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Amy Goodman is the host, executive producer and co-founder of Democracy Now!
THE BACK STORY: My sister Amy and I have written books and articles together but we’ve only occasionally interviewed one another. With the release of a wonderful new documentary film about Amy, it was time to have her back for a very special The Vermont Conversation, a podcast of VTDigger.
For thirty years, journalist Amy Goodman has been “going to where the silence is” to report stories that the powerful would rather you not know about and the corporate media has often ignored. She has stared down armed soldiers in Nigeria, survived a massacre in East Timor, documented dogs attacking indigenous pipeline protesters in North Dakota, and been manhandled and arrested while covering the 2008 Republican National Convention.
Amy is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, the award-winning independent daily news program that she co-founded in 1996. She is also my sister and media hero. We have co-authored four bestselling books together. She is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.”
Now a new documentary film, Steal This Story, Please!, traces Amy’s career and the growth of Democracy Now! from a radio broadcast on nine stations into one of the leading U.S.-based independent daily news broadcasts in the world on television, radio and online. The film is directed by Oscar-nominated filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin. This week, Steal This Story Please! premieres in Vermont in Burlington, Brattleboro, St. Johnsbury and Montpelier.
Following is a transcript of our Vermont Conversation, edited for length and clarity.
David Goodman
Thirty years ago I remember you telling me that you were starting a new show covering the 1996 presidential election, when President Bill Clinton ran against Bob Dole and Ross Perot. You figured this was going to be a 10 month gig, an election show, and then you’d go back to being news director at WBAI, the legendary community radio station in New York City. What did you set out to do differently that wasn’t being done?
Amy Goodman
I got a call from Pacifica Radio while I was in Haiti and there were elections going on there. People who went out to vote sometimes could be gunned down. But the vast majority of people still voted. When I got the call to host the only daily election show in public broadcasting, I thought people in the United States don’t risk anything like that, yet most people didn’t vote, so why would I come back to do that? I didn’t think people were apathetic. I was curious to follow the primaries and go state by state and look at what people were doing in their communities. Because of airing those authentic grassroots voices, there was more demand for the show after the election than before. We don’t bring you the pundits who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. We bring you the people closest to the story. That authentic real voice, especially for young people who sense authenticity, just built an audience that was so devoted.
David Goodman
People think you got into this to be a muckraking journalist, but I know that your real dream in journalism was that you wanted to work for the Phil Donahue Show, which was a forerunner to Oprah. Tell us what drew you to Phil Donahue. He was actually a lot more than just a lightweight daytime talk show host.
Amy Goodman
That’s right, but you’re so modest that you’re not going to ask me to go further back. When I was 10 and you were 8, I went to work for Dave’s Press. That was your newspaper. I was the business manager and the one who would dun the family to pay their subscriptions.
David Goodman
I have waited 60 years for Dave’s Press to go viral and I knew that someday the moment would come. Little did I know that it would be my business manager who did that.
Amy Goodman
It was a wonderful way to start my journalistic aspirations, that my younger brother would be the one to inspire me. We fought out the issues of the day, our entire extended family with our aunts, uncles, grandparents, and letters to the editor page. Grandpa would write in and say, “I love you very much, but I disagree with your views on war.” And you wrote back as the editor in chief of the paper, “Dear Grandpa, Thank you for being my first subscriber, but your views on war are stupid.” That was the kind of erudite analysis you would share with your readers.
Amy’s letter to the editor in Dave’s Press, 1968.
David Goodman
I like to think that we pioneered speaking truth to power.
Amy Goodman
Moving forward… When I was in college, I used to watch the Phil Donahue Show, because I really was taken with Phil. Sure, he had a lot of sensational shows, but he also dealt with a lot of very important issues early on, whether he was one of the first to talk about AIDS, or talking about nuclear weapons. I was just glued to the set. I got all the names of all the credits at the end of the Phil Donahue show and I sent them my very thin resume, and I told them I was looking forward to being Phil Donahue’s producer. Clearly they weren’t impressed. They actually called me a few weeks later and said, Have you gotten a job yet? And I said no. They said, Would you be able to join us tomorrow? Because we’re doing a show on the unemployed, and we’d like you to be in the audience. Well, let’s just say I was devastated. But I thank Phil, because that really led me to find what my life mission and my passion has been, and that is independent media.
