The atmosphere of journalism in the United States has taken a drastic turn in the decades following World War II and later the collapse of the Soviet Union. Major newspapers and TV news outlets have come under the ownership of only half a dozen corporations who have imposed widespread constraints of what can be reported and have censored those who speak out against the crimes of U.S. foreign policy, the abuses of a national security state that is looking to expand its power wherever it sees fit, and a financial oligarchy that is raking in more profits for Wall Street shareholders and bankers and has bought and paid for the U.S. government to their benefit while the American working class lives paycheck to paycheck and without economic means of surviving.
As a result of such ownership and control, a uniformity of information, analysis, and opinion, no matter how true or false, has become what’s normal and many news outlets rely on sensational headlines for clicks and revenue as opposed to independent investigative reporting, leading to an increasing distrust in the U.S. media among the public.
However, it’s not just corporate censorship. Investigative journalists and whistleblowers have come under increasing pressure and surveillance from the U.S. National Security State, most notably in the 2010s when Edward Snowden was forced to live in exile in Moscow for revealing widespread government surveillance against American citizens and WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was imprisoned for 14 years under house arrest, at Britain’s Ecuadorean Embassy under political asylum, and at London’s Belmarsh Prison for reporting on U.S. war crimes in the Middle East and around the world. He was later convicted under the Espionage Act, setting a dangerous legal precedent that criminalizes the publishing of classified government information, which many journalists have done, including at The New York Times, The Guardian, El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, and others.
Substack is a platform where I as an investigative journalist can report the truth and speak to my readers with a kind of freedom that is not found in the mainstream media, in a way that best reflects their sentiment, and without any constraints from the corporate establishment or fear of censorship.
Several premier investigative journalists have been able to find a new voice through this platform and free themselves from economic coercion by corporate owners and advertisers, political pressure from the darkest depths of the U.S. government, and typical newspaper and network constraints such as column inches, word counts, and air time. Such reporters include Seymour Hersh who exposed the war crimes at My Lai in Vietnam and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the former of which won him a Pulitzer Prize in international reporting, and Aaron Mate who reported extensively on the OPCW Whistleblower scandal in Syria and won the Izzy Award, named after the great investigative journalist I.F. Stone, for debunking the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
Our journalism is not funded by any financial interests and the stories published here are not subject to any restrictions by the corporate establishment. I publish regular columns on this page, as well as video reports on foreign policy, government abuses of power, and the financial oligarchy. As reporters are faced with pressure from corporate interests and government surveillance, Substack is our chance to retain independence and report the truth and challenge the official narrative…to paraphrase Hersh…uncensored, without a filter, and deprogrammed.
Jason Zaharis