Exclusive: Journalist Mehdi Hasan on Trump’s threats to the press, why he founded Zeteo, reporting on Hamas, & more

“I am actually feeling quite good about not being in corporate media in a year like this,” says journalist Mehdi Hasan, who quit his over 24-year career as a mainstream journalist to start his own news media company Zeteo.

In an exclusive conversation with Sreenivasan Jain in Zeteo’s studio in Washington DC, Hasan says the 9-month-old company’s success speaks to the crises in American media. “The number of subscribers we have had... That is a reaction from people who are saying they are fed up with the corporate media, we want independent journalism.”  

Hasan, a fierce critic of Donald Trump, warns of the threat a second Trump presidency poses to not just the free press, but  democracy in America.  “Trump, we know, wants to use the IRS, the tax division in the US, the SEC, to go after his opponents. It kills me that so many Americans don't see it coming.” Hasan himself has been subjected to public threats: “The Trump people have openly called out my name and threatened me”, he said, referring to a tweet by Mike Davis – “once I am the attorney general, the first thing I would do is send Mehdi Hassan to Guantanamo Bay [detention camp]. This is the stuff they say openly.”      

From the not-so-hidden ways in which the Israeli lobby has made itself influential, especially in the world of American media, to the ethical complexities of reporting on Hamas, Jain and Hasan discuss the state of the media (and more) in one of the most important years in recent times, with a devastating war in Gaza, and a crucial election in America.  

Watch the exclusive interview here.