WEDU Interview; Amy Goodman

This special presentation was produced in high definition by WEDU, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota. [Lorei]: She was beaten in the country of East Timor at a march for human rights and arrested at the 2008 Republican convention. She's the host of the award winning democracy now program and her passion for Independent journalism has helped pioneer the largest media collaboration in the U.S.. Join me for a conversation with Amy Goodman coming up next. [music] Hello I'm Rob Lorei. After graduating from Harvard University in 1984, Amy Goodman embarked on a journalism career guided by a social conscience. As the principal host of Democracy Now, which airs on more than 750 TV and radio stations, she's established an alternative an independent voice to counter mainstream news. She's coauthored 3 bestselling books including the latest, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times. Amy Goodman is the first journalist to receive the

Right Livelihood award often referred to as the alternative Nobel Prize. And she stopped by our studios for an exclusive WEDU interview. Well Amy Goodman welcome to WEDU. [Goodman]: It's great to be with you. [Lorei]: Thank you for coming. Tell us what is Democracy Now, how would you describe it to people who haven't heard or seen it? [Goodman]: Well Democracy Now is a daily grassroots global, un-imbedded, independent international investigative news hour. Um, it is, a news program that airs on almost 800 stations. Public radio and television stations around the United States. Its headlines are also translate into Spanish on 200 stations, uh, and we broadcast actually around the world because from the beginning we're celebrating our 13th anniversary and we're on this 13th anniversary community media tour, which is why I'm here with you in Tampa. Um, from the beginning we've been online and that brings in millions of people from around the world. And because the work we do with open source is very cutting edge, um, what networks

spend millions doing, like sending video images around the world by satellite we're able to do over the Internet. So Democracy Now which is also a TV show as well as a radio show, uh, airs daily in Stockholm on television in Sweden, weekly in Japan and they take the video broadcast from the internet and it's a perfect broadcast quality show. Um, so having been on the web from the beginning of the show has really given us a leg up on reaching people everywhere and being able to distribute the show very widely. And the point is to get out the voices of the grassroots in this country and around the world in a way we don't usually see in the networks [Lorei]: If you're on 800 stations, that's more than any AM talk show host. I mean not to compare you to Rush Limbaugh but it's more than Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. If you're around the world, um, that's pretty impressive, but why haven't more people heard about Democracy Now.

[Goodman]: Well I think it is growing exponentially. It is also a very diverse audience. It's not any political stripe because I think those lines are breaking down now between conservatives and liberals. The crises are too massive and people recognize that what we've been doing in this country is not bringing us to a good place right now. And we have to solve some big issues like global waring, global warming, the global economic meltdown, the lack of health care in this country. These are issues we have to join together and solve. And that's I think what the role of the media is. To provide that huge kitchen s- kitchen table that stretches across the planet, uh, certainly across this country that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day like war and peace and life and death. [Lorei]: But when you say global waring or global warming or we can say health care, uh, some people are gonna say you know th- that's the liberal agenda, that's the progressive agenda, that's the left agenda.

[Goodman]: Oh I don't- I think that's everyone's agenda right now. I mean if you talk to people, um, at General Motors at Chrysler, you talk to management, you talk to the workers, it's all the same. I mean GM and Chrysler right now spend more money for health care than they do for steel. The reason they want to go to places like Canada is because they don't have to carry the health care costs. They have single payer health care. I think we have reached a point in this country where the answers aren't just simple where you can politically define them. We know across the spectrum we have a massive crisis in health care. That back on the auto industry, that foreign companies, U.S. companies cannot compete with foreign companies cause these foreign companies do not have to carry the health care costs cause their government does. So I think there are allies people never expected that'll be working, um, together to make sure that health care is affordable and it's available to all. [Lorei]: You talk about single payer, which is the system in Canada, where the government, uh, runs the insurance portion of the health care system. Uh, President Barack Obama during the campaign