David Goodman
I thought you were going to say he laughed harder than anybody in the room.
Amy Goodman
He felt terrible, but I truly thank him because I found WBAI, which was Pacifica Radio, which was founded in 1949 by a war resistor, Lew Hill. He said there’s got to be a media outlet, not run by corporations that profit from war, but run by journalists and artists, and that’s how Pacifica was born. KPFA in Berkeley, KPFK in Los Angeles in 1959, my station WBAI in New York, in 1960, where James Baldwin would debate Malcolm X over the effectiveness of nonviolent civil disobedience, Jazz and Justice Radio, WPFW in Washington, and KPFT in Houston, that was born in 1970. Within a few weeks KPFT was blown up by the Ku Klux Klan. When they got back on their feet a few weeks later, the Klan strapped 15 tons of dynamite to the base of the transmitter and blew it up again right in the middle of Arlo Guthrie singing Alice’s Restaurant, which I thought was a good song. I can’t remember if it was the Exalted Cyclops or the Grand Dragon of the KKK, because I often confuse their titles, but he said it was his proudest act. I think that’s because he understood how dangerous independent media is, dangerous because it allows people to speak for themselves. When you hear someone speaking from their own experience, whether it’s a Palestinian child or an Israeli grandmother, whether it’s an uncle in Afghanistan, it breaks down stereotypes and caricatures that fuel these hate groups. The media can be the greatest force for peace on earth. Instead, all too often it’s wielded as a weapon of war, which is why we have to take the media back.
Amy Goodman covering indigenous protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in Standing Rock, North Dakota, in 2016.
David Goodman
Talk about the role that our Jewish background has played in your approach.
Amy Goodman
Our grandfather, Benjamin Bock, who we called Zaidi, was an Orthodox rabbi. He ran the Crown Heights Yeshiva. He and our grandmother came to the United States to flee the pogroms. Those in the family who didn’t leave, a number of them died in the Holocaust. Our grandmother Sonia Bock was born in 1897 and she was a woman of three centuries. She lived until she was 108 and died in Brooklyn. She was a remarkable woman. She inspired me, as our other grandparents did, to question. That’s what our family dinners were. That’s how we grew up, to question everything.
David Goodman
An inflection point in your life came in 1991 when you survived a massacre in East Timor. Few people had ever even heard of East Timor unless they’d read Noam Chomsky, the great social critic and linguist, who was one of the few people writing about this place where a genocide was underway. What happened there and how did it change you and influence everything you’ve done since?
Amy Goodman
I went to East Timor in 1990 and 1991 with my colleague, journalist Allan Nairn. What we found was a true hell on earth. It was 300 miles above Australia. It was occupied by Indonesia, which invaded East Timor on December 7, 1975. Ninety percent of their weapons were from the United States, and the Indonesian army was trained, financed, and armed by the United States. They killed off a third of the population of East Timor, 200,000 people. When we went there in 1991, there was supposed to be a UN delegation that was going to come to investigate the human rights situation. We later learned it was at the behest of the United States that that delegation never came. People dropped out of workplaces, their homes, their schools, so that they would be able to talk to the delegation. When the delegation was canceled, they had no place to turn. It was November 12, 1991, that we heard there was going to be a march from the main Catholic Church in Dili, the capital of East Timor, to the Santa Cruz cemetery, where so many young people were buried. People unfurled banners from their Catholic school blouses that they had hidden away. They appealed to President George H.W. Bush, they pleaded for someone to care. And they marched to the cemetery. We were interviewing people, asking them why they were willing to risk their lives. And at the cemetery, we saw the Indonesian soldiers carrying their US M-16 rifles at the ready position, marching up 10 to 12 abreast.
