In Conversation with Amy Goodman

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This article was published 07/10/2017 (3194 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

At Knox United Church last weekend, award-winning American journalist Amy Goodman shared insights from more than two decades spent working in independent journalism.

Goodman’s radio and broadcast program, Democracy Now!, has been on the air since 1996, when it began covering the U.S. presidential election that saw Bill Clinton re-elected for a second term. Her reporting on the Dakota Access pipeline protests in North Dakota last year helped spur national debate and nearly got her arrested.

Here are excerpts from Goodman’s speech, which spanned more than an hour and emphasized the importance of independent journalism and having networks separated from corporate interests.

“The media is a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day — war and peace, life and death,” Goodman said. “Anything less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and women of our countries.”

On the beginnings of Democracy Now!

“There was more demand for the show after than before (the election) and it just kept growing. Our mission was to go to where the silence was — to go to communities all over the country in the midst of an election where most people didn’t vote… I didn’t think it was apathy.

“But I wanted to know what people were doing in their communities and so that’s where we went — to where the power and the truths are.

“We’re not like the rest of the corporate networks, as you know, and neither are your public media in Canada. We don’t bring you this small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.

“No, it’s our mission to provide forum for people to speak for themselves. There is nothing more powerful.”

On the media’s relationship with Donald Trump

“We now in the United States have a much more oppositional media because the president of the United States… attacks the media directly, calling individuals names, you know talking about the ‘failing New York Times’ and ‘fake news CNN.’

“And so in order to defend themselves… they are fighting back and they are sounding a lot like Democracy Now! when they say, ‘We must fight for an independent media. Media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.’

“And it is. You just don’t usually hear them talking like this and calling out the president. For example, calling out his lies. The New York Times has just listed a litany of lies and they don’t say ‘misstatements’ or ‘misinformation.’ They say lies. That’s a very big deal.”

On climate change

“We know that well over 95 per cent of the scientific establishment in the world believes that human beings have something to do with climate change and we have to do something about it.

“Our president calls it a Chinese hoax. And it is really something that in the midst of hurricanes Harvey and Irma, and Houston and the south of the United States, Florida and the Caribbean, who are drowning, he comes to North Dakota and holds a speech outside of an oil refinery. Not far from where hundreds of Native Americans were jailed and imprisoned and tried (near Standing Rock) for trying to save the planet…

“When it comes to the corporate media and hurricanes, (it’s) 24-hour-a-day coverage… but they almost never raise those two words: climate change, or climate disruption, climate chaos.

“I mean, they’ll flash the words, ‘extreme weather,’ ‘severe weather,’ repeatedly. People tune into television just to see what they should wear that day. But we have to tune in to see what we can do about it.”

On political protests and taking a knee

“This past weekend, beginning on Friday night, (Trump) starts to attack black athletes. This is as Puerto Rico is drowning. Fifteen tweets attack-ing African-American athletes and not one tweet about what he was going to do about Puerto Rico.

“Yes, they both had something in common with each other: the people he was tweeting against and the people of Puerto Rico largely, of course, didn’t vote for him and were people of colour.

“It’s the very population he has campaigned against and his family has worked against for so long. His dad was arrested, Fred Trump, in 1927 at a Ku Klux Klan rally. And then his father took him into the fold, into his development business, and one of the first things Donald Trump as a young developer had to deal with was a justice department lawsuit for not allowing African-Americans into their community housing projects.

“I mean, he is nothing if he is not consistent. So don’t believe the hype when they say he is pure chaos and he changes his mind every day. He’s surely very consistent on these issues and certainly showed that right through to today…

“I don’t think any of us thought this was possible. Let’s just say the owners of the NFL and the players don’t exactly get along… Trump managed to do something that no one has managed to do before and that is bring all of them together, locking arms, standing shoulder to shoulder or taking a knee. It has been just astounding. And the owners are some of his biggest supporters right through his presidency, but they couldn’t take this.

“Where this goes, we will see. I mean, whoever thought I would be looking forward to this football season?”

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