Amy Goodman Quotes

On this 60th anniversary of the Pacifica Radio Network, we should celebrate the tradition of dissent and the power of diverse voices to resolve conflict peacefully.

As global temperatures surge, so do oil-company profits, and U.S. soldiers in Iraq...the alarm has sounded: We need a sane energy policy that decreases our oil consumption (the Germans and French, “Old Europe,” use half as much per capita as we do in the U.S.). The potential for environmental disaster, and the prospects of protracted wars for oil, demand no less.

Elected officials will not solve our media crisis alone. The grass-roots movement for media reform is growing, and with mass layoffs in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms, critical elections, burgeoning military budgets and multiple wars and occupations, and with emergent and accessible digital-media tools and networks increasingly available to most people, there is no better time to join it.

The media are using a national treasure--that's what the public airwaves are. And they have a responsibility to bring out the full diversity of opinion or lose their licenses.

In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world.

We can't even call this a "mainstream" media. It's an extreme media-a media that cheerleads for war. Instead of learning from the media what is actually going on in the world, we get static-a veil of distortion, lies, omissions, and half-truths that obscure reality. As bodies pile up in Iraq and New Orleans, many people are mystified, wondering where it went so wrong. We need a media that creates static of another kind: what the dictionary defines as "criticism, opposition, or unwanted interference." Instead of a media that covers for power, we need a media that covers the movements that create static-and make history. We are not waiting for this alternative media; people are building it right now. Blogs, Indymedia centers, independent filmmakers, and other grassroots media have opened a new way to understand what is happening in the world today.

Those who are scorned today are tomorrow's visionaries. (conclusion)

This bears repeating: the sixty-two wealthiest people-a group that could fit on a bus-control more wealth than three and a half billion people.

Free speech is democracy's last line of defense. We must demand it. Defend it. And most of all, use it-now.

This is not a media that is serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions. This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government spin and passing it off as journalism.

The Bush team has invoked a basic principle of propaganda: Control the images and you control the people.

I began hosting Democracy Now! in 1996, when it was launched as the only daily election show in public broadcasting. Listener response was enormous. Suddenly the daily struggles of ordinary people workers, immigrants, artists, the employed and the unemployed, those with homes and those without, dissidents, soldiers, people of color-were dignified as news. I call it trickle-up journalism. These are the voices that shape movements-movements that make history. These are people who change the world just as much as generals, bankers, and politicians. They are the mainstream, yet they are ignored by the mainstream media.

That is one of the media's most serious responsibilities, to open up the discussion.

The corporate media came late to Occupy Wall Street, offered superficial, often derogatory coverage, and, with a few exceptions, still haven't gotten it right

This is what independent media is all about: unembedded, investigative, international journalism.