Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan, 10 October 2012 – Audio

http://podcast.lannan.org/2012/10/18/amy-goodman-and-denis-moynihan-10-october-2012-audio/

Recorded at the Lensic Theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico on October 10, 2012.

On a U.S. tour with their new book, The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance and Hope (forthcoming August 2012 by Haymarket Books), Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan showed how the work of ordinary people—the silenced majority—is pulling back the veil of corporate media and changing the world.

This event was part of the Lannan In Pursuit of Cultural Freedom series.

Denis Moynihan is the co-founder of Democracy Now! Since 2002, he has participated in the organization’s worldwide distribution, infrastructure development, and the coordination of complex live broadcasts from many continents. He lives in Denver where he is developing a new noncommercial community radio station.

Amy Goodman is an award-winning investigative journalist and syndicated columnist, author and host of the daily, independent global news hour Democracy Now! which airs on more than 1,000 public television and radio stations worldwide. Goodman has interviewed several Lannan guests including Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, and Robert Fisk.

Goodman has also won numerous awards for the radio documentary she co-produced with journalist Allan Nairn, “MASSACRE: The Story of East Timor,” including the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Armstrong Award, the Radio/Television News Directors Award, as well as awards from AP, UPI, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In 1991 Goodman and Nairn survived a massacre in East Timor in which Indonesian soldiers gunned down more than 250 Timorese. The Indonesian military banned them from returning. Goodman twice attempted to re-enter East Timor to cover the historic referendum on self-determination. Citing her name on an army blacklist, the Indonesian regime deported her both times.

Goodman has reported from Israel and the Occupied territories, Cuba, Mexico, Haiti and this year became the first journalist ever to interview the jailed U.S. citizen Lori Berenson, serving a life sentence in Peru. Goodman also recently broadcast the first U.S. radio interview with imprisoned East Timor rebel leader Xanana Gusmao. In addition to her daily radio shows, Goodman speaks around the country on university campuses, as well as to human rights, church and community groups about media activism. She also runs workshops at community radio stations on grassroots coverage.

You may learn more about this event on the Lannan website; you may also view the video recordings of this event there.

Why Newspapers are Failing

There is no getting around the fact that these are tough times for newspapers. The Tribune Company recently filed for bankruptcy and a number of other papers are rumored to be on the selling block. Others have announced cuts in staff and distribution. The Detroit Free Press recently made the decision to limit home delivery to Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays, the heaviest advertising days and the most popular papers for readers. But it’s not only print that is suffering. For the first time in 25 years National Public Radio is laying off staff to repair a $23 million deficit. The company will eliminate 7% of its workforce and drop two of its programs, “Day to Day” and “News & Notes.” At the same time, web based media and independent media are taking up the slack.

But why are the big media failing?

Today on GRITtv we speak with Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!, John McCarther, the Publisher of Harper’s Magazine, and Brian Unger an original contributor to the Daily Show who provides regular commentary for NPR.

It's not just the end of an era: The rise of the web and the death of print. It is in a sense the end of truth. In the run up to the Iraq war the media served as a mouthpiece for the administration's lies. Now the public are looking elsewhere.