I think we [Americans] are going to look back and realize that the civil liberties that we've given up in the name of security, the authority that we've given Democratic and Republican presidents, all have contributed to a fraying of the fabric of our democratic republic.
Jeremy ScahillI have chosen to cast my lot with independent media outlets because I believe that only through independent reporting where you are not beholding to the interests of corporations or government are you able to really aggressively pursue the truth.
Jeremy ScahillBecause I didn't see war in Iraq through the partisan lens that seems to dominate a lot of the perspective today with Fox News on the one side and MSNBC on the other, I didn't see it as Democrats good, Republicans bad. I saw it as a situation where the United States is a force that engages in these military operations around the world, and it's the job of journalists to provide the American people with information they can use to make informed decisions.
Jeremy ScahillI wasnโt like, boo hoo, Bin Ladenโs dead, but I wasnโt jumping. Americaโs a very nationalistic country, and in episodes like that of his death, it becomes jingoism. People are drinking, dancing in the street, chanting USA like theyโre at the World Cup, like they won itโฆ Itโs sick that we turned it into a sporting event.
Jeremy ScahillIf you're a human being, you'd have to be terrified. The impunity ... That these guys can sit on a TV show and just chat in a relaxed way about killing people like Julian Assange. They're joking, but at the same time, it's a vicious kind of rhetoric. The degree of enmity and the show of power and force against Assange must have terrified him. He was prepared to be paranoid when he was young - when nobody was actually after him. But this easy kind of vitriol and hatred that you now see as part of common discourse, it's become part and parcel of our everyday chatter.
Jeremy ScahillMy philosophy about journalism is simple - that we have a job to hold those in power accountable, to give voice to the voiceless, and to provide people with information that they can use to make informed decisions about what policies they want enacted in their name and what policies they don't.
Jeremy Scahill