Les Hinton

Former CEO of Dow Jones, Independent

Search every verified Les Hinton interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Les Hinton, the former CEO of Dow Jones and a longtime lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch, has been promoting his debut thriller novel, "Dying Days," which was released in November 2025. In interviews, Hinton said the novel is about a mysterious group that sets out to kill leading journalists and media proprietorsichel. He described the book as an "accidental thriller" and said it was inspired by his 50 years of experience in the media business, focusing on the declining trust in media and the "blizzard of social media, crazy lunatic lies" that he said makes it difficult for people to know what to believe. Hinton also discussed his earlier career, recounting how he was the first journalist on the scene of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen's deaths in 1978 at the Chelsea Hotel in New York. In other recent appearances, Hinton has commented on the state of journalism and technology. He said that the spread of misinformation through social media has created a "fog" that allows people to be misled, and that the hostility toward journalists and the reduced credibility of what they do is a danger to healthy societies. Hinton also discussed artificial intelligence, stating that computer models may "overtake us quite soon" and that society needs to think about how to control something more intelligent than humans. He has defended Fox News, arguing that it is a "devotedly Trumpian operation" but that CNN is "as fiercely anti-Trump as Fox is fiercely pro-Trump," and said he finds it difficult to get a "proper coherent balance of information" in New York due to the political divide.