For a lot of people, the past year has felt like one of desperation — and understandably so. The Trump administration is attacking basic human rights and dealing devastating blows to millions of people’s lives, particularly those who are most marginalized. Meanwhile, humanity is on the precipice of a catastrophe that threatens our very existence.
At Truthout, we have approached this pivotal time with the gravity it requires: We’ve dug deep and provided a fuller range of investigative reporting, substantive analysis, and incisive commentary than ever before.
But we’ve also approached this moment in history with a sense that we must dream higher, dream bigger. We know that creative journalism can play a role in transformation. And so, we’ve worked to publish bold proposals authored by leading activists and people most directly impacted by the crises we face. We’ve become an even more intrepid platform for the transformative ideas that can spark real change.
We are grateful to play a key role in the social movements that offer some hope for this country, and for humanity.
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Over the past year, Truthout's original journalism combined a renewed commitment to investigative reporting and deep analysis with a drive to give voice to fresh, transformative ideas capable of lifting us out of the current political quagmire.
As the world's climate hit record highs and predictions for the near future grew more disastrous, Truthout's award-winning reporter Dahr Jamail set the journalistic standard for climate reporting. His monthly Climate Disruption Dispatches documented the specific, devastating impacts of the climate crisis around the world, as well as the grassroots movements rising to confront it. Plus, with Barbara Cecil, Jamail launched a new series this year titled "How Then Shall We Live?" which is intended to help us come to terms, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually, with where we are as a species, and discern how to plunge forward to face our future. Meanwhile, Truthout investigative reporters Candice Bernd and Mike Ludwig — two of the first reporters to reveal the devastation wrought by fracking — have continued to investigate environmental degradation. In particular, Ludwig has exposed Trump's efforts to rewrite rules in favor of the pipeline industry, the contamination of groundwater by coal ash, the impact of pollution on Louisiana's "Cancer Alley," and more. Bernd revealed the environmental damage Trump's border wall would cause in the Rio Grande Valley.
Renowned reporter Greg Palast, a regular Truthout contributor, exposed serious wrongdoing in the 2018 Georgia governors' race between Brian Kemp and Stacey Abrams, providing groundbreaking reports on the hundreds of thousands of voters purged from the Georgia rolls. His reporting went viral and resulted in massive pushback and a lawsuit against Kemp.
As the Trump presidency tilted toward fascism, Truthout consistently published critical analysis of and historical context for this ominous development, drawing on esteemed writers like board member Henry A. Giroux, contributing writer and social media manager Kelly Hayes, and activists and researchers like Spencer Sunshine, Shane Burley, and Mark Bray.
Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky provided consistent, trenchant analysis of the resurgence of political authoritarianism through his interviews with C.J. Polychroniou. Chomsky delved into the Trump administration's severe assault on the common good, how neoliberalism and the demolition of unions dovetail with Trumpocracy, Trump's "me first" doctrine, and the carefully honed education and activism necessary to fight back.
Along these lines, Truthout's work on prisons and policing continued to light the way forward, with longtime Truthout investigative contributor Victoria Law revealing how people take guilty pleas because they can't afford to call their lawyers and how incarcerated women are punished for reporting sexual assault. After Truthout exposed the Virginia Department of Corrections's ban on tampons for visitors to the state's prisons, public outrage mounted and the department eventually suspended its outrageous policy.
With immigration becoming the Trumpian right wing's sordid emphasis, Truthout's incisive coverage of this area was crucial. Ludwig investigated the way in which asylum seekers are being disappeared into Louisiana jails, while Bernd reported from the border on tribal resistance to Trump's wall. Leading activists charted a path forward on our pages, from targeting backers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), like Microsoft and Amazon, to focusing on the incarceration of immigrant parents as well as children, to calling for the actual disbanding — not reformation or name change — of ICE. Kelly Hayes and Truthout editor-in-chief Maya Schenwar showed how the caging of immigrant children fits in with the apparatus of the prison-industrial complex.
