For her work on the radio documentaries "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship" and "MASSACRE: The Story of East Timor," Amy Goodman has received a laundry list of awards. The accolades include: the George Polk Award, the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting and the Armstrong Award, to name just a few. But Goodman is not merely a journalist. She has put her life on the line for what she believes in, and championed causes like media awareness and social equality throughout the world.
Thanks to Popejoy Hall's Programming and Booking Manager Paul Suozzi, KUNM General Manager Richard Towne and Goodman herself, the Daily Lobo was granted an exclusive interview following her speech at Popejoy Hall Saturday.
Daily Lobo: You've mentioned the special responsibility that the citizens of Albuquerque have to the peace movement. How would you say that responsibility is being handled?
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Amy Goodman: Well, I think the numbers told it today; several thousand people who came out to say no to war, yes to peace and to bear witness in front of the Air Force base, as well as the labs. As I said in the talk, I don't think that people should automatically assume that those on the other side of the fence are actually on the other side of the fence.
DL: Do you think it's important to speak on college campuses?
AG: Yes. It's very important, because young people are the key to stopping war now, and in the future. And joining together with younger people and older people _ that's what a movement is. I take young people's actions very seriously and they have greater repercussions than just what happens on the college campus. We learn about it outside too. It's like a chain reaction _ the good kind. They fuel others to do things, whether they're in the university or not.
DL: Are people on college campuses more receptive to alternative/independent media than in other venues?
AG: Well, I think that people who are at the beginning of their careers just have the whole world open to them. The independent media movement is made up of people who deeply believe that the world can be made better and that there needs to be a different kind of media. This helps to shore up democracy. I think college campuses are some of the places where it's really at.
DL: Is it true that kids are less idealistic now than a decade or two ago?
AG: I would say that college administrations, the institution, has become more commercialized. It is very frightening to see PR schools meld with journalism schools; to see a country where there are more "PR professionals" than journalists, and even those journalists are basically spin-miesters for power. But I don't see college students as less idealistic. I just see that they're up against a lot more. They're up against a very slick, seductive, commercial world. But I think students are smart enough to see through it and to know what matters.
DL: How do you think the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and subsequent deregulations have affected the American public's perception of the war and anti-war movements?
AG: I think they're intimately connected. The same telecommunications giants that are cheerleading for war are pressuring politicians and the FCC, and greasing their pockets to deregulate telecommunications even more, so that there will be, if possible, even fewer voices of dissent in the media, because there will be fewer owners of the media. These networks and telecommunications giants are not even reporting on the massive changes in media ownership that they are paving the way for. They don't want us to know, they don't want the public to know how they are controlling the airwaves. As soon as people find out, they deeply care. People care. They know that these corporations are becoming all too powerful and we all need to do something about it.
DL: It seems like the more media outlets these corporate giants are allowed to own, that more regulation is put on people like yourself and that it becomes more difficult for independent voices to be heard.
AG: Right. It definitely closes up the public spaces for dissent. The more they become deregulated, the more regulated the other voices are. But we can stop that from happening. Already Michael Powell _ son of Colin Powell _ who is in charge of the FCC, has been forced to account, both in Senate hearings this week and by people demanding that the public have input on what's happening to the public airwaves.
DL: Are you going to attend the upcoming hearing in Richmond?
AG: I'm definitely going to try to cover it. Democracy Now! will be there, one way or the other.
DL: What can be done to make sure that the real facts are brought to light the first time around, unlike what happened with The New York Times misleading reportage on the October protest in Washington?
AG: Every time there's misreporting, to put tremendous pressure on them, to call, to protest. And in the same way that people protest outside of Air Force bases and the Pentagon, I think they should be targeting the mainstream media. They're the way we understand the world and if they're going to cover up what's happening on the ground, or if by simply not reporting it, or misrepresenting it, then we have to let them know how we feel about that. After all, they are capitalist institutions that care about consumers and we're the consumers. There are all sorts of tools that we have to pressure them. We demand that they tell the truth, then they're forced to respond by, in the case of The New York Times, writing another story. We'll see what happens now, we'll see if this time around, they are more honest about it, or if they have to be called to account again.
