← All Of It with Alison Stewart
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- [00:01]
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- [00:38]
Alison Stewart
This is all of it on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. On March 23rd, Riverside Church held a party, a 30th anniversary celebration for Democracy now, the independent news program. The night ended with Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Michael Stipe, Aaron Dessner and the whole church singing. People have the power now on more than 1400 stations. Democracy now starting started as a small enterprise on nine stations in 1996. Hosted by a 20 something journalist named Amy Goodman. The story of Democracy now and how Goodman became a force for independent media are documented in a new film called Steal the Story Please. The film follows her as a young person who sought answers amid the corporate media world that seemed frightened or too enmeshed to ask important questions. Questions like how come the US Supplied weapons to Indonesia to invade East Timor? Goodman reported on that story and found herself under attack, like how come Chevron was involved in the killing of two Nigerian activists, one of whom Goodman interviewed? Steal this Story Please is in theaters now. Joining me now are its host, Amy Goodman. Amy, it's nice to see you.
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Amy Goodman
It's great to be with you, Alison
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Alison Stewart
and Carl Diehl, one of the co directors of the film. Hi Carl.
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Carl Diehl
Hi. Thanks for having us.
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Alison Stewart
Full disclosure, I did a Q and A for the film on Saturday and I had a lot more questions which I get to ask now. Amy, how is this documentary presented to you?
- [02:00]
Amy Goodman
Well, the directors, Carl Diehl and Tia Lesson came to me and they didn't say can we stalk you for two years? But that's how I heard it, which meant it was going to be very painful. But I thought it was worth the price because independent media is essential to the functioning of a democratic society. And if we could get word out about it, no holes barred. Okay, I agreed.
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Alison Stewart
There are two stories being told, Carl, the story of Amy Goodman and then the story of journalism in the past 30 years, corporate journalism. How did you balance the two?
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Carl Diehl
Well, you know, Amy's story is sort of the it's the perfect. It highlights the importance of having an independent media in this country. And independent media These days can mean anything. It's the arts, it's movies, it's television, and it's the news. And Amy. Amy and what she's done with her team at Democracy now has really been an incredible example of what it looks like when you can operate completely unfettered and unattached to anybody's agenda other than your audiences. And, you know a little bit about that yourself.
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Alison Stewart
A little bit.
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Carl Diehl
And it's a really special way to operate, and it's really unique. And especially today when we have a president who has declared the press the enemy of the people. For Tia and I, you know, we're filmmakers, and we're also journalists of a sort. And so, you know, it gave us an opportunity to really engage in this moment and hopefully create something that is going to help other people make sense of this chaos.
- [03:45]
Alison Stewart
You mentioned this, Amy. Journalists don't like to be the story. How did you handle being the subject?
- [03:51]
Amy Goodman
I mean, it was tough. I don't. I want to put my mic in front of other people, but these guys, Tia and Carl, their reputation preceded them. They had been Michael Moore's producers. They were Oscar nominated for the film about Hurricane Katrina, Trouble the Water. Tia won three Emmys for the Janes, about the underground abortion network in Chicago in the 60s. They had done Citizen Koch and other films. And it was a remarkable experience. I mean, it was a big deal to open our archives to them. That's 30 years. We've been doing this show for 30 years, and from the beginning, we have been covering movements around the world. So it's a really original archive. As I always say, you know, the president of the United States is the most powerful, occupies the most powerful office on Earth. But there is a force more powerful, and it is everyone around this country and around the planet, you know, who are part of movements. Movements make history. And that's what we particularly focus on. Our motto is go to where the silence is. And, you know, it's not always quiet there, actually. It's raucous, it's rowdy. People are organizing, but it doesn't hit the corporate media radar screen. And that's what we wanted to capture. And I really think it's the majority of people across the political spectrum, because those who care about war and peace, as we see right now, those who care about climate change and the fate of the planet, those who care about inequality, about LGBTQ rights, are not a fringe minority, not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority silenced by the corporate media.
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Alison Stewart
What is a story that didn't catch Fire that corporate media didn't pick up on that. You were surprised. You've broken a lot of stories, but one that you're like, why didn't someone follow up on this?
