The Young Turks Launches Indiegogo Campaign For Cenk Uygur Documentary

Back in 2005, when YouTube consisted of little more than a dude at the zoo, progressive pundit Cenk Uygur launched The Young Turks, a highly critical news program. Seven years later, Uygur’s crowning achievement has amassed over 874 million views thanks to a diligent stream of uploads (the Young Turks channel has over 13 thousand videos posted on it.)

The Young Turks‘ success has allowed Uygur to achieve some mainstream recognition, and he briefly hosted a show on MSNBC in 2010 before moving to Current TV, but the Turkish-American commentator is still striving for more. Production studio Rareform Pictures has launched an Indiegogo campaign to raise money for Mad As Hell, a documentary about Uygur that seeks to juxtapose The Young Turks against mainstream media outlets.

A trailer has already been created for the documentary, which will explore Uygur’s career and The Young Turks‘ rise to YouTube fame (the channel was once signed with Revision3.) Given that things didn’t work out between Uygur and MSNBC, expect the documentary to explore the ways in which the American media controls what reaches our tubes. Also, they got Tom Morello to be in it, so that’s sort of neat.

The director of Mad as Hell is Andrew Napier, who has been involved with The Young Turks for years and is laser-focus on getting the documentary finished. Napier and his associates still need to raise $100,000 for post-production; with 10 days to go, they are still $70,000 short, so if you’re a fan of Uygur and his band of outsiders, you know what to do.

The first trailer for Mad as Hell was released nine months ago, so this one has been a long time in the making. The Young Turks has long been a symbol of how YouTube has the power to change news media, and I for one would love for the Streamy-nominated show to get the recognition it deserves.