said he was a fan of single payer. Uh, now it seems that he's taken it off the table. At least in his discussions has not invited a lot of the single payer advocates to be part of his discussion. [Goodman]: I mean that is key. We have the videotape of Barack Obama saying that he supports single payer health care. Now he's backed off that. But I don't really care if a person is for a single payer or not for single payer. But what the media has to do is have a robust debate that includes that issue because it is a model that is used around the world. Why aren't we even looking at it. And as a journalist, I think it's our job to consider this. You know Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting the group FAIR.org. They did a study of the week leading up to the White House health care summit on March 5th that President Obama held. There were almost no people who represented this idea of loosely put Medicare for all. Um, who were interviewed in the

media. The only people talking single payer were those that were slamming it. Yet a number of polls in this country show that the majority of people are for some kind of system like that where at least for everyone there is a minimum level of health care that is guaranteed. That means the media is not doing its job. It's not about taking a position whether you feel it should be this way or that private or public. It's about entertaining all of the options so people can make up their own minds. It shouldn't be driven by a corporate agenda with the health care industry- [Lorei]: All right so so if the range of possibilities for healthcare is to go f- have single payer maybe maybe further to the left have a nationalized health care system as they do in England or privatize everything. Uh, what portion of, I mean why do you think that that single payer idea and then anything further to the left is not discussed maybe on MSNBC or NBC or FOX or CNN? [Goodman]: Well I don't know. I mean I would say that we do have overall the mainstream media is a corporate driven media we know that the health insurance industry is

extremely powerful as is the pharmaceutical industry in terms of lobbying in terms of advertising and they've curtailed the debate for a long time. But I do think that there is an anger in this country like we have never seen. We're seeing it having to do with the bailout, with the bonuses for example for the IAG execs. Now it's interesting. The bonuses that are paid out to these executives that got us into this trouble to begin with, is a tiny portion of the bailout money. But it just touched a chord. And you can never tell when that magic moment will happen. Certainly the Obama administration was caught off guard. They knew about this before but they didn't think people would respond. And if you actually look at it objectively it's a tiny percentage of the money of taxpayer money that's being spent to bail out these individuals. But people could identify with that. So I think we may well see the same thing around health care. When people come to understand most people don't even understand when you say single payer or how does Britain have a different system than Canada I mean in Britain the doctors are employees

of the state. They're working for national health care. In Canada, they are not employed by the state, but the insurance is provided by the state, um, and it is a model that ensures that people have a basic amount of health care. And now with so many people in this country unemployed what is it Americans now it's something like 1 in 6 are either unemployed or underemployed. This is astounding. So it's gonna bring this issue to a head. [Lorei]: Well i- if single payer is is your main example so far is is left out of the debate in most national media. Does that say that our national media model is wrong? I mean in in England they have a different model, uh, in in the U.S. we're seeing newspapers decline. Is our is our model wrong because most of our media depends on commercials? Well I do think that there is a very serious problem in many different ways. Um, also just overall I would say you know I talk about Democracy Now being un-embedded I think the embedding process has brought the media to an all time low. And what I mean by that is not just reporters embedded in the front lines of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, though that's a problem.

Not to say they're not brave going there. But you're gonna get one perspective right. You'll get the perspective from the trigger end. What about being at the target end of reporters who're embedded in Iraqi hospitals and Afghan communities in the peace movement around the world. But it's not just being embedded in the military which is a problem because we're supposed to be separate from the state as journalists. It's being embedded in the establishment here at home not asking the serious questions, uh, in Washington D.C. and the White House press corps. Um, and it goes to the issue when you have a corporate sponsored corporate, um, underwritten media that they're less likely to challenge those that feed them. It's very basic and you're raising this issue of the newspapers closing around the country. Um, I've been traveling the country we're in a 70 city tour. I was in Seattle. The Seattle Post Intelligencer just closed. We're headed to Denver. The Rocky Mountain News was about to celebrate 150 years. It survived the Depression.