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Amy Goodman
I mean, let's go back to. There's a whole segment in the film about the standoff at Standing Rock. So it began in 2016. Native Americans, standing Rock Sioux, were opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline. It was, I think, April 1, 2016. It was in the middle of the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. And the unofficial historian of the Standing Rock Sioux, La Donna, Brave Bull Allard, who has since died, said, I'm going to open my property to anyone who will come and help us oppose this. The Dakota Access Pipeline would go beneath the Missouri river, the longest river in North America. And they were afraid it would imperil the water supply of millions of people, native and non native. And she thought maybe a dozen people would come. They'd set up their tents and teepees and hundreds came. Then thousands came. Native Americans from Latin America, indigenous people from the United States, first nations from Canada. This was epic. This was a gathering like we hadn't seen in decades. And then thousands of non native allies. And as it's going through the year, we're covering it from afar. But Labor Day weekend, we decided to go and see what was happening. This was not just about the Dakota Access Pipeline. It was about the climate catastrophe. And so often indigenous people are the leaders there. And we were following a group of people. They went onto some property that was in dispute and a judge was going to rule a few days later, the excavating of what they called their burial ground. And when they got there, the bulldozers were already excavating on this holiday weekend, Labor Day. And women, girls, men, boys stood in front of the bulldozers. And the bulldozers, I mean, they are frightening earth crushing machines, but they actually pulled back like six of them. And then the Dakota Access Pipeline guards unleashed dogs on the protesters. And we filmed a dog with its nose and mouth dripping with blood. We posted it online. We had to go back to New York. Within 24 hours, there were 14 million views. And this went against, you know, I was sometimes invited at the time, msnbc, cnn. I'm not even talking about Fox. And I would say, why don't you cover? I'd say, host the climate catastrophe. And they'd say, well, the executives upstairs think that there won't be enough eyeballs on it. Any executives would drool at getting 14 million views. We waited a few days when the judge was going to rule, we were covering this. I was headed with my colleague Nareen Shaikh to Toronto to the Toronto International Film Festival, because there was a film about if Stone, the muckraking journalist, and they wanted us to speak about it afterwards. It was a film. Well, I have Stone said to students, if you can remember two words, remember governments lie. If you can remember three words, remember all governments lie. And that was the name of the film. And then I was speaking to the University of Toronto students, and all of a sudden I got a text and it said, like, you're under arrest. And I thought, oh, my God. One of these students got all hacked my phone. But I saw it was a North Dakota number that there's an arrest warrant for you. And I thought, okay, I better get back into the United States. So I looked up. I didn't want to publicize this. I wasn't sure if it was true. And I just said, could someone call me a cab? And I raced to the airport, came back, and yes, it was true. I didn't take it personally, but I thought, this is a warning sent out to all journalists. Do not come to North Dakota.
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Alison Stewart
So you got arrested, you got 14 million views on Facebook, and it still didn't get the pickup that you expected?
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Amy Goodman
No, not exactly. We went back to challenge the charges against me. And very interestingly, we broadcast across the street from the court so I could turn myself in right afterwards. But there was so much now press attention that morning that one of the hosts at the North Dakota National Public Radio called, who'd been there for decades, and said, no way the judge is going to sign this against you. There's too much attention. And this is the lesson. And the charges were dropped also against many of the Native American activists who were going to court that day. Misdemeanors and felonies. We were like, it was the New York Times on the homepage. BBC, Al Jazeera, Vogue magazine was covering this, and if anyone could see me now, you'd wonder why. So it had to be about the issue. And this is what happens when the media shines its spotlight in the right direction. Now, in that case, it was a journalist was about to be arrested, but it then went to the whole issue. And that video that got 14 million views, almost every network took it and ran with it because there was no other journalist there. That's the idea I consider an exclusive, a failure. I want the rest of the media to steal this story, please.
- [11:27]
Alison Stewart
The name of the documentary is Steal this Story, Please. I'M talking to Amy Goodman, anchor of Democracy now, as well as the co director of the film, Carl Diehl. We learn a lot about Amy's background. Her maternal grandfather was an orthodox race rabbi who would accept all questioning. Carl, what surprised you about. We're gonna talk back to you like you're not here. What surprised you about Amy's background as a kid who grew up in a suburb on Long Island?
- [11:55]
Carl Diehl
Well, I'd say one of the. One of the greatest surprises as we get. So Tia and I had known Amy for years, right, because we'd been on the other side of her microphone as guests on her show with our films, most recently Tia with her film the Janes, about the abortion underground in Chicag. And we'd also bumped elbows with these guys with her crew. They seemed to be everywhere that we wanted to be. We bumped into them in New Orleans. We bumped into them into them in Baghdad in the weeks before Shock and Awe, when we were there doing our work. And, you know, at the Republican National Convention, where Amy and Sharif Abdel Kaddoose, her producer, and Nicole Salazar were arrested for covering the protests. While they were being arrested, I was on stage with Keith Ellison, you know, just down the street, presenting the film and talking about New Orleans. So we seem to always be in the same place.
