One on one with Amy Goodman
Amy Goodman
An estimated 425 people heard Amy Goodman speak.
Calling the diminishing of diverse media voices the “Clear Channeling of America,” Amy Goodman, the petite, but energy-packed host of Democracy Now! took time to talk with the Weather Vane before her rousing speech to an estimated 425 people at Community Mennonite Church Saturday night.
Goodman, invited to Harrisonburg by former EMU student Trent Wagler, is on a 100-city tour promoting her book Exception to the Rulers. Weather Vane co-editor Zachary Kurtz sat down with her in this interview.
Weather Vane: WEMC is the only Virginia radio station broadcasting Democracy Now! What was your reaction when you heard the show was to be cut back?
Amy Goodman: “Well Democracy Now! is a daily, grassroots news program. It airs on over 240 Pacifica radio stations, community stations, college stations, National Public Radio (NPR) stations, on public access TV, PBS, and on both satellite networks. Two to three stations a week are picking us up. We’re very excited about the response to it, so I very much hope it continues in that way.”
WV: Democracy Now! calls itself an independent media outlet. Define “independent.”
AG: We’re not sponsored by corporations. Pacifica Radio was founded 55 years ago by a conscientious objector in WWII, who believed there should be a media outlet not run by corporations that profit from war.
WV: But isn’t your journalistic objectivity compromised by dependence on the support of a special interest group, i.e., the Michael Moore crowd?
AG: What I’m the most astounded by is the tremendous response to the show across the political spectrum. On the NPR stations that Democracy Now! broadcasts on, we’re beating All Things Considered and Morning Edition hands down in fundraising.
Our profession is the only one – journalism – that’s protected by the U.S. constitution, and the reason for that is we’re supposed to be a check and balance on government, not just a megaphone for those in power. And people deeply respond to that.
I just went to Tampa, in Florida. That night we were at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. Twenty-four hundred people came out. Sold out. People were coming up after – soldiers, military families, people in the intelligence community, conservatives, progressives – because conservatives, like progressives, care about corporate control, privacy, an out-of-control war budget, about the livelihoods of people in this country, about people losing their pensions. I don’t think you can classify those in any political way. They’re concerns of everyone.
WV: A Daily News-Record editorial recently charged that Democracy Now! has a “basic” view of the world — that “United States and major corporations cause most of the problems around the globe.” Your comeback?
AG: What was the end of the editorial – what did the editorial call for?
WV: The editorial called for the program to remain [on WEMC].
AG: I really appreciate that, and I think what’s important is to go to where the silence is – that’s our role as journalists – not to win a popularity contest, but to expose what’s going on, wherever it’s happening.
I’ve done a lot of reporting around the world. Tonight I’ll talk about what happened in Timor, one of the great genocides of the twentieth century (in East Timor, which was occupied by the Indonesian military for many years).
Actually, the Mennonite Church played an important role in trying to help the people of Timor. It’s one of the ways I came to know Eastern Mennonite University, because in just covering the Timorese for many years, one of my meetings in Washington I met a group of Timorese who were in this country at the time of the killings, and I asked them what are they doing here, ‘cause it’s rare to meet a Timorese in the United States –
“Oh, we’re students at Eastern Mennonite University,” they said, “We’re part of a conflict resolution class.” And that’s how I came to know and am meeting other people from around the world who were here for conflict studies from places like Nepal and other places.
I think we’re here to cover it all, to cover the good and the bad, to cover what is happening and how people respond to it with a special emphasis on grassroots movements – what people at the grassroots level are doing to better their communities. And that’s, you know, that can be very inspiring, and I think what we’re known for at Democracy Now! is really going to the heart of the story, not to that small circle of pundits that we see on all the rest of the networks who know so little about so much — but comment on the world — but go to where the story is, to the people closest to that story, not asking someone about someone else about someone else who might know something about that, but going to the actual person who is affected or who is involved in a particular activity, and asking them; baring witness. I see that as very much our role.
WV: Why do you think critics say the tone of the show is too negative or even “anti-government?”
AG: I haven’t heard that. The show is growing so fast right now. It also is great for stations, because community radio stations that often, you know, have fundraising drives and rely on community support – the response is incredible. When I go around the country, any station that wants to hold a fundraiser, you know, I’m always supportive of, because we have to support media that is independent.
We’re living in a time of the greatest media consolidation in this country’s history. We’re living in a time when you can have six stations in a town that are all owned by one corporation. I call it “the Clear Channeling of America.” And that’s a threat to democracy.
We need not just many channels, but a diversity of voices, a forum that provides that. And people across the political spectrum feel that way. When Michael Powell, the chair of the FCC (the Federal Communications Commission), changed the rules to launch the greatest media consolidation in this country’s history, he was challenged by senators across the political spectrum – from Trent Lott of Mississippi to Barbara Boxer of California, from conservative to progressive. More than two million people wrote to the FCC, called, and wrote to Congress: “Say no, this is not healthy when a few media magnates, a few media moguls, gobble up all the stations, commercial and noncommercial.” We need to have a diversity of voices.
WV: Part of EMU’s official line is that Democracy Now! is so polarizing that it threatens constructive community dialogue. Might this be a legitimate argument for taking the program off the air?
AG: I haven’t heard that criticism before. I think tonight, the response we’re seeing, the number of people who’ve come out is very encouraging and wonderful.
Democracy Now! is about dialogue. Democracy Now! is deeply committed to peaceful resolutions to conflict and bringing out the voices of people who work on those issues, and I think the response around the country as we travel around the country testifies to that.
One of the responses we get the most is precisely the opposite – that it encourages dialogue. I just came from Boston, where the Veterans for Peace gave us their highest award, an honor. And just a few weeks before that, the Unitarian Universalists held their international convention, the Global Church, in Long Beach, and they gave us the highest prize. Democracy Now! won the Wilton Peace Prize. And I think the reason for that is because of our commitment to giving voice to so many who – around the globe – to providing level playing fields for people to have discussions and debates, and I think the fact that we won the highest awards in journalism – the George Polk Award, for our investigation of U.S. oil companies in the Niger Delta, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for international reporting, the Radio-Television News Directors’ Award for that documentary, the award from Associated Press and United Press International. We’re very proud of the honors, and most importantly, feel a tremendous responsibility – in our daily work – to bring the best program we can to listeners and viewers around the country and around the world.
WV: Would you care to speculate on what has caused several EMU donors to complain about this program?
AG: I don’t know. It flies in the face of our experience in other places – of everywhere – so I’m not sure what that’s about, at all. Democracy Now! is a very important show at a time like now, precisely because it provides that forum for people to discuss and to dialogue, and that it goes not to the political elite, not just to the political elite – of course we broadcast, you know, those in Washington, and who, and all the political parties – but also the response of people in every community. That’s our real commitment and I think that’s what distinguishes us.
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