Amy Goodman on the Media’s “Access of Evil”

As talks to finish the U.S.–Israel conflict on Iran break down and President Donald Trump calls for a naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, journalist Amy Goodman says that in instances of conflict and conflicts, “What I care about is the answer, and I care that people in this country don’t get health care at the same time that money goes to kill others in another country.”

This week on The Intercept Briefing, Goodman speaks to host Akela Lacy a couple of new documentary referred to as “Steal This Story, Please!” The documentary follows Goodman’s life, journalism profession, and the constructing of the unbiased information program “Democracy Now!” which simply celebrated its thirtieth 12 months. Recalling instances when networks used their video footage, says Goodman, “I encourage that. Steal this story, please. It’s a failure if it’s an exclusive. We are covering these critical issues of the day, and we want to ensure that these stories get out because independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society.”

Many journalists and information shops don’t ask powerful questions to take care of what she calls the “access of evil — trading truth for access,” and to that, Goodman says, “Then it’s not worth being there at all. It’s our job to hold those in power to account.” 

She provides, “We can’t have weapons manufacturers, who provide millions to networks to advertise determining our coverage of war. We can’t have oil, gas, and coal companies determining our coverage of climate change, or banks and other financial institutions determining how we cover inequality. We need an independent media.”

Listen to the full dialog of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you hear.

Transcript

Akela Lacy: Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. I’m Akela Lacy, your host, and a senior politics reporter at The Intercept. We’re bringing you a really particular episode right this moment. If you understand something about unbiased media, you’ve possible heard of the well-known present “Democracy Now!” and its intrepid and fearless host Amy Goodman

[Clip from “Steal This Story, Please!”] 

Rush Limbaugh: Radical leftist TV program referred to as “Democracy Now!” …

Unknown speaker: I’m not asking once more. That method, otherwise you get arrested.

Amy Goodman [montage]: From floor zero … From East Timor … As we deplane in Haiti … From Georgia’s demise row jail… We’re in occupied Western Sahara … We’ve walked throughout the border … We’re in the center of Trump Tower … This is “Democracy Now!,” the conflict and peace report. I’m Amy Goodman.

AL: “Democracy Now!” has opened the door for therefore many unbiased media shops doing investigative reporting and asking powerful questions, together with The Intercept and lots of different shops that we admire. Amy Goodman is a journalist who I’ve unimaginable respect and admiration for. And right this moment, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing her a couple of documentary on her life’s work.

We’re additionally joined by one of the filmmakers of the documentary, which is out now — “Steal This Story, Please!” — which follows Amy’s life and profession in journalism and the constructing of the unbiased journalism Goliath that’s “Democracy Now!”

Amy Goodman, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.

Amy Goodman: Akela, it’s an honor to be right here.

AL: Tia Lessin, welcome to the present.

Tia Lessin: Thanks a lot for having us.

AL: Amy, as somebody who has lengthy coated U.S. wars and international conflicts, what do you make of how mainstream media is overlaying the U.S.–Israel war on Iran? Is it any completely different from how the media coated the 2003 Iraq War, which is one thing that comes up quite a bit in the documentary?

AG: Akela, our motto is “Go to where the silence is.” And that’s what the relaxation of the media, I feel, too typically misses. When it got here to twenty years in the past, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, listening to the voices of on a regular basis Iraqis — nearly absent from the mainstream media. And right this moment, as Israel and the United States assault Iran, listening to the voices of individuals in Iran and the Iranian diaspora.

I’m significantly moved by those that stood up in opposition to the regime, those that had been imprisoned in opposition to the regime, these hundreds of individuals. Of course, there are hundreds who’ve misplaced their lives, however those that survived their fierce criticism of what the U.S. and Israel has been doing. It’s actually essential that we perceive historical past, how the relaxation of the world sees us.

In the case of Iran, 1953 would imply nothing to most individuals in the United States. But for the individuals of Iran, the seminal second when their chief — their democratically elected chief, Mohammad Mossadegh — was overthrown by the U.S. and Britain actually in the end for BP at the time, for British Petroleum. That led to this collection of occasions that led to the shah and his secret police often called the SAVAK, which then led to the overthrow and the Iranian revolution in 1979. Many of those that fought the shah would then be imprisoned underneath the ayatollah.

