Amy Goodman (born April 13, 1957) is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter, and author. Since 1996, Goodman has been the main host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, an independent global news program that she co-founded; it is broadcast daily and syndicated nationally on radio, television, and the Internet, including transcription. On the award-winning program, Goodman elevates voices and perspectives rarely covered in US corporate media.
Highlights of Goodman's investigative journalism career include coverage of the Santa Cruz massacre and the East Timor independence movement, the Chevron Corporation's assistance to armed forces in Nigeria, the 1999 Seattle World Trade Organization protests and anti-globalization activism, the American political prisoner in Peru Lori Berenson, and the US-backed 2004 Haitian coup d'état.
Goodman has received awards for her work, including the Thomas Merton Award in 2004, a Right Livelihood Award in 2008, and an Izzy Award in 2009 for "special achievement in independent media". In 2012, Goodman received the Gandhi Peace Award for a "significant contribution to the promotion of an enduring international peace".
Goodman is the author of six books, including the 2012 The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope, and the 2016 Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America. In 2014, she was awarded the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence by Harvard University's Nieman Foundation. In her field reporting, Goodman has faced attacks and arrest, including in Dili in 1991, Minnesota in 2008, and North Dakota in 2016.
Early life and education Amy Goodman grew up in Bay Shore, New York, on Long Island, to secular Jewish parents who were active in social action groups. Her father, George Goodman, was an ophthalmologist. Her mother, Dorothy Goodman, was a literature teacher and later a social worker. She has two brothers, David Goodman and Steven N. Goodman. Goodman's maternal grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi."Opening the airwaves to voices not heard" . Hindu.com (May 28, 1998). Retrieved March 23, 2013."Sonia Bock 1897–2005: Amy Goodman Remembers Her Grandmother, a Woman of Three Centuries", Amy Goodman & Juan González, Democracy Now!, October 10, 2005. Retrieved March 31, 2013. Her maternal grandmother was born in Rivne, present day Ukraine.
Goodman graduated from Bay Shore High School in 1975. She attended Radcliffe College at Harvard University, took time off during which she studied at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, then returned, graduating with a degree in anthropology in 1984."Amy Goodman To Speak At COA" . Coa.edu (September 13, 2008). Retrieved March 23, 2013.
Investigative journalism career
Goodman produced the evening news program for WBAI, a Pacifica Radio community station in New York City, for 10 years. In 1991, covering the East Timor independence movement, Goodman and fellow journalist Allan Nairn reported that they were badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after witnessing the Santa Cruz massacre, a mass killing of East Timorese pro-independence demonstrators during the US-backed Indonesian occupation of East Timor."Massacre: The Story of East Timor", Democracy Now!, November 12, 1997. Retrieved January 14, 2018. Goodman and Nairn produced the award-winning 1992 radio documentary Massacre: The Story of East Timor, about the event, later set to video.
Democracy Now!
Goodman co-founded the program Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report, which premiered in 1996. Since then, Goodman has hosted and produced the program. It became a flagship of Pacifica Radio, which was founded by Lewis Hill in 1949. Democracy Now! has been described as "probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time" by professor and media critic Robert McChesney.
In 1998, Goodman and journalist Jeremy Scahill documented Chevron Corporation's role in a confrontation between the Nigerian Army and villagers who had seized oil rigs and other equipment belonging to oil corporations. Two villagers were shot and killed during the standoff."Drilling and Killing : As President Bush Meets with the CEO of Chevron Texaco in Nigeria, a Look at Chevron’s Role in the Killing of Two Nigerian Villagers", Democracy Now!, July 11, 2003. Retrieved September 17, 2009. On May 28, 1998, the company provided helicopter transport to the Nigerian Navy and Mobile Police (MOPOL) to their Parabe oil platform, which had been occupied by villagers who accused the company of contaminating their land. Soon after landing, the Nigerian military shot and killed two of the protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, and wounded 11 others. Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole acknowledged that the company transported the troops. Omole said that Chevron management had requested troops from the government to protect their facility. The documentary made by Goodman and her colleagues, Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, won the George Polk Award in 1998.
In 2000, amid conflicts regarding control of Pacifica that threatened the stability of the program's platform, Goodman negotiated greater independence for the program by pioneering a national, collaborative multimedia model to offer independent coverage of the political conventions of the 2000 United States presidential election. Democracy Now! thus expanded as a daily program broadcast across different media platforms, without advertisements and with support from foundations and listener contributions. Its website had 50,000 daily visits, its annual budget reached $1.8 million, and its staff grew to 27. Democracy Now! was dedicated to journalism in the style of George Seldes and Seymour Hersh.
