Progressive Era Repression and persecution Anti-war and civil rights movements Contemporary 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 Dallas Morning News.

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.

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.

"[8][9][10] 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.

Hedges made some freelance contributions for The Washington Post,[11] and later covered the Falklands War from Buenos Aires for National Public Radio using equipment given to him by NPR reporter William Buzenberg.

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.

[17][18] 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.

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.

[21][22] 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 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.

[31] 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.

[32] In a collaboration between The New York Times and Frontline,[33] Hedges authored three articles covering the claims of false Iraqi defectors.

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[35] and destroy vital American infrastructure.

[34] 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.

"[34] In 2003, Hedges gave a commencement speech at the graduation ceremony for Rockford College in which he criticized the ongoing American invasion of Iraq.

[38][39] Hedges had to end the commencement speech short because of the various student disruptions,[40] which included an additional microphone cut, foghorns,[41] and chants of "God Bless America.

[42] 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.

"[1] 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.

[47] 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, who has claimed not to have known much about the network at the time, was approached to make a show by RT America president Mikhail "Misha" Solodovnikov, who promised him complete editorial independence.

[44][57] On Contact provided commentary on social issues, often profiling nonfiction authors and their recently published works, with Hedges aiming to follow the approach of former public television shows.

[44] On March 3, 2022, RT America ceased operations following the widespread deplatforming of Russian-sponsored media caused by the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Hedges said he "might have paid with" his job for making negative comments about the war on Ukraine, "but at least for those six days", after the invasion, he remained in post.[58][relevant?

In March 2008, Hedges published the book I Don't Believe in Atheists, in which he argues that new atheism presents a danger that is similar to religious extremism.

"[73] Hedges criticized the $40 billion aid package for Ukraine in a May 2022 piece, which he says demonstrates that the United States is "trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism" as the country "rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically," with no real plans to address the epidemic of mass shootings, decaying infrastructure, lack of universal healthcare, ever rising inequality, student debt, child poverty and the opioid epidemic.

"[75] Hedges accused social media platforms of censoring those who opposed the "dominant narrative on Ukraine", and criticized the decision to remove Scott Ritter from Twitter for falsely claiming that the Bucha massacre was actually perpetrated by Ukrainian national police rather than the Russian Armed Forces.

Hedges argued that Israel's genocide of Palestinians has "signed its own death sentence" with respect to its "social capital", losing its "facade of civility, its supposed vaunted respect for rule of law and democracy, its mythical story of the courageous Israeli military and miraculous birth of the Jewish nation will lie in ash heaps".

[83] On November 3, 2011, Hedges was arrested with others in New York City as part of the Occupy Wall Street demonstration, during which the activists staged a "people's hearing"[84] on the activities of the investment bank Goldman Sachs and blocked the entrance to their corporate headquarters.