It survived floods. It could not survive this economic downturn. Philadelphia papers, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, bankrupt. Um, uh, Tucson Citizen closed. These New York Times, Boston Globe, New York Times says it's going to close the Boston Globe. Um, and you're having trouble here. People are being laid off everywhere. They are now looking to a nonprofit model of journalism. And I think this is very significant. It's what we've been doing in public broadcasting for a long time here at W EDU, you're doing a WMNF, it's what Democracy Now does. And I think that is healthy. We need a media that is not brought to us by the corporations either that profit from war or the health care industry but brought to you by the people in the communities. [Lorei]: What d- what do you think will be lost the most, uh, as as newspapers continue to curtail, uh, their staffs in this in this recession that we're in? What- [Goodman]: Jobs [Lorei]: Besides jobs. But but but but in the public interest I mean those jobs are certainly

important, but but I wonder you know what do we miss i- if we don't if every community doesn't have a strong local newspaper? [Goodman]: I mean that's it. Local voices. And they are so important. You think about the networks where we watch television, where we get news. You have the same small circle of pundits who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. It is the voices, the talents, the expertise, the wisdom of people in their own communities who are solving local problems that have global implications. These are the voices that we need to hear. And that's what I'm afraid will be silenced. [Lorei]: But here is there a contradiction though in that, um, I think you're a booster of local newspapers. Uh, uh, you talk about being an investigative, uh, show on Democracy Now. But at the same time, a lot of the people that appear on Democracy Now are newspaper reporters who've done original reporting. Uh, I think of Bartlett and Steele who for a long time worked for The Philadelphia Inquirer has have done a lot of a a great reporting, investigative reporting about taxes.

David Cay Johnston has done a lot of great original reporting for The New York Times about taxes. Now when Seymour Hersh come, uh, has a a piece of the New Yorker albeit not a newspaper but you rely a lot on print journalists. Go ahead. [Goodman]: Absolutely. I mean Rob that's absolutely true. There are exceptions all over. And we want to highlight these investigative pieces I mean, uh, Bartlett and Steele were time they were laid off of Time they were pushed out of Time. Uh, David Kay Johnston is no longer at the New York Times. But in these major newspapers and magazines, they do very important reporting, um, and we do want to highlight that. But what matters is the daily coverage on the front pages of these papers. Who's quoted, who's included, what issues are included? For example, we got to do a lot more coverage of war. Yes the U.S. is still involved in Iraq. Obama's expanding the war in Afghanistan. Yet the percentage of news coverage has gone down of war. I mean when you are sending young men and women and not so young men and women to kill or be killed. Um, when their lives are at stake,

it is our responsibility to cover in a comprehensive, above the h- fold top news story way every single day. The most serious action a country can engage in and that is war. [Lorei]: Do you ever envision yourself working for a network or working for a big newspaper, could you see yourself in that role? [Goodman]: Well Democracy Now is a big network. I mean what we're doing is we're piecing together, um, a kind of patchwork quilt of independent stations that run Democracy Now. Um, we're talking NPR stations, Pacifica stations, community stations like WMNF. Also public access TV like Speak Up Tampa Bay. I mean public access TV stations are very important in this country and giving a global voice to these local communities and local community media outlets. Um, but s- on the issue of public access, we have to protect community media overall. And what's happening around the country with public access, is that cable companies have been forced to provide local channels because

they get to the monopoly. One network, one cable company gets to dig up the roads to lay the cables down and so because they get the monopoly, the media activists rested some public interest channels from them all over the country. But now the telecoms are coming into the picture. They're delivering TV, they don't have this obligation and the cable companies are saying hey if the telecoms don't have the obligation we shouldn't have to either. And so public access is under siege and we have to shore up all these independent media outlets. All of them together are on radio and television, low power, full power FM stations, um, are absolutely essential to the functioning of a democratic society. I mean the media has to be holding those in power accountable. [Lorei]: But it seems that the kind of media that you practice hasn't reached critical mass yet and that is the night after night we can see reports about American Idol on on television. We see Britney Spears reports over and over again or the death of the latest Hollywood stars ?starlet? And that the kinds of issues that you raise, um, haven't yet, uh, really

