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| Amy Goodman, the fierce voice of independent media. |
| Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Hosted By: The Texas Media Empowerment Project and the Esperanza Peace & Justice Center Fri Oct 20 Lecture 7:30pm Admission: Free and open to the public. Spanish translation provided. Reception: 6-7pm $50 Book signing to follow 922 San Pedro Texasmep.org 228-0201 |
And I won’t send any spinning fiber-optic wands to MSNBC for allowing Keith Olbermann to do essentially the same progressive schtick Phil Donahue was fired for, back when there was no room for anti-war talk in the mainstream ... just three years ago.
It’s suddenly fashionable to take a swing at the Bush piñata. But tireless independent journalist Amy Goodman has been broadcasting dissent and swinging the baton of truth at corporate media and presidential administrations for A DECADE as the host of the radio/TV newshour Democracy Now! — catch it online San Antonio (defy Clear Channel!); or catch Goodman this Friday, when she headlines Ladyfest at the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center.
The stop is part of an 80-city tour for her new book, Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back, co-written with her brother, David (see review, page 10). The Goodmans also penned the 2004 bestseller The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.
Amy, I’ve been aware of your programming since ‘98, when I moved to the Bay Area. You were one of the first broadcasting muckrakers I ever heard. I wonder who were some of your firsts?
I was lucky enough to find at the beginning of my career what people look for their whole careers, and that is independence. That is an absolutely essential ingredient in reporting. I mean, we need a media that is not embedded, whether in the frontlines with troops or in the power elite of this country. We need a media that challenges power, that covers power, not covers for power. That’s what I learned from the beginning, from when I was a kid doing my junior-high-school and high-school newspaper. Then it was taking on the principal and now it’s just on a grander scale. But it’s so important that there be a media that is the fourth estate, not for the state.
Do you think that this has happened, covering for power, because of access issues? You look at Bob Woodward and him just kind of coming around to talk about Bush’s lies. Yet he was able to get a sit-down with Donald Rumsfeld.
As you know, in Static, my brother David and I … talk about the Access of Evil, trading truth for access. You know this is Woodward’s third book on this administration. If only State of Denial were the first book as opposed to Bush at War, because what we have is a media that is acting as a conveyor belt for the lies of the administration.
When it counts is at the beginning … I mean, we knew before the invasion there were enough people that were saying the evidence doesn’t add up around weapons of mass destruction … We’re going to celebrate the 20th anniversary of FAIR `Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting` tonight. They did a crucial study in the lead-up to the invasion that was looking into the four major nightly newscasts, NBC, ABC, CBS, and the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer, in the two weeks around Colin Powell giving that push for war at the United Nations, which was February 5, 2003. They looked at these four major nightly newscasts. There were 393 interviews done around war; only four were with anti-war leaders. Four of almost 400! That’s no longer a mainstream media, that’s an extreme media beating the drums for war … That’s when the media is, as Noam Chomsky says, “manufacturing consent.” Manufacturing consent for war.
Your first book came out when there were an estimated 100,000 Iraqis dead. Now your new book comes out and there’s the new Lancet medical study — 650,000 Iraqis are said to have died since the invasion. What have you learned since that first book?
Well, the lies take lives. When we came out in 2004 with The Exception to the Rulers — which by the way should be the motto of all the media, to be the exception to the rulers — in fact, Lancet had published the first of these studies … And we interviewed Les Roberts, the co-author of that study, at the time. In fact, we had him again today on Democracy Now! for the second study and he said, it’s amazing, `in this country` Democracy Now! was one of the only outlets that interviewed him after that first study. He was interviewed all over the world. Now they’ve come out with the second one, the climate’s a little different, so it’s getting more coverage and the president was asked about it. But what is absolutely critical is that we provide that forum for people to be able to speak out, to have their say, and we were doing it then, as we are doing it today.
My friend told me to ask, are you spending 24 hours in the role of a journalist — which is fine, it’s something I aspire to do also — but what types of things do you do in your spare time?
You mean on planes? What I do in that time when we take off and then we land? `laughing` Oh, I mean I read, and travel, and walk, and run. I think now, in these really critical times, we just need to build independent media every which way all the time … You know on this 80-city tour we’re on we do fundraisers for independent media all over the country and part of our mission at Democracy Now! is to shore up these independent radio and television stations … and that’s how I’m spending my time.
Amy Goodman discusses her future projects, U.S. media coverage of Iran, and being shut out of Texas Public Radio in the full interview online.
Get the full Ladyfest event listing at Texamep.org and the Current calendar