Allan and I decided to walk to the front of the crowd. We thought maybe we could stop this attack just by our presence as Western journalists. I held up my microphone like a flag. Allan put the camera above his head and we stood in the front of the crowd. The soldiers marched up without any warning, without any hesitation, without any provocation. They just passed us and they opened fire on the crowd, gunning people down from right to left. Then a group of soldiers came at me. They beat me to the ground. Allan threw himself on top of me to protect me from further injury. They took their US M-16s and they slammed them against Allan’s skull like baseball bats until they fractured it. Then they put the guns to our heads and they were shouting, “Are you from Australia?” We knew how dangerous that was, because they had executed five Australian journalists were covering the events leading to the invasion 17 years before. We made very clear we were from America. At some point they took the guns from our heads. They would have to pay a price for killing us that they’d never had to pay for killing the Timorese. They killed more than 270 Timorese on that day. It was horrifying beyond belief. It affects me every day to this day. We were able to get into a Red Cross jeep. We were not able to stop that massacre. Dozens of Timorese jumped on top of us to flee this killing field, and we drove like that as a human mass to the hospital.
When we got there, the doctors and nurses started to cry when they saw us, because of what we represent to the people. Western journalists, people from the West, represent both the sword but also the shield. The US all too often either supports human rights-abusing regimes or uses the weapons themselves like they do in Iran right now. But they see the American people as the shield. And that day that shield was bloodied, and it just deepened their despair.
When we got to Washington after Allan was treated at a hospital, we held a news conference in the National Press Club. A nationwide movement grew up in the United States. Eight years later, in 1999, the UN sponsored a referendum, and the people of East Timor voted for their freedom. And in 2002, they became one of the newest nations in the world, the Republic of East Timor. And we were able to go back on that night when they celebrated, and you could see the tear-stained faces of the surviving population looking up at the fireworks display on this day of their independence. They had a lesson to teach us all. We have a decision to make every day, whether we want to represent the sword or the shield.
David Goodman
You have long been warning about the threat of media consolidation about how fewer and bigger corporations are now controlling the media. This week came the incredible development that Paramount is buying Warner Brothers for $110 billion, and with it countless media properties that include CBS and CNN. Do you think the moment we’re in is just a continuation of the struggle that you’ve been talking about, or are we in a new stage of open repression of the media and journalism?
Amy Goodman
I do think it’s a new phase. I think it’s been incremental, but when you have a president who’s calling the media the enemy of the people, and you have the heads of the networks going on bended knee, doing everything they can to please him, rather than be a true fourth estate, which is what will save a democracy, it is a very big problem. This is a real threat to democracy. There’s a reason we have a First Amendment. The most important part of freedom of the press is the public’s right to know. That’s how you have a meaningful democracy. That’s why President Trump is suing media networks right and left, from CBS to NBC to ABC.
These are very serious times, but I have great hope. We just celebrated our 30th anniversary at Democracy Now at the Riverside Church in Harlem. It was packed with 2000 people. We wrapped up with Bruce Springsteen singing Streets of Minneapolis, and then all the musicians came up on the stage and sang Patty Smith’s iconic song, People Have the Power. That really is the theme of Democracy Now! The idea that movements matter, that we have to go to where the silence is as journalists. It’s often not silent -- it’s raucous, it’s rowdy, people are organizing -- but it doesn’t hit the corporate media radar screen. That’s where Democracy Now! lives, and that’s really where the hope is.
When people are involved in social justice, they build a foundation. You never know when the magic moment comes but if that foundation is there, they will make history. They will help determine the future. And we want to be there recording the majority of people in this country and around the world. I really do think they’re not a fringe minority. People who care about war and peace, climate change, reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, racial and economic equality are not a fringe minority, not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority -- silenced by the corporate media, which is why we have to take the media back.
David Goodman
For over 30 years, you have gone to some of the places around the world where the light is dimmest, often putting your own self in danger. What are you proudest of?
Amy Goodman
Being your sister. Being an aunt. Being a journalist who deeply cares about showing the images, ensuring that people’s voices get heard. Working with a team of people, that brain trust that is Democracy Now! My colleagues are my heroes.
It’s community media for a reason. I love community. I love my family. And I deeply believe that when people can enjoy justice and equality and community, that’s where we thrive. I want to try in my lifetime to make sure that as many people have that chance as possible. I do believe another world is possible.
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I can’t believe that this flew under my radar! It’s 6:35 pm on Saturday, June 20, and I could probably race to The Savoy to catch the Q&A with you and Amy. I’ll most likely catch the film on Sunday. The last time I saw both of you in person was at The Chandler.
Cheers to you both and to Democracy Now!