Amy Goodman, co-host of the independent news program Democracy Now!, discussed the purpose of journalists and the vital position they occupy in a democratic society in a keynote speech last night.
Goodman's speech highlighted the importance of independent media, and the roadblocks she has encountered in her quest to report unpopular truths.
When we are given a record for providing a record
there's a problem she said, referring to her arrest at the Republic National Convention last summer. It not only violates the freedom of the press. It violates your right to know.
She emphasized the need for an independent media that doesn't simply act as a stenographer for government.
What happens when the media serves as a conveyor belt for the lies of the administration? she asked. Those lies take lives. It's that serious.
It is the media's role to create an open forum for discussing crucial issues, a platform unfettered by politics and special interests, she said.
Goodman detailed many of the experiences she has gathered in her efforts to give a voice to those she said often go unheard, from covering the unrest in East Timor to reporting on some high school students in Connecticut who were prohibited by their principal from performing the play they wrote on the War in Iraq.
In East Timor, a small island north of Australia where the native population was brutalized by Indonesian occupiers, she recalled being held at gunpoint by Timorese militants.
I think the only reason why they decided not to kill us was because their guns were made in America she said. The most amazing thing about America is that we are the sword and the shield. We are the sword because we provide the weapons to these people. But we are the shield because we are the ones who can turn it on them.
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Rosie Haney
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Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! speaks at Mem Aud about the role and impact of media. She was one of several speakers at Ohio University for the Schuneman Symposium.