As pundits and politicians exchange talking points about the mainstream media's top-of-the-headline news, including the 2020 elections and the Mueller investigation, Truthout has chosen to cover these issues in more thoughtful ways. Lead columnist William Rivers Pitt tackles the battles playing out in Washington four times a week with historical perspective and heart, focusing attention on not only the Trump administration, the right-wing Senate, and their followers, but also the ways in which leading Democrats are often complicit in disastrous policymaking. With her "Human Rights and Global Wrongs" series, law scholar Marjorie Cohn uses legal analysis to systematically dismantle Donald Trump's policies and explain the possible roads to impeachment. Contributing writer Sasha Abramsky joined us to write regularly about the impact of Washington, D.C., politics, including Trump's wide-ranging attacks on the Census and his threats of paramilitary violence. Meanwhile, Shilpa Jindia covered the rise of a new wave of progressive politicians, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and how their ascent was driven by grassroots activism.
Our stories made a significant impact in the realm of economic justice this year. Just one example: A Truthout investigation exposed how workers with disabilities are making cents per hour — and it is perfectly legal under U.S. laws. The story went viral and fomented momentum to end the subminimum wage. The following month, the House passed historic legislation to eliminate subminimum wages.
Longtime Truthout writer and economist Dean Baker documented how Trump's 2020 budget would deny food to 400,000 children and pregnant people. Reporter Bryce Covert exposed the underbelly of the dangerous, low-paid work world of nail salons. And contributing writer Mark Provost chronicled the history of how millennials became the most indebted generation — including the role played by Joe Biden. Also, this year Truthout added acclaimed economic justice activist Alexis Goldstein as a regular contributor; thus far, Goldstein has zeroed in on the battle to abolish student debt.
As the labor movement has surged back to life over the last year, Truthout's reporting has been on the front lines. Staff reporter Bernd, contributing reporters Bryce Covert and Sarah Jaffe, and others covered this year of labor battles, strikes and labor wins — particularly highlighting the groundbreaking organizing efforts of teachers. And editor-in-chief Schenwar explored the ways in which the labor movement ties in with the immensely undervalued work of labor and birth.
On the racial justice front, as the Democratic candidates sparred over simple definitions of "reparations," we explored what true reparations might mean. For example, with marijuana legalization spreading around the country, Kassandra Frederique outlined in this interview that reparations are clearly owed to the overwhelmingly Black and Brown targets of the drug war. Long-time Truthout contributor Adam Hudson explained how Black Americans' median wealth could drop to zero in one generation, and how a wide range of policy reforms, including an overhaul of the tax code, is in order. Meanwhile, regular Truthout contributing writer William C. Anderson dug into the ways in which white supremacy profits off gun violence while blaming that violence on Black communities. And in the face of the Jussie Smollett controversy, scholar Barbara Ransby challenged us to recognize head-on the pervasive reality of racist anti-LGBTQ violence. And when the national spotlight turned to MAGA-hat-wearing boys who harassed a Native elder, Kelly Hayes drew our attention to the spectacle's grounding in the U.S.'s deep anti-Native, anti-Black history.
As health care took centerstage in Democratic candidates' platforms, we forged ahead with our well-regarded series, "Fighting for Our Lives," documenting the movement for Medicare for All. We also continued to draw attention to the many Americans losing their lives because of sky-high drug prices: Mike Ludwig was one of the original reporters exposing the impact of rising insulin costs, and the impact of his work showed this year as politicians engaged in conversations around this issue. Ludwig continued his deep reporting, telling the story of parents who delivered the ashes of their diabetic children to a price-gouging insulin manufacturer. And the new NAFTA agreement's impact on drug prices, which Ludwig exposed in October, is now being discussed by Elizabeth Warren and other candidates.
When right-wing politicians set their sights on Roe v. Wade, longtime Truthout contributing writer Katie Klabusich documented attacks on reproductive rights at the federal and state level, from the "heartbeat bans" taking root in the South to the mass closure of abortion clinics to Trump's domestic gag rule. As the Trump administration's Health and Human Services Department planned to attack transgender people by establishing a retrograde definition of gender, leading activist Dean Spade wrote of how the government's enforcement and perpetuation of transphobia is killing trans people.
