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RedditPacifica listeners, the most politically pumped-up demographic in Radioland, are taking to the e-mails again. This time they're galvanized by what they see as a move to oust Amy Goodman, for many years co-host and heart and soul of Democracy Now!, a popular news program that showcases the network's avowedly radical take on the world.
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The 'FCC-Word'
Garrett Epps: Censorship is a really dirty word.
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Radio Nation with Laura Flanders
Radio Nation : This week, Nation editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel reflects on the role of independent media in turbulent political waters.
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The Secret White House
Ruth Rosen: By classifying an unprecedented amount of information, the Bush Administration is shrouding its workings in mystery--and threatening our democracy in the process.
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Ha'aretz, Israel's Liberal Beacon
Alternative & Independent Media
Stephen Glain: A spirited daily paper is the last remaining defender of Israel's tradition of dissent.
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The Liberal Voice
Eric Alterman: Thanks to the potty-mouths of Bush and Cheney, we've won the right to accidentally curse on the public airwaves. Now, what about all the networks' intentional antisocial behavior?
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Watching the Reporters
John Dinges: After three foreign correspondents are decertified, is Cuba sending a message to the international press corps?
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Free the Ulysses Two
Stephen Gillers: The time has come to clear the records of two women convicted of obscenity for publishing excerpts from Joyce's Ulysses.
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The Nation Sues the Government
The Nation joins the ACLU and several other organizations and attorneys in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the FISA act.
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Noted.
Ari Melber tracks the continuing fight over FISA; Stuart Klawans remembers Thomas Disch.
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Obama and Iraq
His plan to exit Iraq falls far short of the complete withdrawal most Americans want. But it's a place to start.
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Noted.
Civil liberties, at home and abroad; saving Jeff Wood from Texas's death row.
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Supreme Politics
The Supreme Court's final rulings remind us that civil rights and a sane vision of the Constitution rest with the next President's judicial appointments.
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Fizzling on FISA
Obama and other Senate Democrats should not let a lame-duck Administration compromise our liberties in the name of pursuing terrorists.
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Noted.
George Carlin knew words could never be as obscene as wars; Barack Obama goes for the money, but at what cost?
Many listeners feel that management's move against Goodman, ostensibly to "professionalize" the operation, is really an attempt to bland down the show. Our main concern is that Democracy Now! be preserved under Goodman and her current co-host, Juan Gonzalez. The program has broadcast a string of scoops and garnered some of radio's highest awards. It features the kind of hard-nosed investigative reporting that only noncommercial radio can do. Its series on the Chevron Oil company's collaboration with the murderous Nigerian dictatorship won a George Polk Award (see Goodman and Scahill, "Drilling and Killing," November 16, 1998, and "Killing for Oil in Nigeria," March 15, 1999). Goodman's reports from East Timor with Allan Nairn resulted in a documentary that collected numerous awards. Democracy Now! has covered a host of other stories that the mainstream media ignored or on-the-other-handed to death. Its reports on the Republican and Democratic conventions focused on the corporate domination of these political trade fairs, still another example of what alternative radio can do that the commercial networks won't.
Even the often admirable National Public Radio has sunk to the practice of corporate underwriting; it recently (and disgracefully) joined the big-bucks broadcast lobby in opposing low-power community radio. Pacifica is one of the few noncommercial radio voices left--"the last bastion of the precept, enshrined in the FCC Act, that the public airways are a public trust," as we said in a previous editorial. Goodman and Democracy Now! belong on Pacifica. Make that with an exclamation point!
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