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Amy Goodman
I didn't know that.
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Carl Diehl
No, you didn't know that? No. I was there with Keith, and it blew my mind because I walked out and Tia said, amy just got arrested. And she said, be careful out there. And I went out and the streets were completely empty because they had cleared it all out in the wake of Democracy now and their crew. But anyway, what surprised us was how hilarious Amy is, how funny she is. And it tells you a lot about how it is that she does the work that she does because she finds joy in everything around her. She grew up with three brothers.
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Amy Goodman
Oh, you have to find joy. Otherwise, laughter.
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Carl Diehl
And rabbis on both sides of the family. So that incredible comedic timing was there, and it was a great treat for us as our own kind of storytellers, because you never want to take a laugh out. I mean, our friend, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, always talks about how important laughter is in her work. Because when your mouth is open, you're breathing, you're getting oxygen and you're relaxed and you're kind of off guard, and you can take things in. And so it's something that's always been really important to us in our work. So the surprise also for the audience is the laughter they're gonna find at these really, really dark times, you get
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Alison Stewart
a sense that family is very important to you. Amy, we meet your 106 year old grandma. We meet your brothers. What is something you took from your family, a lesson that has served you as a journalist?
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Amy Goodman
Well, I just have to share now that you raised my grandmother. She actually died at 108. We met her at the young age of 106, right in the film. And so it always touches me when I sit down. I mean, that scene to grandmother. But she lived in Long Beach. My parents grew up in Midwood and Flatbush in Crown Heights. My mother was born in Harlem. And my grandmother, just to tell a quick story, I went and said to her, I'm coming out to visit you. And she said, you can't. I'm heavily drugged. My grandmother did not take drugs. I said, what are you talking about, Grandmama? How did you get heavily drugged? And so she said, I took a half an aspirin about a week ago and I'm feeling the effects still. I said, okay, I'm coming to visit. I'll help you with your half an aspirin. Week ago hangover. But what I learned from my parents and my grandparents. My dad was with Physicians for Social Responsibility. He was an ophthalmologist in Long Island. He was the face on the Long Island Railroad in posters that said, you, doctor is worried. And it was a picture of a doctor. He looked like Peter Sellars. And in the stethoscope was a nuclear mushroom. My mother founded the first Saint Freeze chapter in Long island, but she taught women's history and literature in local colleges. And they were just a mighty duo. And then there were my three brothers. You know, I was inspired to do journalism from my younger brother David, who at 8 years old put out Dave's Press. And you see that in Steal the Story, Please. That's where we had our family debates. The dining room table, you know, Shabbos meals on Friday were about debating the political issues of the day. And with love and anger and absolute defiance, we would fight each other. But we were a family. And I think that that meant. And all my friends would come over and say, God, I mean, we just eat at our table. And I think that showed me I'm not afraid of debate. I mean, it's the way you express love and caring and how we move forward. And that's really, I think a great way to begin journalism is to engage in the debates of the day. That's why I see the media as a huge kitchen table. That stretches across the globe, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. And anything less than that is a disservice to the service men and women of this country. Right. They don't get to publicly debate whether they kill or be killed. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society.
- [17:10]
Alison Stewart
We'll have more with Amy Goodman and Carl Diehl after a quick break. This is all of it. You're listening to all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We're discussing a new documentary about the independent news program Democracy now and its founder, Amy Goodman. It looks at the show's history, the corporate media, and Goodman's life story. I'm speaking with Amy Goodman as well as co director Carl Diehl. You graduated from Harvard Radcliffe in 84, and you were sure that you wanted to be a producer on the Phil Donahue Show. Why was Phil Donohue a hero to you?
