"I think the media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth. Instead, all too often, it's wielded as a weapon of war, which is why we have to take the media back." -- Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! Watch Amy reflect on her 30+ years of journalism, highlighted in a new documentary hitting theaters now.
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FEATURING AMY GOODMAN - More than three decades ago, a scrappy radio station, WBAI Pacifica Radio in New York, became the birthplace of Democracy Now! a pioneering politics and news show that centered people over profits, human rights over advertisers, and justice over business-as-usual.
The show, hosted and produced by Amy Goodman and a small army of intrepid journalists, broke boundaries, challenged corporate media, and is now the focus of a new documentary, Steal this Story, Please. The film, releasing in theaters nationwide, traces several milestones in Goodman’s coverage from the controversial airing of commentaries by political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, to a massacre in East Timor, the September 11th attacks and subsequent war on Iraq, through to the emergence of Donald Trump.
Amy Goodman is an award-winning investigative journalist, author, and host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, which airs on more than 1,500 public television and radio stations worldwide. She spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the new documentary, Steal This Story, Please.
ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:
Sonali Kolhatkar: Amy, I want to begin by letting you know that when I first considered hosting a show on KPFK Pacifica in Los Angeles, it was listening to "Democracy Now!" that gave me the courage to do what I ended up doing. I listened to you, and I figured out that all I needed was a thirst for truth and justice. So, thank you for that. What does the title of this film, "Steal This Story, Please," mean? Let's start there.
Amy Goodman: Well, Sonali, it means so much to me that you said "Democracy Now!" inspired you because I respect your work so much, both on "Rising Up" and "Uprising" before that. "Steal the story, please" is our motto at "Democracy Now!" We consider an exclusive a failure. We want the media to pick up our stories.
To, yes, steal these stories and take them out to the wider world in the same way that we don't expect people will just come to "Democracy Now!" We go out on all social media platforms, from Instagram to YouTube, to X, to wherever, to ensure that wherever people are, that's where we have to be able to get these different voices out.