like Jay Leno doesn't make jokes about single payer health care or or that- [Goodman]: Oh I think people care I mean just look at what's happening, go back to the AIG executives. This is a kind o- issue that caught fire. People care about millions we're talking, billions of taxpayer dollars going to bail out the wealthiest, the biggest who squandered away all of our money. People care in a way that I don't think people realize but, uh, networks realize before that they would, uh, on the issue of war. Um, the lack of voices that are, uh, included in the discussion like on Afghanistan whether we should expand the war. I think people do care. [Lorei]: Le- let me ask about the war. Uh, James Baker, Vice President Cheney, former Vice President Cheney been on the air recently on television, saying that, uh, they didn't lie or the Bush administration rather didn't lie taking us into war. What they did is they were victims of bad intelligence. And that seems to be what they're saying over and over again. What did Democracy Now say about, uh, the lead up to the Iraq war. [Goodman]: Well- [Lorei]: And and how would how I mean how would your

reporting differ from what Vice President Cheney or Dick or James Baker's? [Goodman]: Well I mean in the lead up to the invasion, it was really unforgivable what the media did. All the networks, um, the 4 major nightly newscasts, uh, ABC, CBS, NBC, even the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Uh, this group FAIR a sacristan reporting did a study of the 2 weeks around Colin Powell giving the push for war on February 5th, 2003 right before the invasion. There were 393 interviews done around war. Only 3 were with anti-war leaders. 3 of almost 400 when half the country was opposed to the war. It's about giving a space to a full, robust discussion about the ser- most serious decision a country can make. We were interviewing people in the military, high up in intelligence. We were interviewing U.N. weapons inspectors who were saying the evidence doesn't add up. Not just people in the traditional peace movement but people who'd been on the ground there. Where were these people in the networks they were more than willing to talk. But they did not

have the same message as the networks really circled the wagons around the White House. And that does democracy a disservice. It does the servicemen and women of this country a disservice when they're not asking the serious questions. And I'm seeing a repeat of this now. Everyone rang their hands after and said how did we get it so wrong. That's in 2003 and 2004. Well now it's 2009. President Obama is pushing for the expansion of the war in Afghanistan, sending thousands of more troops. Where is the debate in the media today. I mean you look at our allies. How many Americans realize that you know President Bush, President Obama made his first foreign trip to Canada, how many realize that Canada is pulling out of Afghanistan? I was just on a plane with a military consultant, he was headed to Huntsville Alabama. And I said oh your business must be booming now with the war expanding, he said it is. And he said but it baffles me why Obama is expanding the war. I said what do you mean you're profiting. And he said yeah, but I'm an American and we are not profiting. He says that war is

unwinnable. I think people across the political spectrum asking questions that are not reflected in the media right now. [Lorei]: Sh- should there be a looking back at some of these decisions that were made. Should there be a federal investigation, a blue ribbon commission, looking into the lead up to the Iraq war and the intelligence of what the Bush administration said. And at the same time should there be some sort of massive investigation into the bailouts of these big banks because there was a rush to do that too? [Goodman]: Oh I mean theres no question because this is not about just looking back in history. Uh, this is about where we go from here. How do we learn from our mistakes? And investigating the misinformation that was put out in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. Um, investigating how this economic meltdown happened. Who profited? I mean I fear what we're looking at right now is the very same people who profited in the past, lost so much of our money, will now profit again. In this country, the proposals that are being made are about

socializing the debt and privatizing the profit. You know if we all the risk we all share but if there's profit, then they quickly move in and the largest companies privatized that profit. That has to be challenged. [Lorei]: Amy I've read that, uh, when you were younger, you spent some time in Israel. Did you live in Israel for a while? [Lorei]: No I didn't actually. You know that's interesting Rob. Um- [Lorei]: I saw that on Wikipedia. [Goodman]: On Wikipedia, which is based here right. [Lorei]: Right. [Goodman]: Well that's an example of why people can't believe everything that they read. It's an interesting thing I just interviewed in the interview I just interviewed the, uh, uh, an author of the book The Wikipedia Revolution and I was, um, asking him how you ensure this information is accurate because k- people can insert anything there. Um, but no I never lived in Israel. [Lorei]: Well so so I won't trust Wikipedia as much as I have in the past but but let me ask you this. Rel- did you have relatives who died in the Holocaust? [Goodman]: Yes. [Lorei]: Was your grandfather a rabbi? [Goodman]: Yes my grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi. [Lorei]: I want to ask you about your commitment to shining a light on the plight of