- [17:52]
Amy Goodman
Because I found that in the corporate media at least. I mean, sure, there were a lot of silly issues he dealt with, but a lot of serious issues. And Carl and Thea pulls some from the archive of him talking with Larry Kramer, the fierce AIDS activist, and taking on nuclear issues and much more. They also show clips of him with Donald Trump. But I thought this is where you could have a big effect. So at the end of college, every day in the last days of college, I was writing down every single name on the credits of the Phil Donahue show because I was gonna send absolutely everyone my very thin resume. And then I would just wait and maybe it would take a couple weeks to become the produce of the Phil Donyou Show. And I waited, and I did get a call, and they said, hey, did you ever get a job? And I said, no. And they said, can you come in tomorrow? I said, absolutely. And they said, great. We're doing a show on the unemployed and we'd like you to be in the audience. Oh, my God. But I want to say something about that. This is really interesting. I would come to be friends with Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue, and he became the most popular show. He had the most popular show on MSNBC at the time of the Iraq war. And right before the Iraq war, he was bringing on a lot of anti war voices and he was dumped even though it was the most popular show. And I was invited to be a guest on the 10th anniversary show of Chris Matthews on MSNBC. And then they're gonna have a big party at the top of the rock 30 rock and. And Phil had just been dumped. And so when we were speaking on the air, I said, you know, Chris, I want to congratulate you on the 10 years of MSNBC, but I wish Phil Donahue was standing next to you. I had a memo, we had put it in our book, my brother and I from NBC, that said we can't have these anti war voices when the rest of the media is waving the American flag. I personally think you're waving the American flag when you express dissent. I think dissent is what will save us. And so I said that on the air. I said, I only wish that Phil Donahue was standing next to you right now because he is a great American patriot. So it's wonderful to be here as we now remember Phil and think about all that he did and how important he was and his show was.
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Alison Stewart
We went digging in the archives and we found Amy Goodman on WNYC. In 1987, you hosted a show called Speaking for Ourselves.
- [20:31]
Amy Goodman
Yes. In fact, this is a homecoming, except it wasn't here. Down there, downtown.
- [20:37]
Alison Stewart
Let's listen a little bit.
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Amy Goodman
Students speak out on Howard Beach. This hour on Speaking For Ourselves. I'm Amy Goodman. We'll talk with two students from John Adams High School on racial tension in the public schools. Then Julia Wright talks about her father, Richard Wright, author of the controversial book Native Son and the new film based on it. And we take a look at surrogate motherhood on trial. All this plus your calls on Speaking for ourselves for the 10th of January 1987. It's amazing. I worked at WBAI halftime and at WNYC and we did this weekly Saturday show called Speaking For Ourselves. Julia Wright. Oh my goodness, the daughter of Richard Wright. How absolutely amazing. I think my first guest was Gloria Steinem and we played music. Gloria, Gloria, Gloria.
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Carl Diehl
Alison, where was your team when we were researching this film? I would've loved to have it.
- [21:32]
Alison Stewart
That's a good clip. Why did you find Amy? Why was radio good? For the kind of stories that you wanted to tell, you were here. You would be AI.
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Amy Goodman
The voice is the heart of it. And you know, we started on television the week of 9 11. We were the closest national broadcast to ground zero. We were doing the show when the second plane hit the second tower. The first plane hit the first tower a few minutes before we went on air. And we didn't know what had happened. We worked at a DCTV downtown community television. And suddenly people were running, they were covered in ash. And I stayed at the pile for days. I mean around there, at DCTV so we could do the broadcast. We were in the evacuation zone and I was afraid if I left, the police wouldn't let me back in. And it was critical. We broadcast voice. We started on television then because MNN Manhattan Neighborhood Network asked if they could start running us as emergency programming. And then it just blew up. I hate to use those words when we're talking about 9 11, but TV stations around the country started to say, can we run Democracy Now? And then NPR stations started asking PBS stations, and it went from nine community radio stations, started at Pacifica Radio, the real founder of Democracy now, to 1500. But I always said at the beginning when they were setting up the cameras, you can only do this if it doesn't introduce static into the human voice, because that's what we wanted to hear. We go to where the silence is. And there's nothing more powerful than hearing a man or woman or child talking about their own experience, you know, that you can't even sometimes put into words. It's that the little shake of the voice, it's how fast or slow they speak, it's hearing them tear up, believe it or not. And that is what I learned from doing radio from way back. And now at the beginning, we're the only daily election show in public broadcasting for the first nine months. And then we expanded to television, and that's what we've done ever since.
- [23:48]
Alison Stewart
Carl the film Steal this Story, Please opens with Amy chasing around Trump policy advisor P. Wells Griffith III at the UN Climate Summit in Poland. Let's play it and we'll talk about it on the other side.
- [24:04]
Amy Goodman
Hi, I'm Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. Can you tell I've got to go to another meeting. Can you tell us what you think about President Trump saying climate change is a hoax? Can you could answer the question. Are you not speaking to the press here? Excuse, I'm sorry, I'm running late for a meeting. Thanks. Right, but you weren't running late when you're just standing there. So can you talk about President Trump's saying that climate change is a Chinese hoax?
