Journalist Amy Goodman won't take 'no comment' for an answer

Steal This Story, Please! unwraps Amy Goodman's search for truth and justice Veep fans might think they've found a lost episode of Armando Iannucci's satirical comedy on catching documentary Steal This Story, Please! Opening on the 2018 UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, we witness tenacious broadcaster Amy Goodman chasing a fleeing Trump climate adviser. He steadfastly refuses to answer her questions about Trump declaring climate change "a hoax", slinking behind a rapidly closing door. Indefatigable, Goodman has been speaking truth to power for 30 years, as the founder of award-winning, New York-based, world news briefing Democracy Now! "Democracy Now! is a brains trust of people committed to the idea that the media should be a sanctuary of dissent, and dissent is what will save us," Goodman tells me from her book-lined home in New York City. Directed by partners Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the documentary Steal This Story, Please! screens at the Adelaide Film Festival before releasing nationally from October 22. It traces Goodman's remarkable achievements, reporting without fear or favour. "We're not a party to the parties," she says. Media industry shrinking When Goodman started out in 1996, her "office" was a broom closet, and the hour-long show was syndicated to nine community radio stations. Three decades later, Democracy Now! has a swish studio, broadcasting to more than 1,500 public radio and television stations globally, as well as streaming online. It's vital work, as she sees it, with a dim view of large swathes of the fourth pillar. "I don't call it mainstream media anymore," Goodman says. "I call it the corporate media." The "mainstream" media is rapidly shrinking. When we speak, the industry-reshaping $US113 billion ($162 billion) merger of two of Hollywood's big five film studios — Warner Brothers and Paramount Pictures — has just been given the all-clear. It folds CNN, CBS and Australia's Network 10 into Skydance, the new mega-corporation controlled by billionaire David Ellison. It also merges streamers Paramount+ and HBO Max. US President Donald Trump has said he is a strong supporter of the merger. "That's great. It's gonna be a great company. They're terrific people and it's going to be a great company," Trump said. With the Trump administration also gutting funding for public broadcasting, Goodman says the mission is more important than ever. "This is extremely serious, because how do we learn about the world?" Goodman asks. "It has to be through something other than a corporate lens." Independent voices Independent filmmakers Lessin and Deal agree. "We finance and produce our own films, because we're fearful of the editorial influence of some of these corporate donors," Lessin tells me. "Amy has been sounding the alarm about the dangers of media consolidation for the past 30 years. Ever since the US passed the Telecommunications Act in 1996, it took the guardrails off. We're now seeing it on steroids." Oscar-nominated for their Hurricane Katrina documentary, Trouble the Water, Lessin and Deal also co-produced many of Michael Moore's films, including the Palme d'Or-winning Fahrenheit 9/11. Goodman is a hero to them. "This is a story about this brave woman who has faced down the barrel of a gun, during Indonesia's military occupation of East Timor, and exposed human rights abuses in Nigeria," Lessin says. "She was telling the stories about the toxins at Ground Zero, in our neck of the woods." Goodman's been a thorn in the side of presidents across the aisle, including Clinton and Trump. "Most people being yelled at by a president, and I've seen her being yelled at by several, would run away with their tail between their legs," Lessin says. "Amy stands strong and gives as good as she gets. She will not take 'no comment' for an answer." Even with the filmmakers' impressive track record and shared values, Goodman was still cautious in agreeing to Steal This Story, Please! "It was a difficult decision, because I value my privacy," Goodman says, smiling. "But to be stalked by Oscar-nominated directors made it a little easier, as did their deep commitment to independent media." Global uprisings Goodman insists the film's title is a promise. Their reporting is not proprietary. "Steal this story, in fact, please," she says. "We want the world to hear the stories of people on the ground who are risking their lives. "We should hear how they frame their own story, only telling their story when they can't tell their own, when they're imprisoned, risking their livelihood or their family is threatened." Democracy Now! puts the spotlight on global upheavals. "As we speak today, there are protests in Spain because of the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen," Goodman says "Each day, we're bringing out the voices of people in Spain, and in France, where students are rising up. In India, you have the Cockroach Janta Party, so-named because a critic said these people are like cockroaches, and the young people embraced it." It's happening in the US, too. Never again "We're seeing a real title change of people's attitudes towards everything from inequality and the great sucking sound of wealth from the bottom to the top, to these tech bro billionaires, to what's happening in the Middle East." Goodman is a proud granddaughter of an Orthodox rabbi on one side and a Hasidic great-grandfather on the other. "I was imbued with what had happened, as was Tia, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor," Goodman says. "We learned, from an early age, that never again means never again for anyone anywhere, and my attitude about covering Palestine, in Gaza and the West Bank, and what's happening with Israel today is because of my Jewish education, not in spite of it." Lessin agrees: "We need to be together in this moment, because they're trying to isolate, divide and polarise us. "But when people are in a room together, experiencing culture, it really breaks down barriers." Silenced majority Goodman will continue to spread the word, as she did staring down the barrel of a gun as a young journalist reporting on East Timor. "All I can say is we shouldn't have to get a record when we put things on the record," she says. "We have to go to where the silence is to get that story, and often it is not silent. It is raucous. It's rowdy. People are organising." She says going to the people is the raison d'être of Democracy Now! "Those who care about war and peace, those who care about the climate catastrophe, about racial and economic justice, LGBTQ issues and the immigrant crackdown. "Those are not a fringe minority, nor even a silent majority, but the silenced majority. Silenced by the corporate media. We have to take the media back." Steal This Story, Please! screens at the Adelaide Film Festival then Australian cinemas nationally from October 22.