PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Transcript excerpts from Amy Goodman speech
by marie Monday, Nov. 29, 2004 at 9:30 AM

Amy Goodman, this year’s Annual Thomas Merton Award recipient, can be heard every weekday morning at 8am on WRCT, 88.3fm and seen on PCTV 21 every weekday morning live at the same time on Democracy Now. Below are excerpts from the powerful speech she delivered on Thursday, November 18, at the annual Thomas Merton Award dinner.

"Media as a Megaphone"
(The weekend following the dinner, Democracy Now will be in Madrid, Spain and then Rome, Italy where Silvio Berlusconi also owns almost all the media in Italy, personally.)

We’ll talk about media consolidation and what it means, like in the United States, to have the media as a megaphone for those in power. Though it’s interesting in this country…that George Bush doesn’t have to own it for the media to be his personal megaphone…We have to challenge the corporate media. We have to take on the media because they’re using public property – they’re using our airwaves, the public airwaves. It’s not just Pacifica and NPR and PBS, they’re using public airwaves. ABC, NBC, CBS…they have a responsibility to express the whole diversity of opinion because it’s a matter of life and death. We need the media that doesn’t simply act as a megaphone for those in power.

The polls showed right on up through the election how many people still believe Al Qaeda is linked to Saddam Hussein, that Iraq is linked to 9-11 and that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. How can that be, you ask? It’s not because the American people are stupid. The American people are good media consumers. And if you are told that day after day, week after week, month after month, not only on all those networks but in all the major newspapers of this country, led by the New York Times, “weapons of mass destruction” – you go away for a minute to get something from your refrigerator or walk your dog, you miss the part where they say, “Oops, we got it wrong.” It is not surprising that people believed what they were told. George Bush could not have done it alone. If he simply had a little megaphone, standing on the steps of the White House saying “Trust me, they’ve got it,” it wouldn’t have been enough. Instead, he had the major media networks and newspapers of this country doing his bidding. And it’s not as simple as saying that the Republican administration had the media in their pocket. The way the media works is they express the views of the power elite in this country. Let’s not forget that John Kerry and John Edwards also voted to authorize the invasion of Iraq as did most of the democrats…If you go back, right to the core of the invasion when the vote took place, the democrats joined with the republicans and the media reflected that spectrum of opinion. Which was almost nil – they were all together and everyone else was iced out.
Goodman recorded a session of Hardball in which a San Francisco Chronicle reporter challenged, “Everyone believed it, you can’t fault us for that.” No, everyone did not believe it. It was astounding given how the media only reflected one voice. FAIR...did a study of the week leading up to and after Colin Powell gave a speech at the UN for war February 15, 2003, just a few weeks before the invasion. Of the four major nightly newscasts – and I’m not talking about Fox, they’re easy to attack and you always should…in that two week period, there were 393 interviews done around the war. Only three were with anti-war representatives. That means one of those news programs didn’t have any…This is not mainstream media – this is an extreme media, beating the drums for war. And yet, at that time, most of America was against the invasion for more inspections and diplomacy. And they heard almost no echo of that in the corporate media. On Tucker Carlson’s show he said, “We reflected the opinion, I mean, it wasn’t there.” So what about the protests? Let’s remember, one week later, February 15, 30 million people rocked the globe for peace! And outside the Republican Convention in New York, the day before, on Sunday, half a million people gathered outside Madison Square Garden. And they marched in the largest mass protest in the history of U.S. political conventions. It was an anti-war protest, there weren’t many John Kerry signs; it was as much a message to John Kerry as it was to George Bush.

It is absolutely critical that we demand that the media break the sound barrier or we and the alternative media, the independent media movement, will do it for them. And that is what we have to do. We have to challenge the corporate media and shore up independent media. We have to reflect the reality on the ground, especially when it comes to war. It’s horrifying to see the level of the white wash, the sanitizing of war when it comes to Iraq. I really do believe that if we saw for one week, babies dead on the ground, if we saw women with their legs blown off from cluster bombs, for one week if we saw the true casualties of war. Americans are a compassionate people. That people in this country would say, “War is not an answer to conflict in the 21st century.”

