It’s
official: Amy Goodman has become a celebrity. Touring the country to promote
her new book, The Exception to the
Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them (cowritten by her brother, David), the host of the independent news program Democracy Now! is frequently confronted
by thousands of fans.
Democracy Now! has achieved
notoriety for airing frank discussions with wide-ranging sources on such hot
topics as media consolidation, the Bush Administration’s approach to foreign
policy, the peace movement, and so much more. But even before there was a W.
Bush Administration, Goodman was transmitting foreign policy stories seldom
seen in mass media; in particular, her 1991 reports of the Indonesian
military’s bloody occupation of East Timor.
In
Rochester, Democracy Now! has also
achieved notoriety for where it isn’t. The local activist group Metro Justice
has been working to get the program aired on WXXI. And those efforts, so far,
have been unsuccessful. Station officials simply say the program doesn’t meet
XXI’s standards for balance and objectivity.
“As
long as you’re not advocating for the establishment it’s seen as advocacy,”
Goodman says. “Advocate for the establishment and it’s seen as objective
reporting. I think we simply have to be honest. Reporters have points of view.
But our job is to be fair and accurate.”
To
preview Goodman’s October 17 talk at the Metro Justice Annual Dinner, we spoke
with her about the Democracy Now! approach to news reporting and XXI’s refusal to air her program. An edited
transcript of that conversation follows.
City:As your book tour has taken you across the
country, have you been able to assess any sort of political pulse among the
people you’ve encountered?
Goodman: It’s been
absolutely amazing. Thousands of people are coming out. And the kind of people
who come out, it’s very much across the political spectrum. Military families,
soldiers…. I really think what’s happening now is a breakdown of political
categories. People across the political spectrum care about corporate control.
They care about people losing their pensions, an out-of-control war budget,
issues of privacy like the USA Patriot Act.
We
drew 1,500 people in Minneapolis, where we work with an independent bookstore
and the community radio station. The bookstore is Louise Erdrich’s, the Native
American writer. And she said the book was hotter than Potter.
City:Whether you’ve liked it or not, you’ve
managed to achieve, through the radio program and the book, a certain degree of
celebrity. And I wonder how you feel that jibes with your role as a journalist.
Goodman: Well, I think
it’s just a testament to how hungry people are for independent voices. Not
finding weapons of mass destruction exposed more than the Bush Administration.
It exposed a media that alleged the same thing; that acted as a conveyor belt
for the lies of the administration.
We
have a chapter in our book called “Lies of our Times,” that’s the New York
Times. We went through the front-page drumbeat stories alleging weapons of
mass destruction. We did the “scoops” and the “oops” on each one of them. The Times did it recently in a little box on
page A10. That’s not enough. They need to do it as many times on the front page
as these stories appeared, because the lies take lives. They really paved the
way for war.
City: When you come to Rochester, you’re going to be speaking to
the local activist organization Metro Justice, which is working to get your
program on our local PBS affiliate. These are your fans. How are you able to go
beyond this and reach folks who may not know you exist, or people who disagree
with the viewpoints presented on your show?
Goodman: The response
we get from all over the country is not coming from the so-called usual
suspects. We get calls from everywhere. Public radio typically attracts a very
white, well-off audience. And we’re turning that formula on its head. We’re
very much diversifying that audience. And I think it’s becoming a model, and
that’s why NPR (National Public Radio) stations are picking us up. We’re doing
it just by reaching across the political spectrum.
City: Consumers of media are still extremely polarized. A lot of
people who watch Fox News may not even know “Democracy Now!” exists. Is there
no common place for public discourse anymore?
Goodman: I think there
is. I think Democracy Now! provides
that common ground. I think people who watch the networks, who watch Fox, do
watch or listen to Democracy Now!. I
really do. The level of frustration now, the hunger for independent
information, I think we’re not talking about a fringe minority or a silent
majority. It’s the silenced majority silenced by the corporate media. So there
is a lot of common ground there.
As
I was saying, the number of people who have lost their pensions as corporate
CEOs bankrupt companies but still make a fortune themselves…. More than 1,000
US servicemen and women dead in Iraq…. People across the political spectrum
care about this stuff. And we’re not glossing over these stories. I’m not for
reality TV; but, when it comes to war, I think we need reality media.
City: There’s a lot of reluctance, though, to present images of
the war in Iraq. And much of that is based on reasons of taste.
Goodman: That’s
interesting. We did an interview on Democracy
Now! with Aaron Brown, the CNN host, and he talked about taste.
The
issue isn’t whether the pictures are tasteless. War is tasteless. It’s not up
to us to say “This is not in good taste.” If they continue to sanitize the
photos…. I mean, what would have ended the Vietnam War? You know the famous
picture of the woman burning with napalm? It’s our job to show it. Go to where
the silence is to reflect what’s going on.
City:This is something you talk about in the
documentary “Independent Media in a Time of War.” In that documentary and
elsewhere you’ve been very critical of mainstream media. But I’ve noticed
“Democracy Now!” occasionally practices “rip and read” — reiterating news
reports from outlets like the Washington Post or the LA Times. These are
some of the very same institutions you’ve been critical of. How do you justify
that?
Goodman: Well, we take
each story and look at it. We are not saying that the New York Times never does a good investigation, or the Washington Post, you might as well throw
it out. We don’t say that. There are a number of reports that are very
important in these publications.
What
matters, though, is the drumbeat coverage. It’s what they do on a daily basis
that sinks into peoples’ consciousness. What’s on the front page headlines day
after day, what people start repeating to their friends….
We
encourage people to read from the bottom up: from the back of the newspaper to
the front and from the bottom of an article to the top. But there’s so much
that’s there that we feel is important to highlight. We feel these publications
have a tremendous effect, so we report on what they’re reporting.