Truthout's contributing education reporter, Eleanor Bader, showed how corporate tax cuts were impacting education funding, exposed the anti-LGBTQ backlash against school sex ed programs, documented college campuses sidelining sexual abuse cases, and covered the way in which students without home internet access and computers are left behind. And board member and education scholar Henry A. Giroux wrote of Trump's war on youth, while calling for radical social justice education to fight back against fascism.
Truthout's early years were driven by a commitment to covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq truthfully, while the mainstream obfuscated and covered up reality. We continue to dedicate ourselves to documenting the "forever wars" and the struggle against them. Board President Robert Reuel Naiman laid out clear steps to ending the U.S. war in Yemen, calling for an immediate end to the war – and the impeachment of Trump if he wouldn't end it. Truthout contributing writer Lindsay Koshgarian meticulously analyzed the U.S.'s prioritization of the Pentagon over all other budget areas and the mass fueling of federal dollars to military contractors. Along these lines, William Rivers Pitt issued a call for new priorities, in an age when the F-35 fighter jet alone will cost $1.5 trillion. Maha Hilal and Adam Hudson covered the ongoing, indefinite incarceration of "War on Terror" detainees at Guantanamo, at a time when much of the media has completely abandoned coverage of this issue. Hilal also documented the ongoing impacts of War on Terror politics on Muslims in the US.
Meanwhile, in the face of repressive politics, Truthout remained committed to lifting up unique and powerful progressive ideas for long-term transformation. Our "Visions of 2018" series last year provided a place for leading activists to share their dreams: from home care for all, to the dismantling of fascist border systems, to the reimagining of disability justice, to the transformative power of accepting brutal climate reality, to the prioritization of relationships in building a new world. And our Progressive Picks program continues to feature interviews, reviews and excerpts of insightful new books, elevating the work of independent authors and publishers, and providing key educational tools to fuel mass movements.
This is but a brief sample of the many high-impact stories Truthout published over the past year. We encourage you to visit our site to explore more!
The investigative series, "America's Toxic Prisons," by Truthout's Candice Bernd and Earth Island Journal's Zoe Loftus-Farren and Maureen Nandini Mitra, won awards in two categories of the 2018 San Francisco Press Club's Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards.
Bernd also won the Society of Professional Journalists Fort Worth Professional Chapter's First Amendment Award and the Native American Journalists Associations National Native Media Award for her story on Indigenous asylum seekers facing language barriers and a legacy of oppression at the border.
This was an immense tech project, made possible by grit, determination, long hours — and of course, support from our readers. While it remains true to the spirit of our old one, the new site loads faster, looks nicer, and makes it easier to access your favorite writers and discover new and exciting stories.
In the era of fake news, Truthout’s intensely researched, fact-checked and informed work sets us apart. In 2018, the news trustworthiness app, NewsGuard, gave Truthout a perfect score noting that we adhere “to all nine of NewsGuard’s standards of Credibility and Transparency.”
It’s an election year, but Truthout has no plans to descend into punditry! We will dive into this campaign year with a commitment to engage with substance. We’ll document the candidates’ platforms and actual records on urgent issues. In our new series, “Voting Wrongs,” we’ll expose the injustices that disenfranchise vast numbers of people — and uplift the bold efforts that seek to transform the way the United States does “democracy.”
Meanwhile, we’ll remain conscious that the election isn’t everything. We deeply recognize that we have a responsibility to cover the rest of the news, including the Trump administration’s continuing atrocities, which may be subsumed by buzz about the election. We’ll still pour our attention and resources into covering economic justice, the environment, war and peace, immigration, human rights, racial justice, sexism and reproductive rights, education, and much more. And we will double down on our efforts to seek out change-makers and give them a platform to share their transformative ideas.
In 2020, we also plan to launch several Truthout podcasts, providing additional venues to interview activists, experts and people deeply connected to the crises we face. We hope you’ll help us continue our work by investing in Truthout today. Whether you can give $10 a month or $50,000 a year, you’ll be helping us run an organization that’s making a real difference.
Anna Sutton, Development Director and Ziggy West Jeffery, Publisher
