Democracy Now's Amy Goodman On Indy Media
It might surprise the corporate media in Birmingham, Alabama, to know that Amy Goodman of Democracy Now radio came to town this weekend and drew a crowd of about 350 mostly educated, progressive white folks to hear President George W. Bush and the mainstream media take a tongue-lashing like nothing that has been heard in these parts since George C. Wallace bashed the "pointy-headed liberals" in New York and Washington in the 1960s.
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| by Glynn Wilson |
| Amy Goodman speaks the unvarnished truth in Birmingham... |
Ms. Goodman, 48, who lives in New York and graduated from Harvard, might be surprised at the comparison. But if you have been around journalism and southern politics as long as I have, it works.
The difference is, the Birmingham News actually covered Wallace's speeches in the 1960s, laced as they were with racial epithets.
It is a bit hard to know what the people in the crowd were thinking as some of them later debated over coffee or beer on Birmingham's fashionable Highland Avenue whether or not to pay the New York Times $49.95 a year for online access to their premium content.
Did Ms. Goodman talk so fast that they did not get the point?
Goodman is an independent journalist like nothing anyone in Alabama or the American South has ever seen or heard in person (present company excluded of course).
As the historian C. Vann Woodward said about Alabama when he called it the closest thing to a totalitarian state in the nation during Wallace's time, there is no bona fide tradition of democracy or an independent press here. It's sort of like Iraq in that sense, a third-world country where it will be hard for any kind of workable democracy to ever take hold.
I caught up with Ms. Goodman at the Bare Hands Gallery reception before her presentation at UAB's Alumni Auditorium. I asked her just a few of the questions on my mind since she was busy selling and signing books.
Having practiced all kinds of journalism myself for years and studied the advocacy verses objectivity debate as a research academic as well, I wanted to know how she handles the inevitable questions that must come up from those who find her point of view so different and maybe even refreshing compared to some of the claptrap on conservative talk radio and TV news.
She has a way of turning the question that works in person as well as it does on the radio and TV.
"I think it's important to be fair and accurate. I think it is very important that we hear all sides on issues," she said. "The corporate media advocates overwhelmingly for the state. So when the state goes to war, the media beats the drums for war. That has to be challenged."
I asked her what she thought about the Bill Keller New York Times, which backs up star reporters such as Judith Miller even as she sits in jail for not revealing a source on a story she never wrote. The same Judith Miller who got away with using one bad anonymous source, who we now know as the discredited Ahmad Chalabi, to write story after story in the run up to war in Iraq claiming that Saddam Hussein's regime had active weapons of mass destruction programs and constituted a "clear and present danger" to U.S. security.
While at the same time, the Times does not back up non-union non-staff reporters who right here in Birmingham tried to stand up to the Bush Justice Department as they botched the prosecution of Richard Scrushy of HealthSouth.
Earlier in the day, I did a survey on the street asking people reading the print edition of the New York Times in Southside bars what they thought of the paper these days.
One long-time reader outside Highlands Bar and Grill had a one-word answer: "Timid."
But Ms. Goodman disagreed.
"If they were timid we would be in better shape," she said. "They led the drumbeat for war and really set the agenda for the rest of the press in paving the way for the invasion of Iraq."
In her new book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that Love Them, she includes two chapters on this issue. (If you have had a chance to read the book, feel free to post a review or a comment about this).
Her one-hour daily show, Democracy Now!, is produced by Pacifica Radio, what the mainstream press calls "a politically progressive public radio network that describes itself as 'an independent community voice for peace and justice'."
Ms. Goodman works according to a style and definition of objectivity I have come to call "scientifically objective journalism," which basically means get the facts and tell the truth regardless of economic moitives and political sacred cows. That is not an easy thing to do in a country where scholars such as Noam Chomsky have talked for years about the limited range of debate allowed here, not totally unlike the state-owned media in the old Soviet Union.
Rather than falling into the trap of trying to defend advocacy journalism, a label used by the political right to keep the corporate media telling their lies on a daily basis without question, Ms. Goodman turns around and questions their objectivity.
For starters, does it surprise Americans to know that even CNN refuses to show the horrors of war in Iraq and allow the Bush administration and Pentagon to censor in this country the images of the dead and dying in Iraq that are seen on CNN International all the time?
Do the people of Birmingham realize that the same Pentagon is now harrassing reporters for trying to take pictures of dead bodies floatng in the New Orleans flood?
It seemed to come as news to the liberal crowd. They applauded her several times and even gave Ms. Goodman a standing ovation, then lined up to buy her book.
Editor's Note: We are experiencing some technical difficulty with the conversion of the digital recording of Ms. Goodman's speech and it may be Monday afternoon before our full coverage of this event will be posted.
But for a rush transcript of Ms. Goodman's comments, a link to the movie shown at the event, and more information about the radio show and her books, here's a link to the Democracy Now Web site.
It is Sunday, after all, and we need a break.
Comments
I believe you were speaking about me when you mentioned a debate over whether or not to pay the New York Times fee for online service. I assure you that I understood well what Amy Goodman said in her talk. I also got the point.
I have a son who is a student at NYU. I like keeping up with what goes on in the city where he lives. With all its faults, the New York Times still has an good editorial page and several op-ed writers whose columns I enjoy--Paul Krugman, Frank Rich, Maureen Dowd, Bob Herbert. Having become disgusted with the Birmingham News, I gradually developed the habit of reading the Times online while I drink my morning coffee. Should I pay $49.95 now to enjoy my morning coffee?
