On Thursday night at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, I was inspired by the words of an amazingly intelligent, powerful and, most importantly, truthful woman. A woman who fights on the front line of the war against the dishonesties, half-truths, and biased reporting that permeate throughout the mainstream media. Her name is Amy Goodman, and she is the co-founder and host of the news show Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! is an independent news institution that survives solely on contributions from its listeners and viewers. It receives no government or corporate funding, and accepts no advertisers. In other words, Democracy Now! answers to nobody. It is a station that reports both sides to every story with no bias. When CNN, FOX, ABC and NBC told the United States citizens that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Democracy Now! accommodated experts that told otherwise. When reporters from mainstream stations sat in their skyboxes at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Amy and her crew were outside being arrested among hundreds of protestors. When the world tried to ignore the genocide going on in East Timor throughout the '80s and '90s, Amy and her crew were there. They were beaten by U.S.-trained Indonesian soldiers with U.S.-purchased weapons, but they got the story.
This is the kind of journalism that the world needs. Journalism without an agenda, except to report the truth. Journalism that helps citizens make informed decisions, not bias ones. In a day and age where Hannity Banner and Rush Limbaugh receive the highest ratings, it was unbelievably refreshing to hear Amy speak; to know that there is at least one beacon of truth reporting on the issues I care about. Thank you, Amy Goodman, and thank you, Democracy Now!
Daniel Stephens is a junior studying Latin American studies.
4 Opinion
Letter to the Editor
