Democracy Now!

The show was located in the DCTV firehouse building (a converted firehouse) in New York City's Chinatown

Democracy Now! is a United States (WP) daily progressive, nonprofit, independently syndicated program of analysis, and opinion, aired by more than 1000 Wikipedia:radio, Wikipedia:television, satellite and cable TV networks in Wikipedia:North America. The award-winning one-hour "War and Peace Report" is hosted by investigative journalists Wikipedia:Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. The program is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations, and does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding.

Democracy Now! was founded on 19 February 1996 at WBAI-FM in New York City by progressive journalists Amy Goodman (WP), Juan Gonzalez (WP), Larry Bensky, Salim Muwakkil, and Julie Drizin. It originally aired on 5 Pacifica Radio stations. Goodman is the program's principal host, with Juan Gonzalez as frequent co-host. Jeremy Scahill (WP), an Wikipedia:investigative reporter for Wikipedia:The Nation, has been a frequent contributor since 1997. The Spanish version includes the daily headlines, as well as a weekly summary of the news and was begun by Andres Thomas Conteris in May 2005. The program focuses on issues its producers consider underreported or ignored by mainstream news coverage. Democracy Now! began broadcasting on television every weekday shortly after September 11, 2001, and it is the only public media in the U.S. that airs simultaneously on satellite and cable television, radio, and the internet (WP).

Studios

In November, 2009, Democracy Now! bid farewell to their broadcast studio in the DCTV converted firehouse building in New York City's Chinatown, where they had broadcast for 8 years. The studio subsequently moved to a repurposed graphic arts building in the Chelsea District of Wikipedia:Manhattan. In 2010, the new 8500-square-foot Democracy Now! studio became the first radio or television studio in the nation to receive LEED Platinum certification, the highest rating awarded by the Wikipedia:U.S. Green Building Council.

Syndication

Democracy Now! is the flagship program of the Wikipedia:Pacifica Radio network. The television simulcast airs on Wikipedia:Public-access television stations; by satellite on Wikipedia:Free Speech TV and Wikipedia:Link TV, and Wikipedia:free-to-air on Wikipedia:C Band. Democracy Now! is also available on the internet as downloadable and streaming audio and video. In total, over 1,200 television and radio stations broadcast Democracy Now! worldwide.

Awards and reaction

"I think it's probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time."- Wikipedia:Robert W. McChesney, quoted in Wikipedia:The Nation

Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Wikipedia:Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the Wikipedia:George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Wikipedia:Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Wikipedia:Chevron Corporation and the deaths of two Wikipedia:Nigerian villagers protesting an oil spill; and Goodman with Wikipedia:Allan Nairn won Robert F. Kennedy Memorial's First Prize in International Radio for their 1993 report, Massacre: The Story of East Timor which involved first-hand coverage of Wikipedia:genocide during the Wikipedia:Indonesian occupation of East Timor.

On October 1, 2008, Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Wikipedia:Right Livelihood Award, in connection with her years of work establishing Democracy Now!.

2008 Republican National Convention arrests

Three journalists with Democracy Now!—including principal host Wikipedia:Amy Goodman, and news producers Nicole Salazar and Wikipedia:Sharif Abdel Kouddous—were detained by police during their reporting on the 2008 Republican National Convention protests. Salazar was filming as officers in full Wikipedia:riot gear charged her area. As she yelled "Press!" she was knocked down and told to put her face in the ground while another officer dragged her backward by her leg across the pavement. The video footage of the incident was immediately posted on the Internet, leading to a large public outcry against her arrest. When a second producer, Kouddous, approached, he too was arrested, and charged with a Wikipedia:felony. According to a press release by Democracy Now!, Goodman herself was arrested after confronting officers regarding the arrest of her colleagues. The officers had established a line of "crowd control," and ordered Goodman to move back. Goodman claims she was arrested after being pulled through the police line by an officer, and subsequently (as well as Kouddous) had her press credentials for the convention physically stripped from her by a Wikipedia:secret service agent. All were held on charges of "probable cause for riot." A statement was later released by the city announcing that all "misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists" would be dropped. The felony charges against Salazar and Kouddous were also dropped.

