Christopher Lynn Hedges (født 18. september 1956) er en amerikansk journalist, forfatter, kommentator og presbyteriansk prest. Han var utenrikskorrespondent for The New York Times i 15 år og mottok Pulitzer Prize for sitt arbeid.
I sin tidlige karriere jobbet Hedges som frilans krigskorrespondent i Mellom-Amerika for The Christian Science Monitor, NPR og The Dallas Morning News. Hedges arbeidet for The New York Times fra 1990 til 2005. Han var byråsjef for Midtøsten-kontoret, senere byråsjef for Balkan-kontoret under krigene i det tidligere Yugoslavia. Hedges bidro til artiklene om global terrorisme som The New York Times mottok Pulitzer Prize for i 2002.
The New York Times
In 1990, Hedges was hired by The New York Times. He covered the first Gulf War for the paper, where he refused to participate in the military pool system that restricted the movement and reporting of journalists. He was arrested by the United States Army and had his press credentials revoked, but continued to defy the military restrictions to report outside the pool system. Hedges subsequently entered Kuwait with U.S. Marine Corps members who were distrustful of the Army's press control. Within The New York Times, R.W. Apple Jr. supported Hedges's defiance of the pool system.
Hedges, along with Neal Conan, was taken prisoner in Basra after the war by the Iraqi Republican Guard during the Shiite uprising. He was freed after a week. Hedges was appointed the paper's Middle East Bureau Chief in 1991. His reporting on the atrocities committed by Saddam Hussein in the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq saw the Iraqi leader offer a bounty for anyone who killed Hedges, along with other western journalists and aid workers in the region. Several aid workers and journalists, including the German reporter Lissy Schmidt, were assassinated and others were severely wounded.
Hedges produced a weekly column for Truthdig for 14 years until the outlet's hiatus in 2020. His books include War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction; American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007); Death of the Liberal Class (2010); and Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (2012), written with cartoonist Joe Sacco. Hedges writes a weekly column at Scheerpost and hosts the program The Chris Hedges Report.