It’s individuals who’ve been combating for democracy who say bombing their nation — let me quote President Trump — “to the Stone Ages,” is not going to additional democracy in Iran. That’s what we so typically don’t hear is the Iranian individuals.

AL: Recently, after we noticed all this coverage of the U.S. rescue mission of this downed airman, as this unimaginable feat that took the brawn and the American ethos of conflict combating. That was a quote that I heard from a mainstream analyst about this occasion that had wall-to-wall protection on the networks —

AG: Let me say one thing Akela. 

AL: Go forward, please. 

AG: When you discuss the airmen, the lives of these service members matter — of each one of them — as do the lives of civilians right here on this nation in Israel and Iran. It is crucial that we perceive what’s occurred to a whole lot and a whole lot and a whole lot of U.S. troopers, as soon as President Trump introduced — together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — this unprovoked conflict on Iran. It’s crucial to grasp {that a} number of U.S. service members have died. 

You know the way reporters had been castigated after they raised the service members. It is de facto essential to query, as a result of we’re speaking about lives — life and demise — whether or not we go to conflict, which is why it’s crucial for Congress to debate this subject and decide whether or not the U.S. ought to go to conflict. We have to have the ability to focus on these points, and the media is the place to do it. I see the media as an enormous kitchen desk that stretches throughout the globe that all of us sit round and debate and focus on the most essential points of the day: conflict and peace, life and demise. Anything lower than that could be a disservice to the service women and men of this nation. Anything lower than that could be a disservice to a democratic society.

AL: This is an efficient segue to the touch on the title of the documentary, which is “Steal This Story, Please!” which speaks to the thought that you really want mainstream media to begin overlaying the subjects that you just cowl that they may ordinarily ignore or gloss over. But that even after they do, they don’t at all times join the dots to what’s driving these points or to those questions that you just’re asking about accountability. The premise that that this was an unprovoked war is misplaced in quite a bit of this protection, even when some of it has been comparatively crucial. 

So I simply marvel should you may converse to the way it’s useful for all of us when the media does take note of these points. But what distinction does it make in the event that they’re not connecting it to those broader questions of accountability and energy?

AG: Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the filmmakers who made “Steal This Story, Please!” selected that. It’s our motto at “Democracy Now!” We have a number of mottos. To be the exception to the rulers. That’s our job in the press. The different is to go to the place the silence is. Because the truth of the matter is, it’s probably not silent there. People are organizing, they’re raucous, they’re rowdy, however it doesn’t hit the company media radar display. 

When it involves stealing this story, please — as a result of we’re endlessly well mannered — overlaying these tales like as they coated in the movie, the standoff at Standing Rock. We mustn’t have been the solely journalist there overlaying when a whole lot of Indigenous individuals, Native Americans, First Nations individuals from Canada, Indigenous individuals from Latin America, and their non-native allies began taking on the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We had been there at one second after they noticed bulldozers excavating their burial grounds. And they had been involved about the pipeline going underneath the Missouri River, the longest river in North America, endangering the lives of tens of millions of individuals. That’s what they had been involved about.

They noticed these bulldozers. They went on the property, and the DAPL — Dakota Access Pipeline — guards unleashed canines on the protesters. They had been biting them. They referred to as themselves water protectors, not protesters. We captured that canine with its mouth and nostril coated in Native blood, and we posted online what was going down. Within 24 hours, 14 million views.

Any company govt, so many. When I am going into the community studios, — not solely Fox; however MSNBC at the time, now MSNow; CNN — saying, why don’t you cowl local weather change extra for these many years? The executives say it doesn’t seize sufficient eyeballs. Well, I feel any of these executives would drool for that sort of response. Fourteen million views.

People actually do care. But as a result of we’re the solely ones there, all the networks took our video, and I encourage that. Steal this story, please. It’s a failure if it’s an unique. We are overlaying these crucial points of the day, and we need to make sure that these tales get out as a result of unbiased media is crucial to the functioning of a democratic society.

