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Interview

Amy Goodman

As host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over eight hundred TV and radio stations in North America, and author of a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column, Amy Goodman has become the figurehead of independent media. The Imagineer talked with Amy Goodman about conglomerate control of media, how it is affecting American democracy, and what she is doing to bring the media back to the public.

Conducted by Alexander D. Farris & C. James Block

Imagineer: What is Democracy Now!?

Goodman: Democracy Now! began in 1996 as the only daily election broadcast in the United States. We aired on a few dozen community radio stations as part of Pacifica Radio. I thought it would just go until the election, but after Bill Clinton was elected, people wanted Democracy Now! more than before the election. Our idea was to go from primary state to primary state and talk to people about why so many people do not vote in the United States. In other countries, it is much different. When I was in places like Haiti and East Timor before Democracy Now! started, I saw people who were willing to die to go to the polls, yet they still went and voted. In our country, where it is much safer to vote, people just do not even bother. I did not think it was because of apathy. I thought it was because people thought they did not have a choice, and I wanted to find out why. It was really about giving a voice to the grassroots.
    The show kept growing. More radio stations kept taking us, and right around September 11, 2001, the local public-access television station in New York City asked us if they could broadcast the show on television. I said that it would be O.K. so long as they did not interfere with the sound, because it was a radio show and sound was very important. We started broadcasting right around September 11, 2001, and the show went on as the closest national broadcast to Ground Zero. More television stations asked if they could run us across the country, and soon we began shipping our VHS tapes. Before you know it, it is now fourteen years after we began broadcasting Democracy Now!, and we are broadcasting on over eight hundred stations, television and radio, throughout the United States, Europe, Scandinavia, and Japan. And it continues to grow!

Imagineer: Democracy requires the people to be informed so they can intelligently participate in government. Given this, how do you feel that the mainstream media are informing the public, and how does this affect our democracy?

Goodman: Well, information is really the currency of a democracy, and that is why independent media are so important, not brought to you by weapons manufactures, not brought to you by large pharmaceutical companies, not brought to you by big oil and gas corporations, but brought to you by the consumers of the information, the citizens. That is how Pacifica Radio began sixty-one years ago. That is the principle we embody and continue to internalize and operate on as we grow. It is essential.
    My colleagues and I were at the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and we were arrested as we were covering the protests outside. My two colleagues were detained, and I went to make sure they were freed. The police arrested me too. We were among forty reporters who were arrested. That is a threat to a democratic society, when reporters are beaten, arrested, or detained. It is not merely a violation of freedom of the press, but it is a flagrant abuse of all citizens’ rights to know. When reporters are harassed, it makes it more difficult to get out information.
    We have to support independent media every way possible. Even though there are hundreds of channels, mainly they are owned by a handful of corporations, so it does not bring you the diversity you would think. Independent media are brought to the public by the listeners and viewers of the information, and that is as it should be.

Imagineer: What effects has conglomerate control of large portions of the media had on the quality and value of mainstream journalism?

Goodman: I think it has compromised that journalism. These corporations that own and run the media do not give the kind of drum-beat coverage that we should have on the key issues of the day. When you have media that are brought to you by weapons manufactures—General Electric, for example, owns NBC and MSNBC, in addition to being one of the top defense industry contractors—it is less likely that you will bring out a full airing of the opinions on war.
    On the issue of health insurance, when the health insurance companies invest millions of dollars into the media networks, it is less likely you will have a discussion about the alternatives to the private healthcare industry. Rarely in the corporate media do you see a proponent, let alone a representative, of single-payer healthcare. That is not an unusual idea. It is the way most of the industrialized world provides healthcare. It ensures that people have free access to healthcare. It is sort of like education. We accept in this country that kids should be able to go to school. In fact, we require that kids go to school. We think it is that important to the functioning of a democratic society. Most other countries put healthcare in that same category, but the United States does not. Most people in America would not know how alone we are in saying that healthcare is the province of the few, of the people who can afford it. If you cannot afford it, well, that’s life—or death.
    When you look at the number of times the issue of single-payer or Medicare for All was raised in the media during the recent healthcare debate, it is just a handful of times. They almost never invite on a single-payer representative, even though polls indicate that when explained, most people prefer that kind of national healthcare system. You take the middlemen, the moneychangers, out of the system.
        On the topic of war, the coverage is horrific. We have less coverage of war, yet people are continuing to die—U.S. soldiers, NATO soldiers, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis. The surge in Afghanistan, Obama’s war, has increasingly resulted in civilian deaths, and this is what is not front-page news on the surviving newspapers or on the cable channels. When an Afghan or Iraqi dies, we hardly even know their names, and that is what matters. I think there is nothing more important to cover when a country is at war than that war. What more serious decision could a president make than to send young men and women off to kill and be killed?
    In our country, the media pretty much represent a spectrum of opinion between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. But that is not the majority of people in this country. I think most people fall outside that very narrow spectrum, and I think most people are opposed to the wars. I am not talking about a fringe minority or a silent majority but the silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media, which is why we have to take it back.

Imagineer: Media have been changing significantly not only in respect to corporate takeovers but also the rise of the internet and the information age. Where do you think the future of media lies?

Goodman: Media are changing all the time. The internet is very important. Corporations have been managing globalization for a long time, but the internet provides a place for grassroots globalization. It is very important that we keep the internet in public hands and not let it be privatized. It should be open and free. We must preserve net neutrality, as it is called. Corporations, especially the cable and telephone companies, would like nothing better than to privatize the internet. They want to write the legislation that would take it away from the public commons. I think we have to fight against that, because it is so critical to communicating around the world. We have to preserve the internet as a form of communication among all of us across the globe.
    Our newspapers are changing. Many have closed down. I think it is partly because of the internet and changing technologies, but I also think that they have been the gatekeepers for a long time and have only let out a very narrow spectrum of opinion. Now that people have access to a broader spectrum, they are challenging the corporate media that have brought them so little for so long. We continue to see the pundits on the networks who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.
    I do not know where it will go, but I know Democracy Now! continues to grow. We are multiplatform on radio, television, and the internet as a means to provide a broad discussion about the critical issues of the day, like war and peace, life and death. We have to ensure that these platforms not only continue but expand in the public’s hands.

Next: My Thug of Night

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