|
‘Mainstream’ media more aptly
labeled ‘extreme’
An interview with Amy Goodman
By Eamon Martin
Aug. 27 (AGR) — On Fri., Sept. 3, award-winning
journalist Amy Goodman, the popular host of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy
Now! program, is scheduled to appear at UNCA’s Lipinsky Auditorium
to speak and help raise money for local low-power FM radio station WPVM.
One of the nation’s most recognizable names in independent journalism
and media activism, Goodman has consistently delivered crucial, underreported
news and perspectives from the frontlines of politics.
After returning from a controversial trip to the Carribean with overthrown
Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, Goodman most recently co-authored
the hard-hitting book, The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily
Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them.
Against the backdrop of demonstrations against the Republican National
Convention in New York City, Goodman took a moment to speak with AGR’s
Eamon Martin about media and government propaganda.
AGR: You’ve referred to the corporate media industry
as a “well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government
spin as journalism.” One of the most compelling segments of your
book is a feature on Col. Sam Gardiner, who charges that military-style
psychological operations were conducted through the media on the American
and British public to engineer consent for war. In your opinion, how
did that happen?
Goodman: Well the Pentagon, Col. Gardiner says, was doing a psy-ops
operation on people here at home in the way they manipulate[d], which
is not legal actually. For example, we’re not supposed to hear
Voice of America here in the United States. There’s a law against
it, to send propaganda home — for the government to spread propaganda
here. And yet, over and over again we saw this campaign of lies, not
only to convince the international audience, but to convince the people
in this country, one story after another — from Jessica Lynch to
weapons of mass destruction.
AGR: I’m relating this to something else you’ve
said. At one time you said: “I think we must remember that media
homogenization serves the state.” Can you elaborate on that?
Goodman: I mean, you have [US Secretary of State] Colin Powell,
who is one of the leaders of the war in Iraq, and you have his son Michael
Powell, who is chair of the FCC and who leads the war on diversity of
voices at home. I really do think he has tried to launch the largest
media consolidation in this country’s history. And I really do
think that media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand. It doesn’t
matter how many channels there are. What matters is who owns them.
And it was pretty much across the board that we saw an icing-out of
dissent by the networks, as well as the major newspapers. And that served
the state. They acted as a megaphone for those in power, who do not
represent mainstream America. Because as a matter of fact, mainstream
America was in a very different place, actually against the invasion,
and for more inspections and diplomacy. So I wouldn’t even call
it a “mainstream” media. I would call it an “extreme”
media.
AGR: Can you relate this to your recent historic trip?
You went with a delegation of select officials that chaperoned deposed
Haitian President Aristide on a controversial voyage to Jamaica just
two weeks after he was overthrown and deposited in the Central African
Republic. To this day, Aristide’s ouster is shrouded in mystery.
And it’s fair to say there’s been little news about Haiti
since. At the time of what Aristide referred to as a “modern kidnapping”
his claims were more or less dismissed and continue to be to this day.
This “extreme” media that you refer to, has been referring
to some of the most notorious human rights abusers in the Western hemisphere
as “rebels.” Is this lazy journalism, or another manifestation
of the state?
Goodman: Yes. Another example of the media just spewing the line
that the government has put out. And that is not supposed to be the
role of the media. There’s a reason why our profession is the only
one explicitly protected by the US Constitution —because we’re
supposed to be a check and balance on government.
In the case of the Haitian president, he was ousted in the early morning
hours of Feb. 29th. He described to me as we flew back from Bangui,
Central African Republic through Dakar, Senegal, on to Cape Verde Islands,
over the Atlantic to Barbados, and ultimately Jamaica that on the early
morning hours of Feb. 29th, he and his wife were home, the number two
man in the US embassy came to his home and said [Aristide] could be
killed and that Haitians could die if he didn’t leave. He said
he asked if he could speak to the press, he thought he was being taken
to the press, and then was pushed onto a plane with US military and
security, and forced out of the country. He said he was a victim of
a modern kidnapping in the service of a US-backed coup d’etat.
And we already saw this ten years ago. We saw that Emanuel Constant,
who was the head of FRAPH, a paramilitary death squad, was on the payroll
of US intelligence agencies. That was shown by investigative journalist
Alan Nairn in The Nation magazine. And now we have the number two man
in FRAPH named Jodel Chamblain found guilty in absentia of the murder
of the justice minister during the first coup in ’93, Guy Malory,
and also found guilty in absentia of the murder of Antoine Izmery. He
and others are the ones negotiating with the US government. And we’re
seeing history repeat itself.
AGR: He was just cleared this past week.
Goodman: Jodel Chamblain, interestingly enough, who was found
guilty in absentia of the murder in 1995, [was acquitted on Aug. 17,
2004] in a midnight trial under the coup regime. They exonerate him.
So there are a lot of problems with that.
And I think it’s interesting that not everyone in the world feels
this way about Aristide. They do here in this country because of what
the media has put out. But the Organization of American States has opened
an inquiry into his ouster.
AGR: Have you since been in contact with the Aristides?
Goodman: I haven’t talked to them recently. They’re
in South Africa now.
AGR: At the time of these events, I knew that Democracy
Now!, AGR, and only a few others were really actually reporting accurately
what was happening in Haiti. This was really discouraging to me. Do
you ever have similar feelings, when it seems like your reporting flies
in the face of that saturation of falsehood? Does it ever get to you?
