This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

In a special episode of The Chris Hedges Report live from Rome, Italy, Palestinian Emmy-nominated journalist, producer, and actor Ahmed Eldin joins host Chris Hedges following their involvement in the dockworkers strike and large demonstrations to halt arms shipments to Israel.

Eldin, who has worked in journalism for almost 20 years, explains how crucial storytelling is in a time where Palestinian voices are being killed off in Gaza and silenced elsewhere. “It’s a betrayal of our profession. It’s a betrayal of our human values,” Eldin says of the methods in which mainstream outlets attempt to obscure the realities on the ground of Palestine now and throughout history.

Eldin and Hedges also recount their own experiences of being pejoratively labeled “activists” instead of journalists but Eldin embraces that, saying “if you break down the definition of what an activist is, it’s someone who campaigns for social change. Maybe the way journalists campaign is by holding the powerful to account, by reporting facts and providing context.”

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Host

Chris Hedges

Executive Producer:

Max Jones

Intro:

Diego Ramos

Crew:

Thomas Hedges, Milena Soci, Max Jones

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Transcript

Chris Hedges

So you come out of the journalistic community, went to Columbia Journalism School, they forgive you for that? I want you to talk a little bit about — and you’re Palestinian of course — but talk about how the press has shaped and formed the narrative of the genocide.

Ahmed Eldin

Well, I would say they’ve done it consistently first and foremost. It was not lost on me on October 7th, having witnessed what happened — the breaking of the siege, if you will, in the inverse direction. Of course, a horrific atrocity, but something that I understood was coming sooner or later. And in those early days, I did everything I could to start documenting and applying everything not only I’d learned at Columbia but working for all these media companies ever since.

And the reason I did that, Chris, is the answer to your question. It’s because I knew, having my lived experience working in the mainstream, what was going to come and how deliberate they would manufacture consent. And how do they do it? They do it by casting doubt on any truth or any context that can inform or expand the audience’s understanding, which quite frankly goes against the foundations and the tenets and the purpose of journalism, right?

And so you’ve seen them cast doubt on the numbers of deaths. You’ve also seen them sanitize language. I mean, some of the headlines which you just shared from ABC News, from CBS, from…

Chris Hedges

Well, the New York Times banned words.

Ahmed Eldin

Of course, the style guide that leaked in April, 100%. I mean, and look, when I worked for the New York Times, I was 23 years old. It was during the Iraq War. I’d just graduated from Columbia. I was rewriting headlines and making photo slideshows on the digital side of the international desk. And I was privy to the coverage of Iraq and all this to say, when I would put the word Occupied West Bank, back then, I would get called into an office. And these are facts.

These are things that exist in legal international frameworks. So why this reluctance to just call them what they are? And I think that just answers. I mean, it’s hard to chronicle all the different ways and document all the different ways that they manufacture consent and limit our understanding. But I think the worst part of it for me is how, as you said, they trade access.

They think they can justify their biased coverage under the guise of objectivity in 2025 when people are getting information right from the source. And whether that information is framed in a conventionally journalistic way, which some people would say is like, this view from nowhere where you don’t put your own identity into the story. I mean, look, let’s be real. Journalism is changing for better or worse. Storytelling is changing.

Chris Hedges

I want to talk about objectivity because that is, that’s a trope. Objective truth is not what they print. And objectivity is really, is translated into utter dispassion, i.e. you’re not allowed to feel passionately about any entity that you’re writing about. But it becomes a mechanism to essentially, in the name of balance, equate lies with truth.

So when I covered Gaza, the way they would neuter my story is, Israel would carry out an attack on Jabalia, they bombed Jabalia for instance, and they would say that they had carried out an attack, a surgical strike against a bomb-making factory. Well, I would go there and of course when they drop a 500-pound iron fragmentation bomb, the entire block is gone. I’m seeing the bodies of children and I’m interviewing eyewitnesses, and yet every other paragraph is the IDF.

So by the end of the story, you can believe whatever you want to believe in the name of objectivity, in the name of balance.

Ahmed Eldin

No, and it’s, I’m glad you said that because they not only bury the lead, you know, oftentimes there’ll be an event that happens, and then not only is it that they bury the event — the who, what, where, when, why, I mean, come on, this is the essentials of journalism, of storytelling, not even journalism, just storytelling and that is deliberately done why?

It’s because, as you said, then you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I think even more appalling, they know that when they omit certain things from the lead, people don’t read articles. People share articles before they finish them. So the mental gymnastics and the linguistics and the cartwheels that they use in their headlines, even the AP, even Reuters, as you pointed out, I mean, it’s… one thing is it’s offensive as a Palestinian, as a journalist.

It’s a betrayal of our profession. It’s a betrayal of our human values. But much more alarmingly, like, do they not realize that this is doing long-term damage to the public’s trust, which was already at record lows, with news organizations and media in general? And that’s why people like you, that’s why independent journalists who do go there, who do have context, who do have experience, and who ...