DC/DOX Festival Kicks Off With Rousing Documentary On Amy Goodman, ‘Democracy Now!' Host Who Gives Voice To People 'Outside The Frame'

Hours before tanks rumbled into Washington for Donald Trump's military parade, ground shaking applause erupted in DC for someone who couldn't be more opposed to everything the president stands for — author and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman.
The renowned journalist traveled from New York to the nation's capital for the world premiere of Steal This Story, Please!, a documentary chronicling her work over many decades to give voice to the voiceless, make the powerful accountable, and to support democracy as the foremost means to safeguard human rights and human dignity.
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'Okay, let's go,' Goodman says at the beginning of the film, an instruction to her camera person as she spots P. Wells Griffith III, the climate change policy adviser to Pres. Trump in his first administration. The year is 2018, the location the UN Climate Summit in Poland, and Goodman is trying to get an answer to what would seem like an appropriate and straightforward question for a senior policy adviser on climate change.
After identifying herself and her news outlet, she asks, 'Can you tell us what you think about President Trump saying climate change is a hoax?'
For over two minutes, through the busy corridors of the climate summit, Goodman politely but persistently attempts to get a response from Griffith, who almost breaks into a sprint to avoid her.
'Why not answer a few simple questions?' she continues before he secrets himself behind a door marked United States of America Delegation Office.
Goodman could have used the occasion of the film premiere to laud herself, but instead she directed the focus onto her colleagues at Democracy Now!, her family, and the filmmaking team on stage with her for a Q&A – directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, and producer Karen Ranucci.
'Carl and Tia,' she said, 'your dedication to this and your artistry in doing this, we thank you so much.'
That's just how she rolls. Deal observed, 'Amy's concerned about the other person.'
She's been manifesting that throughout her career in journalism, beginning with her earliest days on, literally, an 'in-house' publication – a newsletter created by her brother Dave when they were children, with a modest circulation encompassing only family members. In the film she shares the story of seeking a job on Phil Donohue's talk show after graduating from college, only to be offered what amounted to a cameo – appearing on his program as a guest to represent unemployed young people.
Her journalism career formally began at the Pacifica Radio station in New York – WBAI. In 1996 she cofounded Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report. 'We went from nine stations to today over 1,500 public television and radio stations around the country and around the world,' she told the DC/DOX audience. 'And translated into Spanish, our headlines every day on hundreds of stations in Latin America and Europe, in the United States, because it is critical that we break down as many barriers as we can.'
Lessin – who along with Carl Deal earned an Oscar nomination for the 2008 documentary feature Trouble the Water – contributed to Goodman's reporting in 2000 at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, where Pres. George H.W. Bush was nominated to run for a second term.
'No sooner did I show up than someone put a lanyard around my neck, a press credential, and a camera in my hand. And I was off chasing Amy. And we actually wanted to call this film Chasing Amy, but the title was taken,' Lessin joked. 'In the film… you might remember George Bush Sr. coming down the stairs with Barbara [Bush] and Amy stops him. And the question she asks is, 'What do you say to people who call you a war criminal for the Gulf War?' …I captured it except I looked at my camera as Amy's having this exchange, and I realized the camera mic was overridden by a mic that I had put on top and we were getting no audio. And so they had this exchange and then Bush walks away, and I have to tell Amy there's no audio. And without hesitating, she said, 'Well, let's do it again.''
Lessin continued, 'She went down the hall and we went around and then [Bush] came up and then down [the stairs] again and [Amy] asked him the same question. He answered it the same way.'
Lessin said the anecdote illustrates Goodan's 'focus and her persistence, and she's not going to get a little technical glitch in the way of reporting the truth. And she also was really kind to me, and I saw that kindness reflected in the work she did with her team. I saw it in the footage that she shared with us. I saw it every day.'
Democracy Now! is completely funded by viewers, listeners, and foundations and doesn't accept corporate or government money or advertising. Goodman has reported in the field from Nigeria where she investigated Chevron's alleged complicity in the brutal suppression of protests by local people impacted by the company's oil exploration. She reported from Haiti, Peru, and in 1997 risked her life to report from East Timor, where Indonesian troops opened fire on Timorese, killing 270 people. Goodman and a journalism colleague writing for The New Yorker were beaten by gun-toting Indonesian soldiers (their weapons, as she pointed out, supplied by the U.S.).
Today, she has become not just admired and respected but beloved by an audience that gravitates to her moral compass, which points toward truth to be uncovered where many news outlets fail to look – in the streets, with the people.
'It's that global audience hungry for authentic voices, not your typical pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong,' Goodman noted. 'That's how the corporate media covers issues. They go right away to the politicians. But what pushes them [politicians]? What changes their minds? What is the reason that they pass bills? It is that engine of grassroots activism that is the true story of history that is so often untold, and it is our job in the media to put that on the record.'
In the film, Democracy Now!'s Nermeen Shaikh says it's about widening the frame of new coverage to center those kept at the margins or ignored by traditional media. Referring to groups often cropped out by the largest and most lucrative media entities, Goodman commented, 'I do think that those who care about war and peace, those who care about human rights, about inequality, those who care about the environment, about LGBTQ issues, about racial justice, economic justice are not a fringe minority, not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority — silenced by the corporate media — which is why we have to [report] the facts.'
As the moderator of the panel, I asked Goodman if she considered herself an unlikely rock star of journalism. She wouldn't bite on that inquiry, but producer Karen Ranucci spoke to the Goodman effect.
'When I walk down the street with Amy, people are stopping her all the time, thanking her,' Ranucci shared. 'At all the protests or whatever she's filming, people are coming up and thanking. And that's such an odd thing to thank a journalist and it's for showing up and it's love. They call her 'Amy,' and it's like this affection. So, for me, it is really thrilling to feel that coming from the public, they're so appreciative.'
Ranucci added, 'As far as myself being a producer, yes, we wanted to make this for the general public to turn people onto Democracy Now! for them to understand why independent media is critical in a democracy.'
As tanks threaten to symbolically crush American democracy in an unprecedented display of militarism and authoritarian-style politics in the capital, Goodman and Democracy Now! can be counted on to document not just that telegenic spectacle, but the heart of resistance in the streets, across America.
Deal said he was struck by how different the approach of Goodman and Democracy Now! is to covering stories of this magnitude after he watched CNN report on the ICE protests in Los Angeles.
'They had three reporters on the ground in the middle of these protests, and they were describing what was happening and then they'd go to a studio interview, and they didn't talk to a single person who was out there, and you had no idea why people were there,' Deal said. 'It was like a big a-ha thing of you need to go to this school of Amy Goodman. It really did help me understand… having seen Amy and watched Amy and sat with her for so many months, how important it is to listen, to let people say why they're doing what they're doing and to understand it. The whole film for us was in dialogue with the world we're living in today.'
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