PREVIEW: Chris Hedges on RT Ban & “Pandora's Box of War”

Empire Files

News

4.8 • 754 Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2022

⏱️ 11 minutes

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Summary

Full episode only at Patreon.com/EmpireFiles - Abby Martin speaks to Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges days after RT America permanently shut down and RT programming was banned across the US and Europe. They talk about the government and Big Tech censorship campaign against dissident views, the media propaganda in a "cartoon war" that plays to emotion instead of facts, US culpability in the war in Ukraine and what needs to happen to avoid the worst outcomes. This exclusive patron-only episode is a thank you to our supporters for making all our free content possible & widely-accessible :)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Russia-backed news organization RT America shuttered its doors on March 4th, after it was dropped
0:14.5	from several cable companies in the U.S. and banned on YouTube across Europe.
0:20.0	Despite its reputation as a propaganda outfit,
0:22.8	the network gave shows to anti-war dissidents,
0:25.5	such as myself, and the legendary Chris Hedges for years.
0:29.8	Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist,
0:32.7	the former Middle East Bureau Chief for the New York Times,
0:36.1	and the author of several books, including
0:38.7	War is a Force that gives us meaning. While many celebrate the takedown of Russian media,
0:45.3	one of the many casualties of RT's closure is Chris's weekly show on contact. Look out for his
0:51.9	future work on Substack. I caught up with Chris on March 10th to get his thoughts on RT America closing down and the ongoing war in Ukraine.
1:02.0	So yeah, Chris, thank you so much for joining me on the Empire Files podcast.
1:06.0	Sure.
1:07.4	Chris, let's start with Russia today, America permanently shuttering its doors last week.
1:12.3	Along with many other shows, your show On Contact was shut down, which broadcasted on RT America for over five years.
1:20.0	Let's go back to 2016 when On Contact started.
1:23.3	Talk about why you chose to do a show on RT in the first place.
1:27.6	Well, so I had had a show on Telesur.
1:36.8	And then with the collapse of left-wing governments in Argentina and other countries,
1:43.0	Telesur crashed and Byr, TELISO crashed and burned.
1:46.0	And the show went off the air, and then RT approached me about reconstituting the show on RT.
1:54.1	They branded it with a different name, but it was essentially the same show.
	...

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