…The U.S. media shows where the missiles take off, Al-Jazeera shows where they land. And you wonder, why it is that right now Al-Jazeera is not allowed to operate in Iraq. And how it is that once again in Iraq, Al-Jazeera’s offices were bombed by the U.S. military. They were bombed twice in Afghanistan…Tareq Ayyoub, he was in his office, he saw the U.S. tanks coming, he went up, doing his job, up to the roof with his cameramen to show what was happening around…the U.S. military bombed his offices, killed him. He was in the midst of his report on the roof…his wife says at his funeral, “You say you are fighting terrorism, who’s engaged in terrorism now?” We spoke with the head of Al-Jazeera. And he said he had given the coordinates repeatedly to the Pentagon of the Al-Jazeera offices. Maybe that was his first mistake…

And then the journalists at the Palestine Hotel…Back in Spain, the journalists said, “No.” They turned their backs on the Prime Minister Aznar when he came into the Parliament. They put down the tools of their trade, their pens and their pencils, their pads, their cables and they turned their backs and they said they would not record the words of the powerful. They waged a one-day strike and then they went outside…these were hundreds of journalists, the elite journalists, right down to the cable layers, and they blocked up the intersection. You see the photographs of their cameras laid one by one, end to end. They turned to the U.S. embassy and they shouted, “Murderer! Murderer!” What happened in this country? Almost not a peep of protest, except one, among others, one reporter questioning, saying, “Tareq Ayyoub, you should have known better than to be in his offices.”

We have got to reflect the reality on the ground. Now the Al-Arabia reporter who went to Falluja to record what was happening there, has been arrested by the U.S. military last week. Almost no attention paid to this in this country. Reporters Without Borders is protesting this, Democracy Now reports – we broadcast this. They know the danger of showing those images. They learned from Viet Nam…and in Falluja…CIA/Saudi Intelligence saying there are no casualties in Falluja. Iraqi Red Crescent disagrees. They say there are 800 people killed in Falluja…they tried to make sure that no one knew what those casualties might be. They first bombed the hospital in Falluja and then went after the next health clinic in Falluja. Doctors saying they are watching people in the streets die and they can’t get to them because they will be attacked if they go out into the streets. They know that reporters will go to the hospitals or call them to find out the casualties. And I think people in this country would care.

The U.S. media is right now...the most powerful corporations on earth. Because they’re among the wealthiest but also because they’re the way we come to understand the world and the way the rest of the world comes to understand us. Right now it is projected through a corporate lens and that has got to be changed. It is all too dangerous for people to see us only reflected through that lens. American people are much better than that and that is why we have to build them independent media.

"Independent Media History"
(Amy relayed the history of Pacifica. Founded 55 years ago by Lew Hill, a conscientious objector to WWII. Hill came out of the detention camps and said there’s got to be a media outlet, not run by corporations that profit from war, but run by journalists and artists. At one point the Klu Klux Klan bombed one of the stations, citing it as “dangerous.”)

Dangerous, because it allows people to speak for themselves. And when you hear someone speaking from their own experience, that breaks down bigotry and stereotypes and caricatures that fuel the hatred that feed these groups. That’s why Paul Robison in the 1950s, when he was white-listed from almost every public place in this country but a few black churches, knew he could be heard on Pacifica radio. Or James Baldwin debating Malcolm X on the effectiveness of non-violent civil disobedience broadcast over the airwaves of WBAI in New York. Fanny Lou Hamer, we have a large audio collection of her recordings, the great Civil Rights leader, anywhere in this world. We must know the grassroots history of this country. It dignifies movements and it also lets us know that there is a tremendously rich history that we can build from and we must as we move forward today in these years of war. The elections come and go, the war continues and we must make that paramount and not be deterred. We really have no choice…