Palestinians. Where does that come from? [Goodman]: I think it comes from my Jewish education. Um, my upbringing. Uh, for the history of the Holocaust, what is meant. The idea that came out of it that I took very seriously all of my life. Never again that this should never happen again to any people. Not to the Jewish people, not to any population. Um, you know this summer I traveled in Latvia and Lithuania and Estonia. And in Lithuania, um, there is a at the University of Vilnius, um, in Lithuania. There is a center dedicated to Jewish studies and to holocaust studies and one of the people that is, um, it is named for is a woman who went into the Jewish ghetto before it was liquidated, um, by the Nazis and she was not Jewish. And she under the guise of saying she'll take the books of the

Jews love she would take them out for the Nazis so they let her go in. She actually was ?spiriting? out babies so that they wouldn't be killed. Um, this idea that whatever our religion, whatever our race, whatever our creed, we are there for each other. We depend on each other. Um, this idea that never again in no other place, should, uh, population face the kind of horror that the Jews faced in World War II. I think that's what informs my deep concern about what's happening to the Palestinians today. [Lorei]: You've put your life on the line for journalism. You were arrested at the GOP convention this past summer, but also you were beaten up in East Timor. Uh, you've actually been on the front lines not just sitting in the studio somewhere in the New York or elsewhere. Tell us about what happened in East Timor. [Goodman]: In Timor that was in 1991, um, and it was the time when Indonesia, uh, occupied East Timor. It was one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. For a quarter of a century until

1999, the people of East Timor were slaughtered by the Indonesian military and I went there with my colleague Allan Nairn and he was writing for The New Yorker magazine, I was doing a documentary for Pacifica 90 and 91, um, and in that second trip we made we followed a procession of thousands of people who were remembering yet another young Timorese had been killed by the Indonesian military is November 12th, 1991. Uh, we followed this group to the cemetery. I was interviewing them and then hundreds of Indonesian soldiers marched up with the US-M 16s at the ready position. We knew they'd committed many massacres in the past, but never in front of Western journalists so Allan Nairn and I decided to walk to the front of the crowd, show all of our equipment, which we usually hid because Timorese would could be arrested or killed if they were caught talking to journalists. I put the headphones on, held my microphone out like a flag. Allan put that camera above his head. We walked to the front of the crowd, the soldiers marched up 10 to 12 abreast. Hundreds of them, US-M 16s at the ready position. They swept past us and they opened fire on the crowd killing

more than 270 Timorese. In fact in the last days now, they have just found some of the graves, the bodies for the first time from that massacre. Um, we were, uh, beaten by the soldiers. Uh, they use their US M-16 as like baseball bats, Allan had thrown himself on top of me to protect me from further injury. They slam them against his skull until they fractured his skull. Um, we got out of the country we're able to say what had happened, they always denied that these kind of attacks had taken place by the Indonesian military and a nationwide movement grew up in this country. And in 1999, the people of East Timor voted for their freedom. In 2002, they became the newest nation in the world. Um, it's our job as journalists to go to where the silence is and that's what we were doing then. [Lorei]: And that really has become your motto. Amy, we have about 30 seconds left what's next? [Goodman]: Well, uh, here in Tampa, supporting community media and then moving on all over the country we're going through Montana, California, Idaho, uh,

Florida. We're going all over the country to make sure that independent media survives. [Lorei]: Well Amy Goodman, thanks a lot. Thanks for coming by WEDU. It's an honor to have you here. [Goodman]: Thank you so much. [Lorei]: Well we hope you enjoyed our WEDU interview with Amy Goodman. This program may be viewed in its entirety online at wedu.org. I'm Rob Lorei and from all of us here at WEDU, thank you for watching. [closing music] [cymbal stops]