# Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman (born April 13, 1957) is an American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter, and author. Her investigative journalism career includes coverage of the East Timor independence movement, Morocco's occupation of Western Sahara, and Chevron Corporation's role in Nigeria.
Since 1996, she has been the main host of Democracy Now!, a progressive global news program broadcast daily on radio, television and the Internet. She has received awards for her work, including the Thomas Merton Award in 2004, a Right Livelihood Award in 2008, and an Izzy Award in 2009 for "special achievement in independent media".
In 2012, Goodman received the Gandhi Peace Award for a "significant contribution to the promotion of an enduring international peace". She is the author of six books, including the 2012 The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope, and the 2016 Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America. In 2016, she was criminally charged with a riot in connection with her coverage of protests of the Dakota Access pipeline. This action was condemned by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The charges were dismissed by the North Dakota district judge on October 17, 2016.
In 2014 she was awarded the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence by Harvard University's Nieman Foundation.

## Early life

Amy Goodman was born in Bay Shore, New York on Long Island to secular Jewish parents who were active in social action groups. Her father, George Goodman, was an ophthalmologist. Her mother, Dorothy Goodman, was a literature teacher and later a social worker. She has two brothers, David Goodman and Steven N. Goodman. Goodman's maternal grandfather was an Orthodox rabbi. Her maternal grandmother was born in Rivne, present day Ukraine.
She graduated from Bay Shore High School in 1975. Goodman studied for a year at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, and graduated in 1984 from Radcliffe College of Harvard University with a degree in anthropology.

## Investigative journalism career

In 1991, covering the East Timor independence movement, Goodman and fellow journalist Allan Nairn reported that they were badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after witnessing a mass killing of Timorese demonstrators in what became known as the Santa Cruz massacre.
In 1998, Goodman and journalist Jeremy Scahill documented Chevron Corporation's role in a confrontation between the Nigerian Army and villagers who had seized oil rigs and other equipment belonging to oil corporations. Two villagers were shot and killed during the standoff. On May 28, 1998, the company provided helicopter transport to the Nigerian Navy and Mobile Police (MOPOL) to their Parabe oil platform, which had been occupied by villagers who accused the company of contaminating their land. Soon after landing, the Nigerian military shot and killed two of the protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, and wounded 11 others. Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole acknowledged that the company transported the troops. Omole said that Chevron management had requested troops from the government to protect their facility. The documentary made by Goodman and her colleagues, Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, won the George Polk Award in 1998.
Michael Delli Carpini, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication, said of Goodman: "She's not an editorialist. She sticks to the facts... She provides points of view that make you think, and she comes at it by saying: 'Who are we not hearing from in the traditional media?'"

### Democracy Now!

Goodman had been news director of Pacifica Radio station WBAI in New York City for more than a decade when she co-founded Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report in 1996. Since then, Democracy Now! has been described as "probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time" by professor and media critic Robert McChesney.
In 2001, the show was temporarily pulled off the air, as a result of a conflict between some Pacifica Radio board members and staff members and listeners over the direction of the station. During that time, it moved to a converted firehouse, from which it broadcast from January 2002 for nearly eight years, until November 13, 2009. Democracy Now! subsequently moved to a studio located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
Goodman credits the program's success to the "huge niche" left by coverage of mainstream media organizations.

### Interview with President Clinton

When President Bill Clinton called WBAI on Election Day 2000 for a quick get-out-the-vote message, Goodman and WBAI's Gonzalo Aburto challenged him for 28 minutes with human rights questions about AIM activist Leonard Peltier, racial profiling, the Iraq sanctions, Ralph Nader, the death penalty, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Clinton defended his administration's policies and said that Goodman was "hostile and combative".

### Arrest at 2008 Republican Convention

During the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, several of Goodman's colleagues from Democracy Now! were arrested and detained by police while reporting on an anti-war protest outside the RNC. While trying to ascertain the status of her colleagues, Goodman was also arrested and held, accused of obstructing a legal process and interfering with a police officer. Fellow Democracy Now! producers, including reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous, were held on charges of probable cause for riot. The arrests of the producers were videotaped. Goodman and her colleagues were later released, City Attorney John Choi indicated that the charges would be dropped. Goodman (et al.) filed a federal civil lawsuit against the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments and the US Secret Service for the illegal arrests. The agencies reached a $100,000 settlement and agreed to educate officers about the First Amendment rights of members of the press and public.

