Breaking the silence

In the mythic world of “liberal media,” journalist and author Amy Goodman and her daily news broadcast Democracy Now! are breaking the silence and exposing the stories the Bush Administration would rather have unreported.

"Be the media": Amy Goodman spoke in Bloomington at the Buskirk-Chumley on May 5 as part of her Un-Embed the Media Tour.

“She gets up every morning of every day — long before the rest of us! — to be the only daily voice of truth on the radio in the United States of America,” filmmaker Michael Moore said recently. “A nation of 300 million, a written guarantee of a free press and no one will do the job that Amy Goodman does so simply, so profoundly.”

Like Moore, Goodman’s brand of reporting is unapologetic and sometimes controversial. She covers the coup d’etat in Haiti the same way she covers the war Iraq, which is to say, with an eye to unearthing the forgotten victims or political alliances behind the story.

“So many journalists are now trading truth for access,” Goodman says. “Reporters are stationed at the White House, the Pentagon and embedded with troops on the battlefield. If they report something unflattering or controversial, if they displease the administration, they are threatened with denied access. But they’re trading truth in the process.”

For her, journalism is not meant to be a mouthpiece for the government, but one for the population. “That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken and beaten down by the powerful,” she writes in The Exception to the Rulers, co-authored with her brother David Goodman, published last year. “It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras and microphones into our communities and into the world.”

Goodman spoke to a packed house in Bloomington as part of her Un-Embed the Media Tour, appearing at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater on May 5. Her visit coincided with the announcement that WFHB (93.1 FM), Bloomington’s community radio station, will now broadcast the daily two-hour broadcast of Democracy Now!

“When people get information, they are empowered,” Goodman believes. “We have to ensure that the airwaves are open for more of that. Our motto at Democracy Now! is to break the sound barrier. We call ourselves the exception to the rulers. We believe all media should be.”

The addition of the Bloomington station is the latest development in the growth of independent media as reflected by the growth of Goodman’s program. In the past four years, Democracy Now! has shape-shifted from a popular niche radio program broadcast on some 25 independent stations to a multimedia institution beamed each day to some 330 community radio and television stations, including Free Speech Television on local Dish Networks.

Democracy Now! has done its share of wooing stations, and it’s done this in a rather unconventional way: by hiring organizers who work with local activists to lobby their public broadcasters to air Democracy Now! This tactic reflects perhaps as much about Democracy Now!’s movement-style credo as it does about the rocky public-access terrain, but it also seems to be savvy strategy. Since hiring its first organizer two years ago, Democracy Now! has recruited more than 200 radio and television stations.

Goodman’s indie-media star status had been building since well before Sept. 11, but it’s begun to approach critical velocity during the past year, as she’s traveled the country to promote Exception to the Rulers. In many ways, though, this has been less of a book tour than a “free the media” organizing drive. Each event has been an occasion for Goodman to exhort her audience to “be the media,” as well as to raise money for community broadcasters. To date, the events have raised more than $1 million.

“I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across this country, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day: life and death, war and peace,” Goodman says. “Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society.”

For Goodman, independent media is necessary for true democracy. “A blow against media ownership consolidation — now or in the future — will have far-reaching implications, as critical information gains exposure to a caring, active public,” she says. “Instead of fake reality TV, maybe the media will start to cover the reality of people struggling to get by and of the victories that happen every day in our communities, and in strife-torn regions around the globe.”

In Indianapolis, Democracy Now! daily news broadcast is available on Free Speech TV (Channel 110) on the Dish Network and on its Web site democracynow.org. WFHB’s programming is streamed on their Web site, wfhb.org, and as a podcast on iTunes.