Goodman, Salazar, and Kouddous subsequently filed a lawsuit against the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis as well as other defendants. According to Baher Asmy of the Wikipedia:Center for Constitutional Rights, "[a]ll three plaintiffs that are journalists with Democracy Now reached a final settlement with the city of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the United States Secret Service, that will resolve the claims that they had against them from unlawful and quite violent arrests." The settlement includes $100,000 in compensation and a promise of police training.

Notable guests, interviews, and on-air debates

• Wikipedia:Alan Dershowitz and Wikipedia:Norman G. Finkelstein – Finkelstein is a frequent guest. This was a much publicized debate about whether the Dershowitz book, Wikipedia:The Case for Israel was plagiarized and inaccurate. Dershowitz has written that he agreed to appear on the show after being told he would debate Noam Chomsky (WP), not Finkelstein.
• Wikipedia:Alan Greenspan, former Wikipedia:Chairman of the Federal Reserve – by Amy Goodman and Wikipedia:Naomi Klein, journalist and author of Wikipedia:The Shock Doctrine, September 24, 2007. In a follow-up interview, Wikipedia:Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Wikipedia:Donald Barlett and James Steele, based on their October 2007 article in Vanity Fair, call Greenspan "flat wrong" regarding claims by Greenspan in that interview denying Federal Reserve responsibility in the transfer of billions of dollars from the Federal Reserve to Iraq, $9 billion of which the reporters claim has yet to be accounted.
• Wikipedia:Arundhati Roy – Recurring guest; Indian writer, Wikipedia:anti-war activist, and leading figure in the alter-globalization (WP) movement
• Bill Clinton (WP) – Interviewed after hours on election day of the U.S. presidential election, 2000. The heated interview on the Wikipedia:Clinton Administration's Wikipedia:neoliberal policies, bombing of Wikipedia:Vieques, Wikipedia:Iraq sanctions, Wikipedia:Leonard Peltier, the death penalty (WP), the Wikipedia:Cuban embargo, Wikipedia:racial profiling, Wikipedia:Ralph Nader, and the Wikipedia:Israel-Palestinian conflict resulted in the outgoing President calling Amy Goodman "hostile and combative." A staffer at the White House press office later criticized Goodman for straying from the topic of getting out the vote and for keeping Clinton on much longer than the two to three minutes agreed. Goodman replied "President Clinton is the most powerful person in the world. He can hang up when he wants to."
• Wikipedia:Bill Moyers – Interviewed; former Johnson Administration Wikipedia:press secretary and former host of the PBS (WP) show Wikipedia:NOW with Bill Moyers and former host of the PBS show Wikipedia:Bill Moyers' Journal.
• Wikipedia:Cornel West – Scholar, currently a professor at Union Theological Seminary, formerly at Wikipedia:Harvard, Princeton, and Wikipedia:Yale; activist; author.
• Wikipedia:Danny Glover – Regular guest; American actor, Wikipedia:film director, and Wikipedia:political activist.
• Wikipedia:Dennis Kucinich, Democratic presidential candidate – Interviewed by Goodman and Gonzalez on November 9, 2007.
• Edward Said – was a regular guest; Columbia University professor, literary critic and Palestinian activist and intellectual
• Evo Morales, President of Bolivia – Interviewed on September 22, 2006; talked about his recent speech at the United Nations in New York where he held up a coca leaf and argued for international drug law reform as well as talked about the nationalization of Bolivia's energy reserves among other topics. Morales was again interviewed on April 23, 2010 after the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
• George McGovern, 1972 Democratic presidential nominee – Interviewed on March 11, 2008 about that year's presidential race and how McGovern's chairmanship of the Democratic Party Reform Commission (1969–70) transformed the nominating process.
• George Monbiot, climate change activist, and Helen Caldicott, debated nuclear power after the Fukushima Dai-Ichi incident "A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy"
• George Papandreou, Greek Prime Minister – Interviewed on December 8, 2011 at U.N. Climate Change Conference in Durban, South Africa shortly after resigning due to pressure from European Union and financial institutions.
• Gore Vidal – U.S.-author, essayist, and political activist; interviewed sparsely on a few occasions.
• Greg Palast – Frequent guest; U.S.-born writer and investigative journalist for the BBC and The Observer.
• Howard Zinn – Interviewed by Amy Goodman; late historian and activist; author of several books, including A People's History of the United States.
• Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela – Interviewed in September 2005.
• Jean-Bertrand Aristide – on March 16, 2004, the recently ousted Haitian President accused the United States of kidnapping him and overthrowing the government of Haiti.
• Jimmy Carter – Interviewed by on 10 September 2007; former U.S. President: author of Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.
• Joseph Stiglitz – Recurring guest; Columbia University economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner (2001), and author
• Julian Assange
• Paul Krugman – Recurring guest; Princeton University economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner (2008), and author
• Lori Berenson – Interviewed in 1999 in Peru by Amy Goodman; political activist arrested in 1995 and convicted for collaborating with the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a Peruvian leftist guerrilla organization. It was the first time a journalist was able to interview Berenson inside the prison where she was incarcerated.
• Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
• Manuel Zelaya – multiple interviews with the ousted president of Honduras
• Matt Taibbi – Frequent guest; U.S.-born writer and investigative journalist for the The Nation
• Michael Eric Dyson – Regular guest; Georgetown professor, writer & radio host.
• Michael Moore – Filmmaker, author, political commentator; interviewed on March 10, 2011 & on September 28, 2011
• Mumia Abu-Jamal – In its first year, Democracy Now! was one of the first national programs to air radio commentaries from the controversial journalist and former Black Panther Party member, on death row in Pennsylvania for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. The 1997 decision to air Abu-Jamal's commentaries caused Democracy Now! to lose twelve of its then 36 affiliates.
• Naomi Klein – Author, public intellectual, and critic of globalization and corporate capitalism. Interviewed on March 9, 2011.
• Noam Chomsky (WP) – A regularly interviewed guest; MIT linguistics professor, political analyst, and author
• Norman Finkelstein (WP) author, activist and scholar
• Wikipedia:Oliver Stone - Director, producer, screen writer.
• Wikipedia:Ralph Nader – A regularly interviewed guest; consumer activist, corporate critic, author, and former presidential candidate.
• Wikipedia:Ricardo Alarcón – President of the Cuban National Assembly interviewed by Amy Goodman.
• Wikipedia:Robert Fisk – Frequent guest; British journalist who is Middle East correspondent for Wikipedia:The Independent.
• Wikipedia:John Pilger – Frequent guest; Wikipedia:Australian journalist and film-maker.
• Wikipedia:Scott Ritter – Interviewed; former Wikipedia:UN weapons inspector who disputed the Bush administration's claims about weapons programs in Iraq.
• Wikipedia:Tariq Ali and Wikipedia:Christopher Hitchens – took opposing sides in two debates over the Iraq War (WP), on December 4, 2003 and October 12, 2004.
• Wikipedia:Tawakel Karman – The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient appeared 21 October 2011, while she was in New York for a UN Security Council resolution that would create a path for Yemen President Saleh to resign.
• Wikipedia:Yoko Ono – Musician, peace activist and widow of Wikipedia:John Lennon. Interviewed on October 16, 2007.

Democracy Now! collection at the Internet Archive

Democracy Now! has digital collections of video & audio at the Internet Archive. The collection of video contains over 3,300 items and the collection of audio contains over 5,300 items.

See also

Chiquita (United Fruit Company) (WP) US military operations in the 20th and 21st centuries List of Military Interventions of the United States private military corporations (also PMC investigator Jeremy Scahill) post-Cold War covert regime change by the US Weather Underground Fallujah Alternative media

Alternative media (U.S. political left) Citizen journalism Citizen media Community radio Human rights in the United States Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn on Democracy Now! Independent Media Center Madge Weinstein

Mass media Media democracy Underground press Dershowitz-Finkelstein affair Independent media Peace movement Social justice INN World Report

External links

• Template:official website
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• Template:Internet Archive collection
• VIDEO: Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, Democracy Now! host, Amy Goodman, and her brother, David Goodman, from their recent book tour, April 14, 2008, Portland, Oregon.
• "Democracy Now! History in the Making", An article by Angela Alston about the innovative distribution of the Democracy Now! TV show, published in The Independent (June 2002)
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