DL: What kind of impact do you think today's protests will have on world leaders and the media?
AG: I understand that Bush was at Camp David today and I heard that Rumsfeld might be putting his home on the market in Taos. I think he's heard the protests. I also think that people have to be persistent and that this is a movement that takes time. I am sure that they are watching, in all sorts of ways. I can only think of someone like Dan Elsberg, who worked for the Pentagon, who saw the protestors outside day, after day, after day. He ultimately went into the basement with top-secret documents that outlined the truth about the Vietnam War, and he Xeroxed them and gave them to the press because he didn't want to be part of the killing machine any longer. It was the protestors outside who made the difference in his life. And I think about Phil Beregan. He died on Dec. 6, but his legacy lives on. Here is a person that day after day, month after month, year after year, continued his protests. He spent 10 of the last 30 years in jail. He didn't ask about the effect of his actions. Many people said, "What's the point? As soon as you get out of jail, you engage in another action like going to a military base, symbolically hammering on a warhead, and then you get thrown back in jail. How does your voice get heard when you do something like that?" He didn't do polls to look at the effect of his actions. He said that in his life, he wanted to bear witness. That's one way of doing it. Other people do it in other ways. Some people work within institutions, and in their small way, they are vigilant. They try to talk to people inside. Every person, I think, has to find the place where they're comfortable because that's where they'll have the greatest effect. It can be done in all sorts of ways, but if the ultimate goal is to work towards democracy and towards social justice and peace, I don't think we should judge the ways people work towards that end.
DL: If indeed we do go to war with Iraq, what amount of access do you think the press will be allowed?
AG: The issue isn't so much what the press is allowed to cover, it's what they accept. That's what's so disgraceful about how the press has behaved. Going back before the Gulf War, to the U.S. invasion of Grenada, to the U.S. invasion of Panama _ the U.S. accepts the Pentagon's press restrictions. Not only that, the press rewards those who write the restrictions. During the Persian Gulf War, it was Pete Williams who was the spokesman for the Pentagon and who helped lay out the designs to restrict the press. He then becomes a chief correspondent for NBC. If the press simply said, "No, we are not going to engage in pool reports, we demand access," they'd get it. It's just that they don't. There are a few brave, independent reporters, and also those within the networks, who try to buck the system; they are the hope. Independent media like Pacifica sued the Pentagon during the Persian Gulf War for the press restrictions. The mainstream media wouldn't join and then wouldn't report on it. But we just keep at it. The Pentagon can only lay down restrictions that the press will accept. If the press didn't accept them, then the Pentagon couldn't do it.
DL: We heard a couple of times today about the link between UNM and the War Department. Could you comment on that?
AG: I think that's for you to investigate, but from what I understand, the labs, the military here in New Mexico and the University of New Mexico are intimately connected and that the military gives contracts to UNM. I think that military contracts and free discourse in universities are antithetical because all too often, and UNM is not alone in this, all too often, when there are military contracts at a university, there is a squelching of free discourse because it does involve secrets. I think that college campuses should be places where there is complete disclosure and full discourse, that graduate students and undergraduates can talk about their research, share it and it's a model for what they do in the future. When you have military contracts, it goes completely in the other direction, in the same way as when you have corporate contracts, like biotech contracts, where students are sworn to secrecy because they're dealing with proprietary information. There's no place for that on a college campus.
DL: What can be done when there is that kind of secrecy?
AG: That should be reported. Never take that as, "Well then there's no story there." Just because they refuse to comment doesn't mean you shouldn't report on it. Also, people will seek you out if you become a person who they see as covering these kinds of issues. I think that there are a lot of people within the system who aren't happy with the direction a university is going when it has these kind of military contracts, and I think they'll start to talk to you, both students and professors.
