David Marr didn’t win many new friends among the press during his two years hosting the ABC’s Media Watch .

But the doyen of progressive Australia journalism was subjected to an unexpectedly harsh character assessment at an event in Sydney on Monday night.

Pulitzer Prize-winning war reporter Chris Hedges called Marr a “piece of shit”.

“Australia produces some of the greatest journalists of our era – Julian Assange, John Pilger,” Hedges said at the NSW Teachers Federation conference centre in Surry Hills.

“But let’s be honest, they also produce some of the worst. Including the last half hour I spent being lynched by David Marr on ABC.”

Hedges, a former Middle East correspondent for The New York Times , is a fervent critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and what he says is the Western m

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