We also need a media that reflects the views of people who have been most demonized by the Bush administration. Unfortunately, what is so frightening right now is you have an administration that demonizes whole cultures. Right now it is Arab Americans, Muslims, Muslim Americans, people of South Asian descent, it’s always African Americans. But that you have a media that acts as a megaphone for those in power and we never hear what they have to say for themselves. We all know about the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. But I do think that it began long before that first low-level soldier laid a finger on the first Iraqi prisoner. It comes back to this country, yes it went up the chain of command and we should recognize that…what these low-level soldiers say that they were granted permission to do. I think what’s much more important and what’s much more…deep in this culture is that they somehow felt they had a kind of permission that I think the media is partially responsible for. When we have a media that has a sound bite culture, the average sound bite is 8 or 9 seconds, what can be said in that amount of time? Except if you repeat the establishment consensus, “Saddam Hussein is like Hitler,” you’re ready for primetime. But if you say, “U.S. officials might be guilty of war crimes,” you can say that in less than 8 seconds but frankly, you sound crazy. Because no one’s heard this before. You need more time to explain yourself. You need to explain: What are the Geneva Conventions? What are the Nuremburg principals? What is a war crime? But you don’t have that time and so that sound bite is a very political form. And we have to break the sound barrier; the media has to be a forum for full discussion and debate and then you go to these populations that have been demonized…we have not even heard in general in this country, what these people have to say, who they are, that they in fact may be us and we them. But we need to hear each other speak. And when you have these populations who are demonized, they need to speak for themselves and explain, why do they believe what they do…and in fact, what is the diversity of opinions in their communities? What are the debates in their communities? They don’t all agree with each other either. And the media is supposed to be there for everyone. And if they cannot speak for themselves, if instead you have a small circle of pundits on every network, who know so little about so much, explaining the world, then there’s no way that we can build bridges…it only takes one step to go from demonizing in this country to these people going to other countries, meaning U.S. service men and women, and feeling that there are some who can be treated as subhuman. And that is why we have to challenge the corporate media in this country. Right now thousands since September 11, Muslims, Arab Americans, Arabs, people of South Asian descent, have been arrested in this country. Hundreds questioned just in the lead up to the election and we know so little about what is happening. Hundreds, if not thousands, have been deported, no crimes. John “0 out of 5000” Ashcroft, 5000 people rounded up! Not one conviction on terrorism upheld. And yet how many people remain in jail in this country? These are the things we have to concern ourselves with. We have to stand together – not agree with each other – but stand together ‘cause if we don’t, each one of us will go down separately. We all know that famous quote from Pastor Martin Niemoller, World War II, first they came for the communists, I wasn’t a communist so I didn’t stand up. Then they came for the trade unionists, I wasn’t a trade unionist so I didn’t stand up. Then they came for the Jews, I wasn’t a Jew so I didn’t stand up. Then they came for the Catholics, I wasn’t a Catholic so I didn’t stand up, and then they came for me. And there was no one left to stand up.

"September 11, Not in My Name"

Democracy Now broadcasts a few blocks from where the towers of the World Trade Center once stood…But on September 11, we were broadcasting Democracy Now…we didn’t have any windows, we didn’t know what had happened. The first plane hit the first tower and we started the show. And we were doing a special that day on the connection between terror and September 11, 1973. When Salvador Allende died in the palace in Chile, the democratically elected leader of Chile. As the U.S.-backed Pinochet forces rose to power, the Nixon-backed Pinochet forces, the Kissinger-backed Pinochet forces, the ITT-backed Pinochet forces, the Anaconda Steel-backed Pinochet forces rose to power. Over the next 17 years, thousands of Chileans died. September 11 is not only linked to terror in our country. September 11, 1990 Guatemalan anthropologists…died at the hands of U.S.-backed Guatemalan forces in Guatemala. September 11, 1977, South Africa Steve Biko, founder of the Black Consciousness Movement was being beaten to death in the back of a van by U.S.-backed apartheid forces...Steve Biko died in the early morning hours of September 12, 1977. September 11, 1971, Attica, the uprising in upstate New York – prisoners protesting prison conditions two days later, September 13, 1971 then-New York governor Nelson Rockefeller called out the New York State troopers. They opened fire, they killed 39 men among them, guards. Critically wounded 88 others and hundreds of others were wounded. No, September 11, 2001, was not the first time terror came to U.S. soil. Ask any African American about slavery. Ask any Native American about what has happened in this country.
But September 11, 2001, was a horrific moment. Three thousand people incinerated in an instant. And we’ll never know how many people actually died. Because those that go uncounted in life, go uncounted in death. They’re the undocumented workers who worked in and around the World Trade Center, and we should know their names. And we should know their stories because knowing their names dignifies a life. In those days, after September 11, we stayed at the firehouse continuing to broadcast, the closest national broadcast to Ground Zero because we could see that the war machine was gearing up very quickly in Washington. And there were so many people who were in so much pain who had lost loved ones, who did not believe that war was the answer. Like Rita Lasar who lost her brother Abe Zelmanowitz on the 27th floor of the World Trade Center. Abe was with his best friend Ed, who was a paraplegic. Abe’s brother was screaming at him on his cell phone, “Get out now, Get out now!” And Abe said, “As soon as the emergency workers come up and get Ed, we’ll go down together.” And they died with so many others. A few weeks later, President Bush invoked Abe’s story at the National Cathedral address and called him a hero. And Rita said, “No.” And she wrote a letter to the New York Times that actually got published and she said even if she knew the worst pain of her life, that it would only increase her suffering to know that a woman in Afghanistan would soon lose her brother. She said, “Not in my name. Not in my brother’s name.” And then there was Phyllis and Orlando Rodriguez who lost their son, Greg Ernesto Rodriguez, above the hundredth floor of the World Trade Center. He worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost 700-1000 workers. And as they hunkered down with their family remembering Greg, they too wrote a letter. It didn’t get published – it swirled around the Internet. It was a letter to President Bush and they said, “Dear President Bush, it will not lessen our pain to know that a mother and father in Afghanistan will soon lose their son. Not in our name. Not in our son’s name.”

