Truthdig

Truthdig is an online media platform "dedicated to reporting on current issues that are insufficiently covered by mainstream media." It self-describes as having a "progressive point of view." Truthdig was founded in 2005 by publisher Zuade Kaufman and editor-in-chief Robert Scheer.


Estimated Reach

In 2014, Truthdig was reported to have over 400,000 unique monthly visitors on its website. As of September 2019, its website received an estimated 357,090 unique visitors per month. As of this same time, the publication's Twitter account had over 91,000 followers and its Facebook page had over 246,000 followers.

News and Controversies

2013 Julian Assange Interview

In 2013, columnist Chris Hedges interviewed Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, who had been granted political asylum and was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in England. In his piece, Hedges reported on the bipartisan consensus that Wikileaks should be handled as a criminal, even "terrorist" organization. Hedge reported on the coordinated, global hunt for Assange and other Wikileaks activists, noting how intelligence agents had violated international law to interrogate suspected Wikileaks activists in Iceland and in 'black sites' in an unknown African country. Hedges asserted that this assault "is part of the terrifying metamorphosis of the 'war on terror' into a wider war on civil liberties. It has become a hunt not for actual terrorists but a hunt for all those with the ability to expose the mounting crimes of the power elite."

When asked about the main purpose of Wikileaks, Assange described it as "giving a voice to the victims of U.S. wars and proxy wars by using leaked documents to tell their stories." Assange specifically mentioned leaks pertaining to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, discussing Operation Medusa, one of the largest military conflicts in the Kandahar region in Afghanistan, which had gone relatively unreported by media sources. Assange claimed one of the only reports he had seen involved an on-site journalist who claimed the platoon he was covering "had sort of made me one of them... you know as a journalist you try to avoid drinking the Kool-Aid, but I did feel a sense of belonging with those guys."

Assange saw this journalist's comments as "one of many examples of the failure by the embedded reporters to report the truth." Hedges agreed, commenting, "The press of a nation at war, in every conflict I covered, is an enthusiastic part of the machine, cheerleaders for slaughter and tireless mythmakers for war and the military. The few renegades within the press who refuse to wave the flag and slavishly lionize the troops, who will not endow them with a host of virtues including heroism, patriotism and courage, find themselves pariahs in newsrooms and viciously attacked— like Assange and Manning— by the state."

Hedges continued by saying, "as the traditional press atrophies with dizzying speed—effectively emasculated by Barack Obama’s use of the Espionage Act half a dozen times since 2009 to target whistle-blowers like Thomas Drake — it is left to the renegades, people like Assange and Manning, to break down walls and inform the public."

He concluded the piece by warning, "The persecution of Assange and Manning is the harbinger of what is to come, the rise of a bitter world where criminals in Brooks Brothers suits and gangsters in beribboned military uniforms — propped up by a vast internal and external security apparatus, a compliant press and a morally bankrupt political elite — monitor and crush those who dissent."

Letter From Dying Veteran to Bush Administration

In 2013, Tomas Young, a paralyzed Iraq war veteran who lived under hospice care wrote a letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, saying "I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans — my fellow veterans — whose future you stole."

About Bush and Cheney, Young asserted that no amount of wealth, power, or privilege could "mask the hollowness of your character", noting how the former had gone "AWOL from your National Guard unit" and the latter had "dodged the draft in Vietnam".

He also stressed the fact that he did not want to fight in Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 attacks, blaming Bush and Cheney for satiating the greed of oil companies and "your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia."

Young accused Bush of hypocrisy for proclaiming himself a Christian but engaging in sinful behavior such as lying, murder, and selfish ambition.

Young concluded the piece by saying, "I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness."

When Young died in 2014, Chris Hedges wrote a piece in his memory, saying "We will leave defeated from Iraq and Afghanistan; we will leave burdened with the expenditure of trillions of dollars and responsible for mounds of corpses and ruined nations. Young, and here is the tragedy of it, was sacrificed for nothing. Only the masters of war, those who have profited from the rivers of blood, rejoice. And they know the dead cannot speak."

Award-Winning Articles

As of September 5, 2019.

2018

• Eunice Wong, "Demonic Possession in a Chinese Family", November 9, 2019.

2017

• Amelia Pang, "Native American Rape Survivors Tell How Deck Is Stacked Against Them", September 27, 2017.
• Paul Street,"An Insubordinate President", Nov 14, 2017
• Carrie Rickey, "What Happened to the Female Directors of Hollywood?", March 11, 2017.

2016

• Sonali Kolhatkar, "We Need to Understand What Happened on Election Night, and Fast", November 9, 2016.
• Amelia Pang, "Who’s in the Kitchen at Chinese Restaurants?: An Investigative Report, Part 1", November 2, 2016.

2015

• Bill Boyarsky, "Why Ending Homelessness Is Political Poison", September 4, 2015.
• Chris Hedges, "We Are All Greeks Now", July 13, 2015.

2013

• Chris Hedges, "The Crucifixion of Tomas Young", March 11, 2013.

Funding Structure

From information available on the Truthdig website, financial support for the media organization comes through advertising revenue, donations to Truthdig LLC, and donations to the Truthdig Fund, the platform's nonprofit fiscal sponsor.

Truthdig LLC is a for-profit enterprise. A $250 or more contribution to this company grants the donor "Bedrock Supporter" status, entitling them to a year of benefits including "the quarterly Best of Truthdig newsletter and complimentary tickets to a Truthdig event."

In comparison, the Truthdig Fund "is a single-entity fund of Tides Foundation" and serves as the media platform's fiscal sponsor. This fund's TAX ID# is 51-0198509 (shared with the Tides Foundation).

Personnel

As of September 5, 2019:


Founders

• Zuade Kaufman, Publisher
• Robert Scheer, Editor-in-Chief

Staff

• Kasia Anderson, Executive Editor
• Jacob Sugarman, Managing Editor
• Natasha Hakimi Zapata, Foreign Editor
• Eunice Wong, Book Editor
• Clara Romeo, Editorial Assistant
• Donald Kaufman, Staff Writer
• Ilana Novick, Blogger / Editorial Assistant
• Matt Beran, Bookkeeper
• Sophia Harang, Human Resources

Copy Editors

• Kathie Bozanich, Chief
• T.L. Caswell
• Barbara Dunlap
• Gregory Glover
• Sheri Gordon
• Anita Salzberg
• Heidi Swillinger

Columnists

• Amy Goodman
• Andy Borowitz, contributing
• Chris Hedges
• E.J. Dionne Jr.
• Ellen Goodman
• Jabari Asim
• Joe Conason
• Marcia Alesan Dawkins
• Marie Cocco
• Molly Ivins, contributing
• Norman Solomon
• Richard Reeves, syndicated
• Sonali Kolhatkar
• Tony Blankley, contributing
• William Pfaff

Contact Information

Truthdig
1158 26th St., No. 443
Santa Monica, CA 90403-4698​

Website: www.truthdig.com
Web contact: Contact us
Twitter: @Truthdig
Facebook: @Truthdig

Articles and Resources

Related SourceWatch

• Amy Goodman
• Barack Obama
• Chelsea Manning
• Chris Hedges
• Dick Cheney
• George W. Bush
• Julian Assange
• Robert Scheer
• September 11, 2001
• Tides Foundation
• Wikileaks