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Amy Goodman with John Pilger

29 June 2002
Ms. Goodman speaks of her experiences in East Timor, with Pacifica radio, and her belief in alternative radio with John Pilger.

I don’t think that the ultimate in journalism is interviewing someone in high office, getting access, and really making a trade off that I don’t think is worth it. You have reporters at the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department who basically spew the state line in the hopes that they will get some kind of leak or some kind of special access without being critical. I also think that when you have these news anchors on television, they should be flashing the amount of money they make. People should understand the economic strata they come from. They represent such a minority in this country and they interview their friends, basically. Cozying up to power, often going back and forth from government into something that’s not even journalism, but TV. For example, take someone like Pete Williams. He was the spokesperson for the Pentagon in the Persian Gulf War; he was the one who helped to design the censorship of the media, the rules about how the media would cover the war. Then he becomes a chief correspondent for NBC. This is unacceptable.

It’s most challenging to go where the silence is and say something, to go to places that are not being covered, but where the U.S., as a U.S. journalist, is deeply involved, like East Timor. We have to go to places where the U.S. government is supporting military dictatorships and regimes, where U.S. money is pouring in. — Amy Goodman, interviewed by Nell Geiser of KGNU Radio in Boulder, CO, March 10, 2001

Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Pacifica Radio’s daily newsmagazine Democracy Now! which airs daily on over 400 stations in North America. Goodman has interviewed several Lannan guests including Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, and Robert Fisk.

John Pilger, born in Sydney, Australia, is the author of nine books including Aftermath: The Struggle of Cambodia and Vietnam (1981), Hidden Agendas (1998) and most recently, The New Rulers of the World.

Related Entries

Amy Goodman Bio and Cross Links

Link to Democracy Now! website

John Pilger Bio and Cross Links