Independent media it is not, but it's a lot better than what we have around here.
I also enjoy reading two blogs--Talking Points Memo (which Ms. Goodman mentioned) and Daily Kos. I have listed among my favorites such websites as Truthout.org, Watching America, Common Dreams, Guardian Unlimited. I get nearly all of my news from sources such as these.
I resent being depicted as clueless.
Sincerely,
Jody Coombs
Posted by: Jody Coombs | September 19, 2005 01:33 PM
Well, now that I know your name, I can truly depict you when I finish my coverage on Monday - since no one at the table the other night even bothered to introduce themselves to me. Quite a rude group of liberals if you ask me : )
I ain't having my best couple of days, fighting with the technology and all. But if you followed this independent media Web site produced right here in little old B'ham., Alabama, you would have seen a column under the headline "The Problem With Liberals" a couple of weeks ago, archived under the category Under the Microscope on the blog.
Try e-mailing Krugman or Dowd and see if they reply. I read them too, and used to link to their columns on the news page, although I won't be doing that anymore for the reasons we only briefly discussed.
As I suggested, it's your decision if you want to support that corporation's decision to charge for its Web content. I'm sure you have the money and are quite comfortable, which is just one of the reasons why the corporate media continue to earn a 20 percent return on investment producing garbage for mass consumption and not actually investing in news gathering.
It is also one of the reasons the Democratic Party has very little chance of beating the Republican Party in any election in the near future, nationally or in Alabama.
If that makes you happy, go for it. You can read the Declaration of Independence, although you might also want to read the Bill of Rights, which is being dismantled while the corporate media watch.
I am just trying to get you to wake up and smell the Yuengling, the same as Amy Goodman. The situation is out of control, and all you can do is argue with me about the price. That's why they are winning.
Posted by: fast2write | September 19, 2005 01:36 PM
It seems that my formal dress caused you to think I can well afford to spend $49.95 for a website. No, I'm not "quite comfortable," at least at this point in life, and you would do well not to make automatic assumptions. I was all dressed up because I happen to work as a church organist and had a wedding to play that day. True, my son does go to NYU, but it's killing me and my husband to send him there. I also teach a large group of piano students. He's our youngest of three, all of whom excelled in school because we told them that was how they would get scholarship money. We live in a modest house, drive cars that are ten-fourteen years old. I buy all my clothes from consignment shops, occasionally GoodWill.
Education is about the only thing we spend money on.
As far as the $49.95, I'm undecided. But, do you really think that their op-ed writers can answer all their emails?
Posted by: Jody Coombs | September 19, 2005 01:39 PM
Talk about automatic assumptions, I don't judge people on the way they are dressed. Besides, I'm not trying to judge you anyway, but to make you think.
How about this? Instead of just paying the fee, which I'm sure if you asked Amy Goodman she would not recommend it, why don't you protest the New York Times charging and maybe they will change their minds? There is an e-mail address on the NYT site for select something or other. I sent them my "fuck you" the other day. Tell them you like reading the paper but can't afford the fee. Maybe it will make a difference. Maybe not.
But whether you resent it or not, it is my job, just like it is Amy's job, to report fairly and accurately what I see. What I see on one hand is a bunch of fairly clueless Birmingham liberals coming to see Amy Goodman because she is a celebrity journalist from New York with a book out, and on the other hand, talking about paying the New York Times a fee for their online content.
Did you just miss the part about them beating the drums for war? How can you support that?
Also, and this is just inside baseball stuff on the media which I understand the public doesn't get, the NYT is just as guilty of a disparity in wealth as the Bush administration. Did you know Maureen Dowd makes $1.2 million a year to write two snarly columns a week? Did you also know that the NYT was paying freelancers like myself $15 an hour to do things out of New Orleans like investigate Trent Lott?
My work buried Trent Lott, and the correspondent I worked with did not even give me byline credit. The NYT management slandered Rick Bragg from Alabama for using an intern, but the guy who did not give me credit was a Yale grad from Long Island and they gave him a promotion. He is now the Hollywood bureau chief for the Times.
I appreciate what Amy Goodman is doing, but as far as I'm concerned, she is just another New Yorker with a degree from Harvard who gets all the money and attention, while all kinds of reporters from around here work for slave wages and do a lot of the real work Ms. Goodman puts on the air on her show every day.
Forgive me if I sound pissed off, but the fact is, I am pissed off. I want the people of Birmingham to understand what is going on. That's why I started the Web site in the first place. But after being gone from here for many years, what I find is the same kind of ignorance that I left here to get away from.
If not for my 79-year-old mother who needs me here now, I would not be here. I have little hope that the few protestors there are around here will ever be able to make a difference, although I try to hold out some hope.
Your comments to me are indicative of exactly what I fear. Nothing personal, but shouldn't you be arguing with the little pansy who is the editorial page editor of the Birmingham News? Did you happen to catch his column last week? He didn't want to play the blame game, so he was so fair and balanced that his pathetic little column was wholly inaccurate.
Of course I told him so via e-mail, but they just ignore the criticism because they are a Newhouse corporate chain newspaper and could care less what the smart people in this town think - as long as people keep buying the paper and they make their 20 percent profit.
I wish you well, I really do, but if you pay the NYT after hearing what Amy said, I have nothing else to say to you.
GW
Posted by: fast2write | September 19, 2005 01:42 PM