AL: Tia, I need to carry you in right here, too. You opened the movie with Amy holding a microphone, following a Trump official, persistently asking him questions about why he’s at a local weather convention when Trump has referred to as local weather change a hoax, amongst different environmental coverage questions.

[Clip of film]

AG [in film]: Hi, I’m Amy Goodman from “Democracy Now!” Can you inform —

P. Wells Griffith III, then-Trump local weather adviser: I’ve gotta go to a different assembly.

AG [in film]: Can you inform us what you concentrate on President Trump saying local weather change is a hoax? You may reply the query, are you not talking to the press right here?

PWG: Excuse — I’m sorry, I’m working late for a gathering. Thanks.

AG [in film]: Right, however you weren’t working late if you had been simply standing there. 

[Clip end]

AL: Tell us about that scene, and why you selected to open with it.

TL: It was quintessential Amy Goodman there. She was going up and down the stairs, out and in of corridors, following, chasing after the Trump administration’s consultant to the convention who wouldn’t cease to reply her questions. And she was simply doing what a superb reporter does, and she or he was unstoppable.

She understood that her listeners needed to know these solutions, and she or he was going after them. To me, it simply confirmed the whole lot you have to find out about Amy Goodman. And it actually, I feel, makes the viewers root for her as a result of she’s doing this for us. She is working in the public curiosity to get these solutions from elected officers, from company CEOs.

We see that all through the movie: She’s typically chasing after billionaires and politicians, and oftentimes getting solutions that nobody else is, to questions that nobody else is asking. I’ll say, we had been going to name the movie “Chasing Amy,” or “Amy Chasing” or “Chasing Amy Chasing,”

AL: I really like that. “Amy Chasing –––.” Fill in the clean. [laughs]

TL: The title was already taken. But I’ll say that, to return to your earlier query, I feel of the phrases that Amy’s co-host Juan González stated to us after we had been speaking to him about the protection of the Iraq War in 2003, or let’s say the invasion of Iraq. And the cheerleading that the commercial media did, “Democracy Now!”’s reporting was fairly distinctive in elevating questions that journalists weren’t asking. They had been taking Bush’s proclamations at face worth.

Twenty years later, lots of mea culpas on the half of the press, “we were wrong.” Even individuals like David Remnick, we’re sorry we were wrong. Juan González put it completely when he stated, to paraphrase him, it’s not sufficient to say 20 years later we had been incorrect. You must cease the injustice when it’s taking place, or not less than report on it.

That is one thing Amy does and Juan does and her workforce does each single day. 

[Break]

AL: There was a ton of dialogue in Trump’s first time period about how the media ought to cowl somebody like him. And we didn’t see many journalists doing what we noticed you doing, which is, and we don’t see that right this moment actually, working individuals down and asking them onerous questions. Often I really feel like these days that’s related to — I’ve photos in my head of viral videos of reporters making an attempt to do gotcha questions, and that’s not the sort of journalism that we’re speaking about.

We’re speaking about discovering individuals in energy and asking them onerous questions. So I’m questioning should you may speak slightly bit about what mistakes you suppose journalists made in overlaying Trump in his first time period, and whether or not you suppose that we’ve discovered something from that on this second time period?

AG: I feel that journalists interact in the what I name “access of evil” — buying and selling fact for entry — taking part in on the previous “axis of evil” time period. This goes method again, and it’s not simply with Republican presidents, it’s with Democratic presidents as nicely. You don’t ask a troublesome query since you’re afraid you then received’t be referred to as on once more. But I say, then, it’s not worth being there at all. It’s our job to carry these in energy to account. 

Right now, the stakes are so excessive. When President Trump tries to censure AP for not going together with Trump and calling the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America.” Or his explicit assault on ladies journalists, and significantly ladies of shade, is grotesque. Every single time, the total press corps ought to stroll out, or object when he calls on the subsequent individual, when he says “Quiet, piggy” or speaking about the “ugly” reporter. It’s crucial reporters stand collectively. He’s doing that to intimidate as a result of there’s a much bigger query he doesn’t need requested, whether or not it’s about the Epstein files or grifting. 

