A Speaking Gig with celebrated U.S. independant media journalist Amy Goodman

by pc Fri Jan 14, 2005 22:39

Amy Goodman is speaking Sat Jan 29 afternoon in Kildare for Afri and Sat Jan 29 8pm for Ploughshares will post more details soon

by R. Isible Fri Jan 14, 2005 23:11

1. It's in a good cause: the Ploughshares folks need solidarity 2. Amy Goodman rocks! She's a really nice lady in person and gives a grreat talk.

Her show "DemocracyNOW!" is co-hosted with the equally impressive Juan Gonzalez (among his claims to fame are that he broke the story about how the Environmental Protection Agency had lied about the dioxin levels in the area around the Twin Towers after Sept.11th. Community groups were reporting illnesses and concerns and were being stonewalled by the administration and the media.)

The show is broadcast across the Pacifica Network which is a series of high-powered transmitters completely funded by listener donations (no dodgy "foundation" grants or advertising). It was created by anarcho-pacifist Lou Hill in 1947 in order to try and avoid a repeat of the horrors of WW2 by allowing people to educate themselves free of corporate and state propaganda. Since the initial station (KPFA Berkeley) was founded it has grown and has just added its first AM transmitter.

Amy Goodman (along with Alan Nairn) were some of the few journalists to report firsthand (and on a sustained, continued basis) on the brutal colonial occupation of East Timor by the Indonesians. One of the low points of her experience has to have been being a survivor of the 1991 massacre at Dili. She is also notable as having been one of the key figures that resisted the attempt to create a centralised hierarchy within the Pacifica Radio Network. Her refusal not to discuss the power struggles within that network (which went on openly for at least 2 years) led to her show being pulled off the air in the middle of broadcasting by the authoritarian tendencies ( professional NGOers and Marxist-Leninists) but the huge campaign by listeners aided by Amy's refusal to stay silent led to a completely revamped, more democratic station structure.

Anyway, she's well worth hearing.

Her show is now also a TV show and the radio and TV streams can be seen/heard at the link below. There are a couple of bandwidth options available for the radio streams and they also provide the show in Ogg Vorbis format (non-patent encumbered alternative encoding to MP3 for those that care about patent issues).

by redjade Wed Jan 19, 2005 15:48

A televisual fairyland:
The US media is disciplined by corporate America into promoting the Republican cause

January 18, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1392797,00.html

The role of the media corporations in the US is similar to that of repressive state regimes elsewhere: they decide what the public will and won't be allowed to hear, and either punish or recruit the social deviants who insist on telling a different story. The journalists they employ do what almost all journalists working under repressive regimes do: they internalise the demands of the censor, and understand, before anyone has told them, what is permissible and what is not.

So, when they are faced with a choice between a fable which helps the Republicans, and a reality which hurts them, they choose the fable. As their fantasies accumulate, the story they tell about the world veers further and further from reality. Anyone who tries to bring the people back down to earth is denounced as a traitor and a fantasist. And anyone who seeks to become president must first learn to live in fairyland.

by R Thu Jan 27, 2005 13:59

"The only daily voice of truth on the radio in the United States of America. How sad that I even have to write those words!.....Amy Goodman is a national treasure"
-Michael Moore, director, "Fahrenheit 9/11

"Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new heights...She has tirelessly pursued the most challenging and hardest questions, relentlessly and courageously".
-Noam Chomsky, author

by Ploughshares Thu Jan 27, 2005 16:25

Amy Goodman's recent book "The Exception to the Rulers" will be available for sale a this event.

More info on link below.......

http://book.democracynow.org/

by redjade Thu Jan 27, 2005 20:46

ya gotta see her!

by redjade Thu Jan 27, 2005 21:02

hmmm

by Ploughshares Fri Jan 28, 2005 15:27 087 963 8398

AMY GOODMAN, LEADING US JOURNALIST, TO SPEAK IN DUBLIN

ON THE eve of polling day in Iraq, one of America’s
most respected broadcasters will be in Ireland to
speak on the responsibilities of independent
journalists covering wars and elections.

