical Greek. While attending Harvard, Hedges lived in Roxbury, a neighborhood in Boston, where he worked as a seminarian and ran a small church. He was also a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's boxing team, writing that the boxing gym was "the only place I felt safe."

Early career Hedges gained an interest in pursuing journalism as a means of furthering ministry after a period of close communications with British journalist Robert Cox, who was at that time reporting on the Dirty War in Argentina. While having one year left before graduation, Hedges briefly dropped out of Harvard to study Spanish in Cochabamba, Bolivia with the support of the Catholic Maryknoll Fathers. Following Cox's recommendation, Hedges informally prepared for work as a reporter through studying a four-volume set of collected works by George Orwell. Hedges made some freelance contributions for The Washington Post, and later covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio using equipment given to him by NPR reporter William Buzenberg. Hedges returned to the United States to complete a Master of Divinity degree at Harvard in 1983.

Hedges continued his career as a freelance journalist in Latin America. From 1983 to 1984, he covered the conflicts in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala for The Christian Science Monitor and NPR. He was hired as the Central America Bureau Chief for The Dallas Morning News in 1984 and held this position until 1988. Noam Chomsky wrote of Hedges at the time that he was one of the "few US journalists in Central America who merit the title."

The New York Times In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges's defiance of the pool system.

Hedges, along with Neal Conan, was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper's Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.

Yugoslav Wars (1995–2000) In 1995, Hedges was named the Balkan Bureau Chief for The New York Times. He was based in Sarajevo when the city was being hit by over 300 shells a day by the surrounding Bosnia Serbs. He reported on the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 and shortly after the war uncovered what appeared to be one of the central collection points and hiding places for perhaps thousands of corpses at the large open pit Ljubija mine during the Bosnian Serbs' ethnic cleansing campaign. He and the photographer Wade Goddard were the first reporters to travel with armed units of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in Kosovo. Hedges' investigative piece was published in The New York Times in June 1999, detailing how Hashim Thaçi, leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (and later president of Kosovo), directed a campaign in which as many as half a dozen top rebel commanders were assassinated and many others were brutally purged to consolidate his power. Thaçi, indicted by the special court in The Hague on 10 counts of war crimes, is in detention in The Hague awaiting trial.

Hedges was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University during the 1998–1999 academic year, and chose to study Latin because of his prior interest in the classics from studying Classical Greek.

Hedges ended his career of reporting in active conflicts in October 2000.

Terrorism coverage and Iraq War (2001–2005) Hedges was based in Paris following the attacks of 9/11, covering Al Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East. He was a member of a New York Times investigative team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting in 2002 for their coverage of Al Qaeda. Hedges also received the Amnesty International Global Award for Human Rights Journalism in 2002. Hedges's contribution to the Times award was an October 2001 article describing Al Qaeda's foiled bombing plot of the Embassy of the United States, Paris.

Reporting from coached defectors

In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline, Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors. Hedges worked on behalf of Lowell Bergman of Frontline, who could not travel to Beirut to interview the purported defectors. The trip was organized by Ahmed Chalabi, whom Hedges considered to be unreliable. The first defector Hedges interviewed identified himself as Lt. General Jamal al-Ghurairy. Hedges consulted the U.S. Embassy in Turkey to confirm that identity, and the embassy falsely did so, as the real al-Ghurairy had never left Iraq.

Hedges wrote a November 8, 2001 Times cover story about two former Iraqi military commanders who claimed to have trained foreign mujahedeen how to hijack planes and destroy vital American infrastructure. The two defectors also asserted there was a secret compound in Salman Pak facility where a German scientist was producing biological weapons. The Frontline report featured statements from American officials who doubted the claims of the defectors.

Conservative outlets referenced the articles in justifying the invasion of Iraq. In the aftermath of the revelations that the Iraqi defectors were not legitimate, Hedges defended his comportment since he had done the story as a favor to Lowell Bergman, adding that "There has to be a level of trust between reporters. We cover each other's sources when it's a good story because otherwise everyone would get hold of it."

Exit from the Times In 2003, Hedges gave a commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for Rockford College in which he criticized the ongoing American invasion of Iraq.; Rockford College, May 2003 His speech was received with boos, and his microphone was shut off three minutes after he began speaking. Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions, which included an additional microphone cut, foghorns, and chants of "God Bless America."

The New York Times criticized Hedges's statements and issued him a formal reprimand for "public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper's impartiality". Hedges cited this reprimand as a motivation for resigning from the Times in 2005.Hedges, Chris; A Father's Gift, Dallas Morning News, June 17, 2006, accessed December 21, 2010 In 2013 he said "Either I muzzled myself to pay fealty to my career, which on a personal sense would be to betray my father, or I spoke out and realized that my relationship with my employer was terminal. And so at that point I left before they got rid of me. But I knew that, you know, I wasn't going to be able to stay".

During the uncertainty following the loss of employment, Hedges was looking for posts to teach high school English classes. In a 2008 interview, Hedges acknowledged that he ultimately had not struggled, adding that "every year since I left the Times, I've made at least twice the salary I made at the paper. So, in a way, I didn't pay for it. And I have maintained what is most valuable to me, which is my integrity and my voice."

Later career

In 2005, Hedges became a senior fellow at Type Media Center and a columnist at Truthdig, in addition to writing books and teaching inmates at a New Jersey correctional institution.

In 2006, Hedges was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Nonfiction.

Truthdig (2006–2020) Hedges produced a weekly column in Truthdig for 14 years. He was fired along with all of the editorial staff in March 2020. Hedges and the staff had gone on strike earlier in the month to protest the publisher's attempt to fire the Editor-in-Chief Robert Scheer, demand an end to a series of unfair labor practices and the right to form a union. Hedges resumed work with Scheer after the launch of Scheerpost.

In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham published an article on The New Republic website accusing Hedges of plagiarism in several Truthdig columns and a 2010 Harper's Magazine article. The Truthdig posts were updated to give attribution to their author, and the Harper's article was withdrawn.

In December 2014, Hedges was disinvited from the University of Pennsylvania to speak at a conference held by the university's International Affairs Association that was scheduled on April 3, 2015 after he published a column on Truthdig where he compared Islamic State's tactics to the actions of Zionist militias that "used violence, terrorism, foreign fighters, clandestine arms shipments and foreign money, along with horrific ethnic cleansing and the massacre of hundreds of Arab civilians, to create Israel."

Additional accusations of plagiarism from Ketcham were countered by an independent investigation from the Type Media Center.

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