We are delighted to announce that, as of next week, award-winning journalist Dahr Jamail will be joining the team here at Truthout as a full-time staff reporter.
From his courageous work as an unembedded reporter in Iraq to his groundbreaking, on-site investigation of the BP oil spill’s lasting effects, Dahr has remained a vital independent voice amid an overwhelmingly corporatized journalistic landscape.
“Truly independent journalism has become increasingly rare, yet has never been as important,” says Dahr. “Truthout remains one of the last platforms available to report clearly about the converging crises that define our times, and that is why I’ve decided to join them.”
Dahr’s highly respected work for Truthout, Al Jazeera, The Guardian and many other outlets has covered a wide range of crucial issues. Reporting for Truthout from Iraq in 2010, Jamail documented the war from the assaults on Fallujah throughout the occupation, to the experiences of American soldiers in the field and at home. In his extensive coverage of the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, he followed BP response workers and documented the impact of the disaster on Gulf residents. Dahr’s recent work on the still-underestimated scale of climate change has already made a critical impact on conversations around this issue that will drastically shape our collective future.
He has also reported from Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey over the last ten years, and has won awards including the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship and four Project Censored awards. Dahr has reported for Democracy Now! and Al Jazeera, and has appeared on the BBC, NPR, and numerous other stations around the globe. He is the author of The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (Haymarket Books, 2009) and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007).
In the coming months, Dahr’s work will center around anthropogenic climate disruption and corporate environmental crimes. We’re thrilled to have him with us, and look forward to sharing his groundbreaking work with you!
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re shoring up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy