I have worked at the highest levels of the media as a full-time correspondent for 60 Minutes, chief Foreign correspondent for CBS News, chief Foreign Affairs correspondent for CBS News. That was my home for 16 years. And as a journalist, I have sat down with world leaders, mass murderers and terrorists, and I have held people on both sides of the aisle accountable.
I have seen suffering and I have faced evil, and I have walked through the fires of hell on distant battlefields. I faced my own death at the hands of a mob of some 200 men in Egypt when I was gang raped and sodomized and beaten almost to death while on assignment for 60 minutes.
And yet for almost a decade, I have been targeted and falsely branded and accused of many things that I did not do. They have attacked my work, my character, my sanity, and my marriage. And I am not alone. We are many and we will not give up, and we will not give in to those who wish to censor the idea of free speech. In America and all over the world, media companies, institutions, and journalism schools have failed all of us. And for too long we have allowed nonprofit organizations to masquerade as nonpartisan media watchdogs, when in fact they are a little more than highly paid political propagandists and assassins, whose entire reason for being is to crush anyone who stands in their way.
And along with them, the long held and cherished ideas of free speech, free thinking, and free minds. This is a blood sport for them. Their political allies and their puppet masters. They know how to kill a journalist without murdering them. We call it cancel culture. In truth, it is a death sentence and they get away with it because they have information dominance. Some are strong enough to survive, but only a few like Glenn Greenwald, Tucker Carlson, Matt Taibbi, only a few like them are able to reach greater heights and thrive. These nonprofits that I'm talking about are part of a vast censorship network that includes government agencies. They use deception to mask their actions with lofty goals like preventing the spread of misinformation, disinformation hate speech. They use phrases like protecting democracy. And make no mistake, words matter. The media is collaborating with government agencies and operatives to censor and shape the information battlefield to justify certain actions.