Today, I’m stepping down from The Intercept to focus on building Field of Vision, which marks its second year of commissioning and creating short-form visual journalism.
I am thankful to The Intercept viewers who have embraced our films. The Field of Vision archive and new films will move to our website at www.fieldofvision.org.
I joined First Look Media in 2013 to commission and produce nonfiction films, and I am excited to expand that work. Field of Vision will remain part of the nonprofit journalism mission of First Look Media, alongside The Intercept. While we will continue to collaborate with The Intercept on stories, Field of Vision will also expand its partnerships with other news organizations and distribution platforms internationally.
The mission of Field of Vision will remain the same — to commission filmmakers to respond quickly to global events through cinema. I believe deeply in the power of images to transform how we understand the world. In our first year, our films included a six-part series about Syrian refugees and a behind-the-scenes look at the student protests at the University of Missouri.
I’m deeply thankful to Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Betsy Reed for their leadership at The Intercept. I believe The Intercept fulfills an essential adversarial role in the landscape of U.S. journalism, and I’m proud to have been a part of it.
IT’S EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT.
What we’re seeing right now from Donald Trump is a full-on authoritarian takeover of the U.S. government.
This is not hyperbole.
Court orders are being ignored. MAGA loyalists have been put in charge of the military and federal law enforcement agencies. The Department of Government Efficiency has stripped Congress of its power of the purse. News outlets that challenge Trump have been banished or put under investigation.
Yet far too many are still covering Trump’s assault on democracy like politics as usual, with flattering headlines describing Trump as “unconventional,” “testing the boundaries,” and “aggressively flexing power.”
The Intercept has long covered authoritarian governments, billionaire oligarchs, and backsliding democracies around the world. We understand the challenge we face in Trump and the vital importance of press freedom in defending democracy.
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
IT’S BEEN A DEVASTATING year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
I’M BEN MUESSIG, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief. It’s been a devastating year for journalism — the worst in modern U.S. history.
We have a president with utter contempt for truth aggressively using the government’s full powers to dismantle the free press. Corporate news outlets have cowered, becoming accessories in Trump’s project to create a post-truth America. Right-wing billionaires have pounced, buying up media organizations and rebuilding the information environment to their liking.
In this most perilous moment for democracy, The Intercept is fighting back. But to do so effectively, we need to grow.
That’s where you come in. Will you help us expand our reporting capacity in time to hit the ground running in 2026?
We’re independent of corporate interests. Will you help us?
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