Amy Goodman, who has won numerous awards for
programmes made across the entire globe (see
biographical note below), will show a short film and
address an audience at Dublin’s ATGWU hall, 55 Middle
Abbey Street on Saturday, January 29th at 8pm. (She
will speak at an Afri event in Kildare earlier the
same day.)

Goodman hosts the daily syndicated Democracy Now!
programme on US radio. Appropriately, the Dublin event
will be chaired by perhaps her nearest Irish
equivalent, Vincent Browne. It has been organised by
the Pitstop Ploughshares group – who face trial later
this year for ‘disarming’ a US military plane at
Shannon airport in 2003.

With George W Bush starting his second term, the need
for hard-hitting investigative journalism is greater
than ever – and so are the hazards that come with it.
Goodman has never been afraid to dig deep and court
controversy.

Goodman is notoriously disrespectful of the powerful
and privileged. When President Bill Clinton put in a
“get out the vote” call to her programme on election
day in 2000, she kept him on the phone for the most
challenging interview of his presidency.

And when Washington’s prestigious Overseas Press Club
tried to give her an award, she came to the ceremony
but refused the honour because she saw the club
showing too much deference to Secretary of State
Richard Holbrooke, who was also present.

For more information about the Dublin event, contact
Damien Moran, 087 963 8398.

ABOUT AMY GOODMAN
Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of
Democracy Now! She is co-author of the US bestseller,
The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily
Politicians, written with her brother David Goodman.
The book was chosen by American independent bookstores
as the top political title of the 2004 election
season.
Amy Goodman began her career in community radio in
1985 at Pacifica Radio’s New York station, WBAI. She
produced WBAI’s Evening News for 10 years.
In 1990 and 1991, Amy traveled to East Timor to
report on the US-backed Indonesian occupation of East
Timor. There, she and colleague Allan Nairn witnessed
Indonesian soldiers gun down 270 East Timorese.
Indonesian soldiers beat Amy and Allan, fracturing
Allan’s skull.
Their documentary, Massacre: The Story of East Timor,
won numerous awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy
Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I.
DuPont-Columbia Award, the Armstrong Award, the
Radio/Television News Directors Award, as well as
awards from the Associated Press, United Press
International, and the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting.
In 1996, Amy helped launch Pacifica’s Democracy Now!
Two years later, Amy and producer Jeremy Scahill went
to Nigeria. Their radio documentary, Drilling and
Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship,
exposed Chevron’s role in the killing of two Nigerian
villagers in the Niger Delta, who were protesting yet
another oil spill in their community.
That documentary won the George Polk Award, the
Golden Reel for Best National Documentary from the
National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and a
Project Censored award.
In 1999, Amy Goodman traveled to Peru to interview
American political prisoner Lori Berenson. It was the
first time a journalist had ever got into the prison
to speak to her. In March of 2004, Amy obtained an
international broadcast exclusive: the return of
Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from imposed
exile in the Central African Republic to Jamaica; she
accompanied the Aristides with the delegation that
retrieved them.

by Ed Fri Jan 28, 2005 20:42

Don't mean to be fickle, but what's the ideal amount of money to donate?
Cheers

by eeekkk Fri Jan 28, 2005 20:47

E5 if you're not flush
E20 if you are
E100 for the guilty rich and landlords

by redjade Fri Jan 28, 2005 23:19

costs about 200 yoyos for the space

so...

if its valuable to ya, then...

by pc Sun Jan 30, 2005 15:39

I thought the talk last night was very good, even better then I expected. although short... I was most interested in her response to questions from the floor, there was about 6 or 7 questions asked to her and Vincent Browne, but she managed to answer them all in one go, on my mind was the question of whether we should reinforincg the idea of "journalist" and "then everyone else...", but she showed how important it was for independent media at every level, and that direct grassroots activism and reporting could effect mass media.. by making the truth unavoidable and enacting better ethics. why do we always laugh when we talk about the Irish Navy, Im sure not everyone finds it funny ?