The release of the report, submitted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that offered details to support U.S. officials’ claims that Russian interference had tainted the recent American presidential election was treated by many news sources as a major development and further justification for treating the Kremlin, not to mention the incoming Donald Trump administration, with suspicion.

Several alternative media sources, including this one, have also wound up on the receiving end of censure and what Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges considers a kind of McCarthyism for questioning prevailing media and government narratives and for continuing to demand concrete proof of Russian intervention.

On this week’s episode of “On Contact With Chris Hedges,” journalists Abby Martin and Ben Norton join Hedges for a wide-ranging discussion about troubling shifts away from fact-based reporting and governance—as well as the potential costs of insisting that, as Norton put it, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”