### British Columbia border crossing incident

On November 25, 2009, Goodman and her two colleagues, Denis Moynihan and Chuck Scurich, were detained for approximately 90 minutes by Canadian agents at the Douglas, British Columbia border crossing into Canada while en route to a scheduled meeting at the Vancouver Public Library. Immigration officials asked questions pertaining to the intended topics of discussion at the meeting. They wanted to know whether she would be speaking about the 2010 Olympic Games to be held in Canada.
She and her colleagues were eventually permitted to enter Canada after the customs authorities took four photographs of her, inspected Scurich's computer, and stapled a "control document" into her passport; it required that she leave Canada within 48 hours.

### 2016 North Dakota access pipeline protests

In September 2016, Goodman covered the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in Morton County, North Dakota; footage from her reporting "showed security personnel pepper-spraying and siccing attack dogs on demonstrators." After Democracy Now! aired the footage, she was charged by state prosecutor Ladd Erickson with criminal trespass. After the court dismissed that charge, Erickson charged her with riot, gaining a warrant for her arrest. Erickson said that Goodman acted as "a protester" rather than a journalist, because "Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions."
Goodman turned herself in to the Morton County sheriff on October 17, saying that she would be fighting the charges against her as a "clear violation" of the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of the press. She was supported by the Committee to Protect Journalists, which issued a statement saying: "This arrest warrant is a transparent attempt to intimidate reporters from covering protests of significant public interest. [...] Authorities in North Dakota should stop embarrassing themselves, drop the charges against Amy Goodman, and ensure that all reporters are free to do their jobs." Steve Andrist, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association, also expressed concern that a journalist was one of only two people covered by an arrest warrant from the day in question. Authorities said that Goodman was charged because she was identified from the video footage.
On October 17, 2016, the case was dismissed by District Judge John Grinsteiner, of the South Central Judicial District, who found no probable cause to support a riot charge. The charges against Goodman reportedly increased the public awareness of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Goodman had presented that day's Democracy Now! broadcast from in front of the Morton County Courthouse. Reporter Deia Schlosberg was arrested in similar circumstances while reporting on pipeline-related protests.

## Awards and honors

Goodman has received awards for her work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting (1993, with Allan Nairn) and the George Polk Award (1998, with Jeremy Scahill). In 1999, she declined to accept the Overseas Press Club Award, in protest at the group's pledge not to ask questions of keynote speaker Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and because the OPC was honoring Indonesia for its improved treatment of journalists despite the fact that its forces had recently beaten and killed reporters in occupied East Timor.
She received the 2001 Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage.
On October 2, 2004, she was presented the Islamic Community Award for Journalism by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. On November 18, 2004, she was presented the Thomas Merton Award. In 2006, she received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.
Goodman was a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award. The Right Livelihood Award Foundation cited her work in "developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media".
On March 31, 2009, Goodman, with Glenn Greenwald, received the first Izzy Award (named after journalist I. F. "Izzy" Stone) for "special achievement in independent media". The award is presented by Ithaca College's Park Center for Independent Media.
In May 2012, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from DePauw University in recognition of her journalistic work. She also received the Gandhi Peace Award from Promoting Enduring Peace, for a "significant contribution to the promotion of an enduring international peace".
On May 16, 2014, she received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Purchase College, SUNY in recognition of her progressive journalism.
In February 2015, she (and Laura Poitras) received the 2014 I.F. Stone Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.
In 2016, Goodman and Democracy Now! (along with Laura Gottesdiener, John Hamilton and Denis Moynihan) received a Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists in the category of Breaking News Coverage (Network/Syndication Service/Program Service) for their piece, “Standoff at Standing Rock: Epic Native resistance to Dakota Access Pipeline.”
On February 14, 2019, she, and others, received the Frederick Douglass 200 award and was honored at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Frederick Douglass 200 award is a project of the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington D.C. In October 2023, the NY Peace Action Network recognized her with the William Sloane Coffin "Peacemaker Award".

## Personal life

In September 2007, Goodman suffered a bout of Bell's palsy. She practices yoga.