Mehdi Hasan sounds off
"The media is too timid, too cautious, too cowardly."
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Mehdi Hasan thinks elite media institutions are failing us, which is why he founded Zeteo, an “independent and unfiltered” news and commentary site that has grown exponentially since its debut earlier this year.
“Zeteo in many ways is a media company that’s built on media criticism,” he told us, describing his publication as “an alternative to the US media’s weak coverage of Trump’s fascism and racism.”
Mehdi is still doing his trademark hard-hitting interviews — the grilling of Jill Stein he published yesterday is a must-watch — and he’s also assembled a team of contributors who help him cover everything from the war in Gaza to the threat of Trumpian authoritarianism and the media’s struggle to deal with it.
“We’ve been presented with a man who is so brazenly, manifestly, demonstrably, undeniably, objectively unfit for any office — the fucking school board, let alone the presidency of the United States. And yet political correspondents cannot compute, cannot bring themselves to absorb and acknowledge that fact out loud,” he told us. “Therefore, we pretend that he’s a normal candidate, or even if he’s not a normal candidate, we must treat him in a normal way. That is what breaks the entire model.”
Public Notice contributor Thor Benson connected with Hasan last week to talk about why he launched Zeteo, coverage of the 2024 election, his complex view of Biden’s presidency, and much more. A transcript of the conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Thor Benson