The quantity of cash his household is making, particularly now throughout the second time period, we’re speaking conservatively about billions of {dollars}. The Wall Street Journal has completed nice reporting on this; the New York Times has completed nice reporting on this. “Democracy Now!,” I at all times say we forestall tales from being “priv-ished.” The phrase is revealed and perhaps a narrative is revealed, however typically it’s behind the fridge advertisements or it simply doesn’t get quite a bit of consideration in print, and to broadcast it’s actually essential. Raising these points regularly. 

Trump is a grasp of media manipulation. He sues the media. He sued “60 Minutes” for enhancing a Kamala Harris interview. We all do interviews for an hour, then reduce it right down to 10 minutes. It’s our job. Unfortunately, we don’t have limitless time.

So of course in that lawsuit, I feel “60 Minutes” and CBS would’ve received, however their house owners had been engaged in making an attempt to merge two firms, Paramount and Skydance, and it wasn’t price it to them to undergo this train that may antagonize President Trump. So they basically paid him off. They say the cash goes to the Trump library. What was it? $15, $16 million. But what they get in return is one thing like a $6 billion, $7 billion merger approval. 

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos saying that President Trump was discovered civilly accountable for rape. This was in the case of E. Jean Carroll, who President Trump had a trial and was discovered responsible of sexual assault. The decide in the case stated in frequent parlance, that may be rape. I feel George Stephanopoulos and ABC would’ve received. But once more, their company house owners needed a bigger company merger — I feel it was between Nexstar and Tegna — and it was price billions of {dollars}.

So paying $15, $16 million to the so-called Trump library was pennies for them. 

Now, that is extraordinarily critical, particularly for much less financially well-off networks; you possibly can’t afford these varieties of lawsuits. So it was an actual lesson to everybody, and it’s completely crucial that they be fought.

AL: Talking about this solidarity, or lack thereof reasonably, in the White House press corps round setting norms round the right way to deal with an official like Trump. There’s a scene from the documentary I keep in mind the place you’re in the White House briefing room, and also you’re asking powerful questions on the U.S. arming and coaching the Indonesian navy that carried out the bloodbath in East Timor that you just had been current for.

[Clip from film]

AG [in film]: Will President Clinton push for the sale of F-16s to Indonesia when Congress returns in January? José Ramos-Horta says it’s like promoting weapons to Saddam Hussein.

Mike McCurry, White House Press Secretary: That’s not the view of the United States authorities. We make arms transfers of that nature after they’re in the curiosity of the United States.

AG: You’re supporting the navy dictatorship by doing it.

MM: Well, you’re additionally advancing U.S. strategic pursuits in the area.

[Clip ends]

AL: The press secretary kind of makes a joke at your expense, and also you see the relaxation of the reporters begin laughing with him. What was that have like being surrounded by that press corps? Did you ever query your strategy? How was that for you?

AG: This was about the 1991 bloodbath, which Indonesian soldiers armed by the United States with M-16s. Indonesia invaded East Timor December of 1975, and they’d go on to occupy East Timor for 20 years. They killed off a 3rd of the inhabitants. 

My colleague, journalist Allan Nairn, and I survived a bloodbath on November 12, 1991, which the Indonesian troopers opened hearth on harmless Timorese civilians. They killed over 270 of them. They beat us to the floor. They fractured Allan’s cranium. They put the weapons to our heads, U.S. M-16s. And solely after we satisfied them that we had been from the United States — the identical place their weapons had been from — did they pull the weapons off our heads, and we had been capable of get away in a Red Cross Jeep with dozens of Timorese leaping on prime of us, on prime of the van to flee this killing area. 270 Timorese killed in sooner or later. But in the end throughout that point, 1975 to 2002, a 3rd of the inhabitants of East Timor was killed.

So after I got here again to the United States after the ’91 bloodbath, that was President Clinton, and the press spokesperson was Mike McCurry. Congress had determined to chop off navy coaching help to Indonesia, the fourth strongest military in the world — armed, educated and financed by the United States overwhelmingly. They reduce off IMET, that’s worldwide navy schooling and coaching, funding. And the query was President Clinton going to revive it. And I stored asking that query to get a solution, and after I requested it once more and stated I find out about the bloodbath, I survived that bloodbath, he in the end stated, “The turnip is dry.”