DL: Do you think that mainstream media try to discredit alternative voices?
AG: Again, I would even say with the media, that there are a lot of people inside who are very disgusted. I really do think that the public has a say in what's presented on television. I've been in many debates with people, from The New York Times to the networks who say, "People just don't want to know those things." I say that's far from the truth. When people know, they care. The example for many years was Timor _ "They just don't want to know." Well, when people in Kosovo were suffering, we'd never even heard of the name Kosovo before, and suddenly you see people on your TV screen who are suffering and you care! If you don't know, there's no reason to care. I use the same example with Iraq. Every time someone goes to Iraq in one of these delegations _ right now there are more than 30 delegations from around the world in Iraq _ just people trying to build bridges with people. They're not there to talk to government officials, they want to talk to people on the ground in Iraq. The last group I talked to was two days ago, four women who lost loved ones on Sept. 11 at the World Trade Center, went to speak with people in Iraq who had also lost people, in the Gulf War and beyond in the bombings. First of all, we don't know when most people go, but every time a high profile person goes, like Sean Penn or congressperson McDermott, they are pilloried, they are ridiculed. How dare they give comfort to the enemy! Now tell me that an Iraqi child is an enemy of us. It makes it very difficult for other people to go there, because they are concerned that the same thing will happen to them. People are continuing to go. I mean, you look at someone like Kathy Kelly, twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, who founded Voices In the Wilderness, she just doesn't stop. Month after month, they send more and more people. The more people that go, the more people see that war is not the answer. How do you say that we're going to bomb this country to save it? Here are people that, for more than a decade, have been bombed, have been sanctioned to the point of not being able to get food and medicine. Not even the UN sanctions _ the U.S. government continually bombs these areas, the Kurds in the north, the Shi'ites in the south _ to help them? To free them of this tyrant? It's not getting Saddam Hussein, it's getting the people. And as Terry Rockefeller, one of the women who lost someone at the World Trade Center, lost her sister, who just came back from Iraq said, "What we found there on the ground, whether or not Saddam Hussein is removed, is the level of fundamentalism and anti-American feeling, which is growing tremendously there." Because of the level of suffering, they have nothing to lose right now. This is a country that was one of the most sophisticated, industrialized, in the Middle East. It has been bombed, you know, back to the Middle Ages. Women had made more progress there than in any other country in the region. It's very frightening. If we want to be a safer society, we cannot generate that kind of hostility abroad. That is the greatest threat to us here at home. Let's not forget what happened on Sept. 11. As Bush talks about a Star Wars shield and all this stuff, it happened with box-cutters, and that's what's so frightening. It's not this high-tech stuff. We have to really bring down the level of hatred and look at our actions.
DL: Do you feel like diplomacy is the answer to that?
AG: Yeah, there's no question. We talk about how we are in the 21st century, we are the most powerful country on earth. I think we can figure out a way not to kill people to save them. I think we can figure out a way to save this planet that involves alternative energy, that involves being a model here at home and starting at home with civil rights and social justice here. We have a long way to go. That's going to make our society safer _ pouring money into education and health care _ that's what strengthens this country. Not bombing other countries. As one of the ads says, taken out by peace activists, what Bush is doing is using "weapons of mass distraction." That's what it's all about right now _ diverting us from our problems at home.
DL: You called for the implementation of "trickle up journalism"...
AG: Just as I said right now, I think that in the same way people protest the Pentagon and at Air Force bases, I think they should look to the media because they are the most powerful institutions of our time. They're not only among the wealthiest, but they are shaping the rest of the world's view of us and our view of the rest of the world. The day that the bombing of Afghanistan began, people protested in New York. They went to the Armed Forces recruiting station in Times Square, which is right next to The New York Times _ the Armed Forces recruiting station, not to be confused with The New York Times _ and that's a good beginning. Bringing these protests right to the steps of these institutions that want to block us out. I think if that movement begins, these networks and these papers of so-called record will have to open up, will have to respond.
