In a story that was run in Alternet, entitled The Silencing of Dissent on Graduation Day, By Amy Goodman and Chris Hedges, Democracy Now! (May 22, 2003) Hedges' address to the class at Rockford College, Illinois, was cut short by the antics of a handful of the graduating class. Hedges, a long-time War correspondent and Pulitzer Prize-winner, who reports for the New York Times, was soon speaking without a microphone (it was cut). His address had to be curtailed; and out of concerns for his safety he was escorted from the hall by campus police.
In the Goodman/Hedges article, Hedges answered a question about the response of The New York Times in this way: "Well, they're looking into questions of whether I breached protocol in terms of my very pointed statements about the Iraqi War. I mean, that's something that makes them uncomfortable". He goes on to say that he didn't think his book, War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning (on which his address was based) , was a problem for them in itself.
The reader who takes a look at the text of his speech (in The Rockford Register Star Online) will more likely come to the conclusion that the response of his editors was odd and disturbing.
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