I don’t know if that was a code I used to be supposed to present to a different nation. But that’s when all the journalists laughed. Because quite a bit of instances the administration can use peer stress, however I don’t care about that. What I care about is the reply. And I care that individuals on this nation don’t get well being care at the identical time that cash goes to kill others out of the country. So we simply endured.

AL: What have you ever discovered from being that individual in the room, significantly surrounded by individuals who typically have that entry, however don’t use it to ask powerful questions?

AG: You simply must hold going. It’s like speaking about the company media for 30 years. “Democracy Now!” has simply celebrated its thirtieth anniversary.

AL: Congratulations. 

AG: We had a good time not too long ago at Riverside Church, that incredible place the place Dr. Martin Luther King gave his speech in opposition to Vietnam in 1967, a 12 months to the day earlier than he was assassinated, in opposition to the conflict in Vietnam. The mainstream media, like Life Magazine stated he had completed a [disservice] to his trigger and his individuals; that he seemed like he was studying a script from Radio Hanoi as a result of he was in opposition to the conflict in Vietnam, he ought to follow civil rights. Even these in his internal circle, some felt that method. But MLK endured, and he stated, no, these points are related. So in the identical method the company media goes after him, it’s actually essential to see and canopy these leaders who both their speeches, their messages don’t get heard, or they get misrepresented.

But for 30 years, we’ve been criticizing the company media. Today, there are numerous journalists inside the company media who may need bristled in the final 30 years at what we stated, however now are saying, “You didn’t say enough.”

Look at the Washington Post newsroom. It’s been cut by a third by a tech billionaire proprietor Jeff Bezos, who based Amazon, purchased the Washington Post, is making an attempt to curry favor with President Trump, stood behind him with the other tech billionaires when he was inaugurated. And now has sliced and diced this newsroom to the horror of not solely nice journalists at the Washington Post, however to individuals who reside in a democratic society and who do imagine, go by that motto of the Washington Post, that “Democracy dies in darkness.” The U.S. has now attacked Iran, and nearly the total Middle East division of the Washington Post is gone. The reporter in Ukraine, she will get an e mail that she’s laid off as she’s overlaying the conflict on the entrance strains. 

These are actually critical instances. It’s crucial we proceed to sound the alarm and construct unbiased media, a media that’s delivered to us by those that are hungry for genuine voices. In the case of “Democracy Now!,” it’s the listeners, it’s the readers, it’s the viewers. And for 30 years, now we have depended on this international viewers. Many of whom we attain on the web at democracynow.org and now on social media platforms.

Because we are able to’t have weapons producers, who present tens of millions to networks to promote, figuring out our protection of conflict. We can’t have oil, gasoline, and coal corporations figuring out our protection of local weather change, or banks and different monetary establishments figuring out how we cowl inequality. We want an unbiased media.

TL: And that exact same week that Jeff Bezos lays off what number of a whole lot of Washington Post reporters, columnists, editors is the same week that the documentary about Melania Trump comes out. It got here out on Amazon, they put it in the theaters. How much did they spend on it? $30 million to make it, an extra $45 million to market. Or is it the different method round, I can’t —

AG: $40 [million].

TL: Either method, it’s an obscenity. First of all, it’s only a industrial for Melania and her style trade. But worse than that, it’s only a bribe to the Trump administration. So the incontrovertible fact that these two issues occurred at the identical time, I feel, is simply, it’s outrageous.

AL: Amy, you created “Democracy Now!” at a time when firms had been constructing these big monopolies, privatizing information media. For each of you although, are you able to discuss — we hold speaking about unbiased media, however I’m wondering should you may discuss what does that truly imply to you, and what it was like being an unbiased journalist in that media panorama at the top of all these consolidations?