Interview with President Clinton When President Bill Clinton called WBAI on Election Day 2000Democracy Now! Exclusive Interview with President Bill Clinton, Democracy Now!, November 8, 2000. Retrieved September 17, 2009. for a quick get-out-the-vote message, Goodman and WBAI's Gonzalo Aburto challenged him for 28 minutes with human rights questions about AIM activist Leonard Peltier, racial profiling, the Iraq sanctions, Ralph Nader, the death penalty, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Clinton defended his administration's policies and said that Goodman was "hostile and combative".*"Bill Clinton Loses His Cool in Democracy Now! Interview on Everything But Monica...", Democracy Now!, June 22, 2004. Retrieved September 17, 2009. Gibbons, Chip, "When Iraq Was Clinton’s War: Bill Clinton's 'quiet war' on Iraq set the stage for George W. Bush's bloody invasion", Jacobin, May 6, 2016. Hentoff, Nat, "Can WBAI Be Saved?", Village Voice, April 10, 2001. Nader, Ralph, Crashing the Party: Taking on the Corporate Government in an Age of Surrender, Macmillan, 2007, p. 3. "To Amy Goodman, Independent Media's 'the Oxygen of Democracy'", KVMR FM. "Amy Goodman meets Bill Clinton - Democracy Now - full 28 minutes". wn.com, February 1, 2011.
Break with Pacifica Radio In 2001, the show was temporarily pulled off the air, as a result of a conflict between some Pacifica Radio board members and staff members and listeners over the direction of the station. During that time, it moved to a converted firehouse, from which it broadcast from January 2002 for nearly eight years, until November 13, 2009. Democracy Now! subsequently moved to a studio located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.Andy Worthington Archive for November 2009. Andyworthington.co.uk. Retrieved March 23, 2013. Goodman credits the program's success to the "huge niche" left by coverage of mainstream media organizations. Michael Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, said of Goodman: "She's not an editorialist. She sticks to the facts... She provides points of view that make you think, and she comes at it by saying: 'Who are we not hearing from in the traditional media?'"Tanya Barrientos, "She’s taking the watchdog to task", The Philadelphia Inquirer, (May 13, 2004).
Arrest at 2008 Republican Convention During the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, several of Goodman's colleagues from Democracy Now! were arrested and detained by police while reporting on an anti-war protest outside the RNC. While trying to ascertain the status of her colleagues, Goodman was also arrested and held, accused of obstructing a legal process and interfering with a police officer. Fellow Democracy Now! producers, including reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous, were held on charges of probable cause for riot. The arrests of the producers were videotaped. Goodman and her colleagues were later released, City Attorney John Choi indicated that the charges would be dropped. Goodman (et al.) filed a federal civil lawsuit against the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments and the US Secret Service for the illegal arrests. The agencies reached a $100,000 settlement and agreed to educate officers about the First Amendment rights of members of the press and public.
British Columbia border crossing incident On November 25, 2009, Goodman and her two colleagues, Denis Moynihan and Chuck Scurich, were detained for approximately 90 minutes by Canadian agents at the Douglas, British Columbia border crossing into Canada while en route to a scheduled meeting at the Vancouver Public Library. Immigration officials asked questions pertaining to the intended topics of discussion at the meeting. They wanted to know whether she would be speaking about the 2010 Olympic Games to be held in Canada.Kathryn Gretzinger, Interview with Amy Goodman, CBC Early Edition, November 27, 2009. Retrieved December 3, 2009 (archived) She and her colleagues were eventually permitted to enter Canada after the customs authorities took four photographs of her, inspected Scurich's computer, and stapled a "control document" into her passport; it required that she leave Canada within 48 hours.Kathy Tomlinson, "US journalist grilled at Canada border crossing", CBC News, November 26, 2009. Retrieved December 1, 2009.
2016 North Dakota access pipeline protests
In September 2016, Goodman covered the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in Morton County, North Dakota; footage from her reporting "showed security personnel pepper-spraying and siccing attack dogs on demonstrators." After Democracy Now! aired the footage, she was charged by state prosecutor Ladd Erickson with criminal trespass. After the court dismissed that charge, Erickson charged her with riot, gaining a warrant for her arrest. Erickson said that Goodman acted as "a protester" rather than a journalist, because "Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions."
Goodman turned herself in to the Morton County sheriff on October 17, saying that she would be fighting the charges against her as a "clear violation" of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press. She was supported by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which issued a statement saying: "This arrest warrant is a transparent attempt to intimidate reporters from covering protests of significant public interest. [...] Authorities in North Dakota should stop embarrassing themselves, drop the charges against Amy Goodman, and ensure that all reporters are free to do their jobs." Steve Andrist, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association, also expressed concern that a journalist was one of only two people covered by an arrest warrant from the day in question. Authorities said that Goodman was charged because she was identified from the video footage.