A nationwide movement grew up in this country called Not in Our Name, September 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and you often saw them on television. You would see them in the corporate media talking about their loved-ones. But when they moved from description, who they were, to prescription, what should happen - then the networks moved to the terrorism experts, like Oliver North and Henry Kissinger, to explain what should happen. Even before George Bush said we should not only go after the terrorists, we should bomb the countries that they’re in, I got scared because I live in the same city as Henry Kissinger. Because I think the corporate media got it right in that case, the terrorism experts – it takes one to know one. And I would say that might say it all when you look at Henry Kissinger’s record in Chile, thousands of innocent civilians died in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, a million in Timor – one of the great slaughters of the 20th century. Indonesia invaded Timor the day before President Ford and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger went to Indonesia, gave the go ahead for the invasion, 90% of the weapons used when Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 were from the United States. And you look at Argentina. And Kissinger, working with the generals and the dirty war that wiped out so many young people, dissidents, people that the general assembly didn’t like. Yeah, I do think that Osama bin Laden and his accomplices should be tried for what happened on September 11 but I also think that Henry Kissinger should be tried…

In the days after September 11, we stayed at the firehouse and watched all of those pictures go up all over New York; there were thousands of them — the colors, Xeroxes, the photographs of people lost at Ground Zero. There would be a picture of a woman holding her child and it would say, “If you’ve seen my wife, please call her husband. She was last seen above the 50th floor of the World Trade Center,” and there would be a phone number. Or a man holding his dog and it would say, “If you’ve seen my brother, please call his sister,” and there would be a phone number. And I thought how similar those pictures were to the pictures on the placards held by the mothers of the disappeared in Argentina as they walked the Plaza de Mayo. “Have you seen my granddaughter?” “Have you seen my grandson?”

September 11 united us with people around the world against terror. When President Bush came to Ground Zero this chant went up around him, “U.S.A., U.S.A.” and it sent a chill through me. The same thing at the Republican Convention, that same chant and then they showed the videotape of what happened at ground zero with that chant. But that is not the answer. The answer is a global community united against terror.

"Positive Feedback"
(Supporters kept calling in to the Sally Jessy show to make sure the episode with Amy Goodman aired.)

It did air, and the most interesting response I got was from women on Southern military bases. Who called up to say, “I agree with you. We’ve never heard this view on television before.” Here were women who were being sent off to war, or their loved ones were, to kill or be killed, I don’t know which is worse. And they were saying, they can’t have these debates on military bases. They rely on us in civilian society to have these critical discussions. I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across this country, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. Life and death. War and peace. And anything less than that is a disservice to the servicemen and women of this country, is a disservice to the people of Iraq, is a disservice to a democratic society. Democracy now.

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