City: Do you do any fact checking of the stories you report on
from other media?
Goodman: Well, we do
as much as we can. What we can do is attribute. I mean, if there’s a story that
someone has exposed, we do attribution. And we do our own investigations as
well.
City: Alternative media have always lagged far behind the
mainstream when it comes to resources. What methods do you think can be used
— and what methods has “Democracy Now!” used — to level the playing field?
Goodman: Well, first of
all, it’s not just a matter of resources. It’s who you turn to for information.
There’s the small circle of pundits we watch on the networks and read in the
papers who are quoted all the time, who know so little about so much. We’ve
just broadened that circle to people who are closest to the story. These are
just the basic principles of good journalism. Sometimes all it takes is some
good phone reporting, where you start finding, instead of the pundit, the
person who is affected or who has written the policy. So that’s what we do.
The
media has reached an all-time low right now. The embedding process has really
corrupted American journalism. You have hundreds of reporters on the front
lines with the troops. Where are they in the Iraqi communities, hospitals, or
the peace movement around the world to show the full ramifications of war?
City: You’ve been mobilizing reporters out to some of these
non-embedded areas….
Goodman: And the
response to that from the mainstream media has been interesting. We’re called
all the time by the biggest shows on the biggest networks. “Where did you get
that?” All the time. Journalists are a big audience. And our motto is: Steal
this story, please. We don’t enjoy getting the Project Censored awards. It’s a
very dubious distinction: stories that had the least effect on the world.
City:Metro Justice has been working to get your
show aired on our local PBS affiliate. The station addressed this with its
Community Advisory Board over the summer, and I’d like to have you comment on
some of the things station officials said about “Democracy Now!” in their
meeting.
One of the
statements made was that “Democracy Now! is a Pacifica program hosted by Amy
Goodman, and Pacifica claims to be an independent form of media that’s
anti-Republican.”
Goodman: We don’t side
with either major political party. That’s not our job. We’re not for them or
against them. We report on them.
City:Why do you think WXXI would have the
impression that you’re anti-Republican?
Goodman: If you look
at my book, the inside jacket has some interesting quotes. The first is from
former President Bill Clinton: “Hostile, combative, and even disrespectful.”
And then there’s former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: “I’ve advised my mother to
talk to no reporters because of you.” Indonesian military called me a threat to
national security.
We’re
reporters. We’re not entertainers. We don’t cozy up to power. Our job is to go
where the silence is.
City:One of the other statements made is that
“Democracy Now! admits host Amy Goodman has a political agenda and that the
content of her program is driven by that agenda.” They add that you are “not
able to present all sides of an issue” and that you’re “driving the content
because of a political bias.”
Goodman: I just wonder
if they’ve listened to or watched the program. The program has won the highest
awards in journalism. It has won awards from the Society of Professional
Journalists, the AP, UPI, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting….
City:They go on to say that “Amy Goodman was
recently arrested in an anti-war protest in front of the White House for
participating in the demonstration.”
Goodman: That isn’t
true.
City:WXXI officials say they’ve realized that
isn’t true and they’ve made corrections to the minutes. But why do you think
this incident was so widely misconstrued?
Goodman: There were
not many people there. And there may have been a press release that went out
where the people who wrote it weren’t there.
This
was a small group of women including Alice Walker and Maxine Hong Kingston.
They had gone in front of the White House and had locked arms. I went up to
them with my cell phone and I was calling different radio stations and
interviewing them live on the air: Why are you doing this? Why are you willing
to be arrested?
When
the police started to move in on the protestors, I walked over to the police to
pass the police line. So I was the first one they arrested. But I was very
clear as to who I was. This does happen, and it happens all too often.
City:What kind of impact do you think the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s guidelines for objectivity and balance
have had on public broadcasting?
Goodman: To really
have a discussion about that, I’d have to sit down with you for a while. I
think it’s really important that the media serve a democratic society by
broadcasting a full spectrum of opinion, to have a debate and discussion about
the most important issues of the day.
Years
ago, I went on the Sally Jessie Raphaël show. The biggest response I got was
from women on southern military bases who called to say they never heard a
discussion like this in the media about war.
I
always say in my speeches that I see the media as a huge kitchen table that
stretches across the country. We all sit around it and debate and discuss the
most important issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. And anything
less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and women of this country,
because they say they can’t have these debates on military bases.
I
think it’s very important that we honestly critique the so-called mainstream
media, because I think it has left the mainstream. As I say in the [Independent Media in a Time of War]documentary, of the 393 interviews done
on the four major nightly newscasts as we were leading up to a war in Iraq,
only three were with anti-war representatives. That’s not balanced media.
That’s media beating the drums for war.
City:Yet critics call what you do in representing
these other viewpoints “advocacy journalism.”
Goodman: As long as
you’re not advocating for the establishment it’s seen as advocacy. Advocate for
the establishment and it’s seen as objective reporting. I think we simply have
to be honest. Reporters have points of view. But our job is to be fair and
accurate.
The Metro
Justice Annual Dinner on Saunday, October 17, First Unitarian Church, 220 South
Winton Road, at 6 p.m. (7 p.m. talk) is sold out, but talk-only tickets are
available for $10 by calling 325-2560. For info on the talk or Metro Justice’s
efforts to have Democracy Now! aired
on WXXI, go to www.metrojustice.org. Locally, Democracy Now! can be viewed on
Rochester Community Access TV, Time Warner Cable channel 15, Monday through
Friday from 12 to 1 p.m. Satellite TV subscribers can also view the program: It
airs on channel 9415 of the DISH Network and channel 375 on DirecTV. The
program can also be downloaded for free every weekday from www.democracynow.org
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2004.
