RIP to Redacted Tonight & RT America - And We Are All Poorer for It
RIP to Redacted Tonight & RT America - And We Are All Poorer for It
When Voices That Challenge Corporate Corruption, Expose Hypocrisy Inconvenient to the Powerful are SILENCED, Only Benefits the Powerful, Who Have One Less Outlet To Worry About
I’ve been watching Redacted Tonight for years; since I got a smart TV and noticed it on my Pluto App. Since before I started aggregating & publishing news. I also used to subscribe to DirectTV and remember watching Redacted on RT America thinking it was WAY funnier than any comedic news show on commercial TV.
This week, Redacted Tonight was just one casualty of the information war happening concurrent to the Ukraine crisis that’s been happening since 2014. On March 2, RT America announced it was shuttering operations, putting hundreds of American voices who routinely challenge narratives out of work, immediately. Specifically, the crew at Redacted plus comedians Natalie McGill, Naomi Karavani, Anders Lee & Jaffer Khan, plus scores of others are affected by this, directly and indirectly.
Shows like On Contact with Chris Hedges, The News with Rick Sanchez, The World According to Jesse and many others were the only semblance even close to a 24-hour TV network where AMERICANS who have legitimate issues with things happening in our country had a platform to express those gripes. For some reason, Spotify also preemptively voluntarily decided to remove the podcasts “Moment of Clarity” by Lee Camp and the RT Podcast “The Politics of Survival with Tara Reade.”
You won’t find them, or voices like theirs, on mega-corporate-owned TV - the 20 companies that control almost all content people see & hear - because they say things that make corporate network execs, and the companies they advertise for - defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, fossil fuel & big box retail - uncomfortable by exposing their corrupt practices, which they try to whitewash with flowery ads.
Our mission at Independent Left Media is, and has been, to amplify voices that call out corruption and corporate hypocrisy, and Redacted was a Crown Jewel in that mix early on, as we ramped up and found more voices to include - no doubt partially inspired by the team at Redacted.
For almost a year, one of the YouTube channels we put on auto-tweet was Redacted Tonight. We tweeted EVERY published segment & episode by the channel as soon as it was available. For receipts, you can search twitter for the phrase - @indleftnews redacted - even before this even launched as a website, we shared a Moment of Clarity video (our site launched on March 12, 2020)
After we changed our name from Progressive News Daily back in September 2020, Lee & Eleanor’s Sunday night livestream raising $$ for the Assange Defense was one of the first SuperChat donations we made as Independent Left News.
This automation also included supporting Lee Camp’s other shows/channels - Moment of Clarity & Government Secrets, plus Eleanor Goldfield’s Common Censored podcast - in our auto-tweet rotation. We also included his posts at leecamp.com and scheerpost.com - in addition to performing standup comedy, Lee really is one of the hardest working people in this business, though few notice or acknowledge it.
We support independent media and amplify voices like these.
We at Independent Left Media, as well as all of the channels in the Indie News Network family of content creators, stand in solidarity with all those who lost their jobs & will continue to amplify their voices as they reemerge, likely on the independent scene. We’ve seen the independent content creator space already step up to voice their outrage & concerns too. Here’s just a small sample…
Lee has started a Patreon to continue his work, Tara has a Substack where you can support her with a one-time or monthly subscription. Share their articles, podcasts & videos if you can’t afford to donate. Please don’t allow these voices to be silenced.
Co-published at leftists.today and indienewsnetwork.substack.com.