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Alison Stewart
This goes on for.
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Amy Goodman
Are you not talking to the press
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Alison Stewart
while you a minute of chasing after him. Why did you want to open up with this scene?
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Carl Diehl
Well, in reality, it's about 15 minutes of her following him up and down all the. It's in a convention hall that is, as Amy has explained, in Katowice, Poland used to was built by the coal industry.
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Amy Goodman
It was modeled on a coal mine. And so it had a lot of fake stairs racing up and Then he would have to come right back down after that.
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Carl Diehl
So you see him running into all these dead ends. And so look, for us, it just felt like that. Told you everything you needed to know about Amy Goodman in, in a nutshell. And because you see her, well, you see her athletic ability, for one.
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Amy Goodman
If only we would accept corporate advertising, we could be brought to you by sneaker companies.
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Carl Diehl
Exactly.
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Amy Goodman
That's what we rely on.
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Carl Diehl
And. But you also see her, you know, her quick wit, her quick. And her unwillingness to take no comment for an answer. And keep in mind that this is set against a really, really important event. This is the world coming together to try and solve this grave climate crisis, and yet the Trump administration has sent their representative there to promote coal. And so it's everything you need to know about Amy, right there. And go ahead.
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Alison Stewart
I was gonna say, Amy, you repeat questions quite often. You repeat them, you repeat them, you repeat them. How important is repetition?
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Amy Goodman
People don't understand. Well, I only repeat them when they don't answer them. And, you know, if you repeat it enough, maybe you'll get an answer. And at a certain point. And he was the envoy for president, well, he had just been elected the first time, and President Trump was pulling the US out of the Paris climate agreement. So it was very serious. And there was Griffith, who had gone on to, in this administration for a time being an undersecretary of energy. His family owned an Alabama gas station pushing oil, gas and coal. And it was a serious issue when the rest of the world was trying to talk about renewables and how we save the planet. And he said, at a certain point, as I was trying to keep up with him, I consider this harassment. And I said, sir, a reporter asking you a question is not harassment.
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Alison Stewart
Two films came to mind when I was watching this. And this is for both of you, call me. Can a journalist be an advocate?
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Carl Diehl
Well, I think we all are advocates for our values, or lack thereof. I mean, it's part of who we are as human beings. And I think the problem with advocacy and journalism is when you try and conceal it and you're not honest about it, people use the word advocate or activist to try and discredit people, to try and minimize. I mean, no matter in any profession or just in life in general. But, you know, if you look at the media, you know, who are you advocating for? You know, are you. A lot of folks in the corporate media, I think, are activists for power. They're activists for people who have power. You know, we're looking at these Mergers that are happening right now, they're out of control. And that's the subtext for this film. It's been going on for 30 years and we just. Everybody's seen it now. And we've got this Paramount merger coming up with Time Warner. And Tia and I and Rosario Dawson, Jane Fonda, Julie Cohen, the great filmmaker, are all executive producers with us. And us and hundreds of our colleagues in the documentary community have joined with over a thousand media professionals to oppose this merger. Because what people don't know is it's not a done deal yet. It hasn't been approved, but it has a profound impact on how all of us get our voices heard and how media is distributed, including things like this film. Despite the fact that we have some success here in New York with a very, very strong opening, one of the strongest for a documentary in 10 years at IFC center, we're still independent. And the corporate, the institutions that determine who gets to see things believe that people don't want to see films about things like this. And we believe otherwise.
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Alison Stewart
Quickly, we've got about a minute left. Can a journalist be an advocate?
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Amy Goodman
I am an advocate for independent media. It is absolutely critical to be a sanctuary for dissent. I think dissent will save us. Independent media is the oxygen of a democratic society. And as we see these corporate newsrooms being devastated, the legacy media being sliced and diced, Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, cutting a third of the newsroom. We have to support independent media brought to us by the listeners, the viewers, the readers who are really citizens, citizens of the world craving authentic voices. This is the kind of media that will save us.
- [29:53]
Alison Stewart
We're talking about the documentary Steal this Story, Please. It is out now. I've been speaking with Amy Goodman and Carl Diehl. Thanks for coming into the studio.
- [30:01]
Amy Goodman
Thank you so much, Alison.
- [30:03]
Carl Diehl
Thanks for everything you do.
- [30:05]
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- [30:35]
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