Christopher Lynn Hedges was born in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, the son of Thelma Louise (nee Prince) and the Rev. Thomas Havard Hedges, a Presbyterian minister. He grew up in rural Schoharie County, New York, southwest of Albany. He graduated in 1975 from the Loomis Chaffee School, a private boarding school in Windsor, Connecticut. He founded an underground newspaper at the school that was banned by the administration and resulted in his being put on probation.

In 2003, University of Texas classics professor Thomas Palaima wrote an article for the Austin-American Statesman accusing Hedges of plagiarizing Ernest Hemingway in Hedge's 2002 book War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. Palaima said that Hedges had corrected a passage in his first edition of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that was close to Hemingway, and he should have cited the paraphrase in all subsequent editions. Hedges' publisher at the time, PublicAffairs, said it did not believe the passage needed to be cited to Hemingway. The New Republic said that Palaima's allegation had resulted in the passage being reworded. But, after posting the article online, the magazine posted a correction box that read:  "In the original version of this article, The New Republic indicated that PublicAffairs changed the text of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning only after having been alerted by Thomas [Palaima] to the presence of plagiarism. In fact, the wording had been changed months earlier, and an edition with the present language existed at the time of Palaima's e-mail to PublicAffairs. However, there was still no attribution to Hemingway in the new version, despite the obvious similarities in ideas and formulation".  In June 2014, Christopher Ketcham accused Hedges of plagiarism in an article published in The New Republic. Ketcham claims that Hedges plagiarized many writers over his career, including Matt Katz, Naomi Klein, Neil Postman, Ernest Hemingway, along with Ketcham's wife: Petra Bartosiewicz. Hedges, his editors at Truthdig, and his publisher Nation Books denied the claims made by Ketcham. In a response first published by The Real News on June 16, 2014, Hedges noted that Ketcham based his allegations on an unpublished manuscript which the latter man admitted he had never seen and passages that were actually footnoted or sourced. Hedges accused Ketcham and The New Republic (TNR) of malicious intent and character assassination. On the following day (June 17), The New Republic republished Hedges' response along with Ketcham's (and TNR's) response to the counter-allegations made by Hedges.  The Washington Free Beacon reported The New York Times spokesman saying that it "did not have reason to believe Hedges plagiarized in his work for the paper" and had no plans to investigate Hedges for plagiarism. The American Prospect and Salon declined to publish Ketcham's article, and The Nation Institute and Truthdig issued statements dismissing Ketcham's allegations.

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