AG: We’re the identical then that we at the moment are, and it’s unbiased. I discovered at the starting of my profession, WBAI in New York, half of the Pacifica Radio Network, which was based in 1949 in the Bay Area by a person named Lew Hill, who was a conflict resistor, got here out of the detention camps and stated, there’s received to be a media outlet that’s not run by firms that revenue from conflict.

Or as George Gerbner, founder of the Cultural Environment Movement, former dean at the Annenberg School for Communication, stated, a media not run by firms that don’t have anything to inform and the whole lot to promote which are elevating our youngsters right this moment.

So we began with this deep perception that unbiased media serves a democratic society. It has simply turn out to be more and more corporatized to the level the place many of these inside these company constructions are saying they’re dropping their jobs and are saying we are able to’t sound the alarm loud sufficient. At this level, quite a bit of the legacy media is, to say the least, dropping its energy, is diminishing. So much of these newspapers are going by the wayside, and it’s an infinite loss. 

We’re talking to you truly on Local News Day, an important day as a result of now we have misplaced a lot native information. That’s the place the whole lot begins. When you care about what your metropolis council decides or your college board decides, and then you definitely go to a bigger stage. So much of our tales — worldwide, nationwide tales — begin with native information protection that we examine and discover the people who find themselves closest to the story. Not these pundits, who know so little about a lot explaining the world to us and getting it so incorrect. 

We want to listen to extra of that. I don’t know the kind, the social media platforms and the sort of journalistic formations that will likely be, however now we have college students coming to “Democracy Now!” day by day, lecture rooms watching the broadcast in the morning, 8 to 9, and speaking with them after. And I say there couldn’t be any extra noble career than journalism. I’m undecided the completely different shapes it can take, however I can simply say, “You should do it.”

We have to be honest. We have to be correct. You’re entitled to your individual opinions however not your individual details. It is crucial that we perceive that the web is extraordinarily essential, and social media platforms are extraordinarily essential in difficult the conventional gatekeepers, however they can be a worldwide rumor mill, and now we have to make sure authenticity and fact.

AL: I’m undecided that the common individual completely understands the impact that corporatization of media has on the journalism itself. I feel quite a bit of us have been inured to the concept that as a result of Politico Playbook is sponsored by BP, that doesn’t essentially have an effect on the journalism. But I feel that’s —

TL: And it’s not solely journalism. It is definitely journalism, however it’s not solely journalism. I take into consideration the world of documentary filmmaking: The quantity of platforms and shops that our work airs on has shrunk on this media consolidation. So that implies that not solely are there much less commissions and fewer cash for making movies, however the movies that we make, that I make, the political documentaries don’t get funded, significantly by industrial media that’s on the lookout for company sponsors or is accountable to their company boards which are making an attempt to kiss as much as Donald Trump. 

In this case, I feel we’re discovering a really slender marketplace for political movies. In our case, we’re distributing “Steal This Story, Please!” independently, and we’re enthusiastic about doing that. We have seen time and time once more on the competition circuit, there may be an urge for food for political content material for movies that talk to this second, for this movie about Amy Goodman and “Democracy Now!” and unbiased media. And I feel quite a bit of the distributors would have you ever imagine that each one that audiences care about are true crime tales and movie star biopics. We are out to show them incorrect.

AL: The movie “Steal This Story, Please!” is screening in theaters throughout the nation. Visit stealthisstory.org to seek out showtimes close to you. Amy and Tia, thanks a lot for becoming a member of me on The Intercept Briefing. It’s been an honor to talk with you each.

AG: Thank you a lot.

TL: Really recognize the time. Thank you a lot.

AL: Before we go, we’d like it should you assist The Intercept Briefing, win its first Webby Award for finest information and politics podcast. I’ve already heard from not less than one listener who instructed us that they voted for us, along with my fiancé. So please vote for us! We’ll add a link to vote in our present notes. We thanks a lot to your assist. 

That does it for this episode. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Muessig is our editor-in-chief. Maia Hibbett is our Managing Editor. Chelsey B. Coombs is our social and video producer. Fei Liu is our product and design supervisor. Nara Shin is our copy editor. Will Stanton combined our present and authorized evaluation by David Bralow. 

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Until subsequent time, I’m Akela Lacy.