Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! talks the future of media and her visit to Glenwood Arts this weekend
Under Arrest: AG Arrested while covering the Republican National Convention, Sept 1, 2008. (courtesy Rick Rowley/Democracy Now!)
In the world of independent media, Amy Goodman is an icon.
Goodman co-created Democracy Now! in 1996 as a daily, hour-long radio show. Thirty years later, Democracy Now! is a radio and television program carried across more than 1,400 radio and TV stations across the world (locally it airs on Kansas City PBS and KKFI). For the whole of its existence, Democracy Now! has been completely viewer and listener supported, never taking federal or corporate funding.
The new documentary Steal This Story, Please! Covers Goodman’s career and highlights in the history of Democracy Now!, from staying in their Financial District studios during 9/11 for fear they’d be unable to cover the story if they left (Goodman still has a persistent cough from the debris) to being a constant presence at protests and political rallies nationally and internationally.
Steal This Story, Please! and Goodman herself, along with directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, come to the Glenwood Arts in Overland Park for three screenings this weekend, as part of a fundraiser for KKFI. Goodman spoke to The Pitch about the film, the state of the media, and how to support the future of independent journalism.
Abby Olcese, The Pitch: This film is coming out at such a pivotal point for the media, and you’ve been doing this a long time. How do you feel about the state of media now, versus where it was when you started Democracy Now!?
Just today on Democracy Now! we spoke with the California attorney general (Rob Bonta) who’s leading about a dozen state attorneys general in a lawsuit to prevent the Paramount Skydance merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. If that goes through, all of those companies would be under one roof. The UK is thinking about filing suit as well. That merger is not just a disservice to audiences because of lack of diversity; it’s a disservice to democracy. We need a great variety of media outlets, not just owned by a few billionaire Trump allies. Any ally of a president, really. 
This is a real crackdown on the media as (Trump) continues to sue the media as well. The pressure is enormous when he calls the press the enemy of the people. It’s incredible how Trump has gone after ABC and CBS, how Jeff Bezos can buy the Post. Under him, the motto “Democracy dies in darkness” was developed, but the Post is very dark right now. A third of the newsroom has been fired. This is a real threat to democracy.
There’s a reason our profession is protected by the First Amendment. The flip side of that is the public’s right to know. You can’t have a meaningful democracy without trustworthy information. The job is not to kowtow to people. It’s to question and to hold those in power to account.
Along those lines, there’s so much conversation right now about the need to represent “both sides” in reporting, but so much of the time it feels like an excuse for media outlets to platform bigotry—I’m particularly thinking about criticism around the way The New York Times covers issues of transgender healthcare. But I’m really impressed how, in the documentary, we see how Democracy Now! manages to cover multiple angles of a given issue without doing that. What do you think is the key to maintaining that balance?
I deeply believe in people speaking for themselves. There’s nothing more powerful. I come from Pacifica Radio, a network that includes KPFT in Houston, which went on the air in 1970. It wasn’t a month before the KKK struck dynamite to the base of their transmitter and blew it up. They rebuilt the transmitter and got back on the air, and right in the middle of Arlo Guthrie, the KKK blew it up again. For months the station was rebuilt, and in 1971 they went back on the air.
I can’t remember if it was the Exalted Cyclops or the Grand Dragon who said this; I get their titles confused, but he said that was his proudest act. I think that’s because he understood how dangerous independent media is. It’s dangerous because it allows people to speak for themselves. When you hear someone speaking from their own experience, whether it’s a Mexican immigrant whose family member was taken by ICE, a Palestinian child in Gaza, or an uncle in Afghanistan, it makes it much less likely that you’ll want to destroy the person. The media can be the greatest force for peace in the universe. Instead it’s wielded as a weapon of war.
You and Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, the film’s directors, have been taking this movie to screenings around the country. What’s that experience been like?
This film came out about the same time as The Devil Wears Prada 2. It was appearing in theaters at the same time. We pulled up to the Charles Theater in Baltimore for a screening of Steal This Story, Please! and there was a line around the block. I figured it would be for The Devil Wears Prada 2, but Steal This Story Please! was the film that was sold out. In Milwaukee, we did a screening on Mother’s Day. Who would even go to a theater? By the point Steal This Story was starting, The Devil Wears Prada 2 had sold 70 tickets, and we’d sold 290.
The movie is dealing with difficult issues, but people come out feeling so hopeful. That’s what’s inspiring. The people you’re watching on the screen, as with Democracy Now!, they aren’t your typical pundits explaining the world and getting it so wrong. They’re the people close to the story who are doing something about it. That buoys our spirits. That’s the tenets of good journalism.
Photo by Brook Duth
What do you think about the future of the media at large, corporate and otherwise?
I call it corporate media, not mainstream media, because I really do think that we are mainstream, perspective-wise. Democracy Now! is mainstream. KKFI, and Kansas City PBS are mainstream outlets. People who care about war and peace, who care about the climate, the fate of the planet, crackdowns on immigration and LGBTQ issues are not a fringe minority. It’s not a silent majority but a silenced majority.
Do you think subscriber models and worker-owned collectives, places like Defector or 404 Media, which have reader-supported models, are sustainable long-term?
I do, because that’s how Democracy Now! continues. It’s listener, viewer, and reader-supported. We don’t accept corporate or government funding. I think this plethora of indie media that’s growing up in the wake of the crackdown on media as a whole…we couldn’t have predicted what’s coming up. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube- who’d know these platforms would grow up?
As long as we apply the tenets of good journalism to be fair and accurate, it’s exciting to see what’s springing up right now. Even if you can’t afford every single publication, people must support these because it’s expensive for us to lose them all. It’s a high price, an unacceptable price in a democracy.
How do we as consumers best support independent media, especially when there are so many outlets to support?
People always ask me, “How do we find out about other resources?” Democracy Now! has a hub, but don’t just rely on us. We need a great diversity of news sources. The way to support it is either financially or spreading word about the news sources you trust. That’s absolutely critical as well, so people who trust you turn to those sources too.