Goodman: I think that we can make a huge difference. I do think
that independent media can break the sound barrier.
You take the example of Haiti. When we put out our first reports when
President Aristide called from the Central African Republic, he called
US Congressmember Maxine Waters from Los Angeles. She went on the air
quick. After she had talked to him, she said on the air that Aristide
called from the Central African Republic right when he first had been
dumped, and he said these things, about him being the victim of a modern
kidnapping and we put the transcripts on the website. Network reporters
took our transcripts, brought them to the Pentagon, questioned [US Secretary
of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, and he said that’s ridiculous. But
I’d say from in my years as a journalist, I’ve learned that
when a politician tells you “that’s ridiculous”, you’re
probably on the right track.
And then, when I followed [Aristide’s chaperones] to the Central
African Republic, AP took our reports exclusively. They continually
put them out through the trip, there and back.
And then, when I landed in Jamaica, CNN called me on the tarmac to report
what had taken place, and I talked about the violence in Haiti and who
these coup leaders were.
So, you know, you look at CNN, AP, and then our transcripts brought
to the Pentagon with the reporters saying, “Is this true what Pacifica
said?” —I think that this is a good example of trickle-up
journalism, where you can make a difference, that we can break the sound
barrier.
We’re the largest public media collaboration now in the country.
We’re on over 240 Pacifica radio stations, community stations,
NPR stations, public access TV stations, and both satellite networks:
Free Speech TV and Link TV.
Amy Goodman will speak at 8 pm this Friday. Tickets are $10 general
admisión and $5 for students and MAIN subscribers (MAIN discount
available only with advance parchase). For more information, call 828-255-0182
or visit www.main.nc.us or www.wpvm.org.
OUT RAGE! Protests put end to reggae
festival
By Sandra Laville
Aug. 30— The first large reggae festival planned in Britain
for 17 years has been cancelled after gay activists threatened to disrupt
the event in protest at the presence of two “homophobic” dancehall
stars in the line-up.
The organizers of Reggae in the Park, due to be held this weekend, had
said they were moving the gig from Victoria Park in east London to Wembley
Arena for technical reasons.
But yesterday a spokesman for the promoters said the event would be
cancelled because no suitable venue would agree to host it due to the
threat of disruption by gay activists who are angry at the inclusion
of the dancehall acts Sizzla and Vybz Kartel.
Outrage!, the pressure group which is running a campaign to stop UK
performances by Jamaican reggae stars whose lyrics incite violence against
gay men and lesbians, said yesterday it had never intended that the
whole festival be cancelled.
“At no point did Outrage! call for Reggae in the Park to be cancelled,
we are sorry the whole event has been axed,” Peter Tatchell of
Outrage! said.
The idea for an annual reggae festival came from Glen Yearwood as a
tribute to the legendary reggae producer, Clement ‘Coxsone’
Dodd, who died earlier this year. The line-up included Marcia Griffiths,
Gregory Isaacs, and Barrington Levy as well as Sizzla and Vybz Kartel.
A spokesman for the promoters said that no venue was willing to take
on the security risk Outrage! had warned local authorities and venues
that it would disrupt the festival if Sizzla and Vybz Kartel appeared.
Ticketholders were advised to ring their agents for a full refund.
Brett Lock, a spokesman for Outrage!, defended the group’s actions.
“This goes way beyond an acceptable expression of opinion,”
he said. “Lesbian and gay people have a right to live their lives
free from threats to kill them.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
Guantánamo: Honour Bound to
Defend Freedom
New Yorkers take British Camp X-ray play
to heart
By Gary Younge
New York, New York, Aug. 28— In this partisan and polarised
election year in the US news has had a habit of turning itself into
culture and culture into news. In the opening week of Michael Moore’s
film Farenheit 9/11, Republican members of Congress advised
people to see Shrek 2 while Democratic party activists shook
their collection buckets in the cinemas.
Unfit for Command, a book by Swift Boat veterans denouncing
the Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s war record,
is number one on the Amazon.com bestseller list. The “9/11 Commission
Report,” on the terrorist attacks on New York city, is number
one on the New York Times paperback non-fiction list.
And so on Thursday night, as a Yemeni prisoner stood at a preliminary
hearing before a US military commission in Guantánamo Bay in
Cuba, a play relating the Kafkaesque experiences of British detainees
in Guantánamo Bay opened to a standing ovation in New York
city.
“I felt confused as to whether I should appreciate it as art
or as real life, because it was really both,” Richard Levy said
afterwards.
Guantánamo: Honour Bound to Defend Freedom, an off-Broadway
production created “from spoken evidence” by the former
Guardian journalist Victoria Brittain and the writer Gillian Slovo,
arrived at the 45 Bleecker Street Theater via the The Tricycle in
Kilburn and the West End to strong reviews. “It exerts an icy
visceral charge that is never achieved by flashier agitprop satire,”
the New York Times commented. “What pulls hardest at the emotions
are the detailed epistolary accounts of life in prison and the letters’
change in tone from willed optimism to abjectness to, in one harrowing
case, something approaching madness.”
“I know the stories cold,” said Michael Ratner, a New York
lawyer who has represented many Guantánamo detainees. “I
know that in some cases the reality is even much worse than it was
depicted. But I was still completely moved. It really showed the dead
end of their situation. The fact that there is no way out.”
A few things were lost in translation. The line in which one detainee
says he keeps thinking Jeremy Beadle is about to turn up and say it’s
a hoax obviously had to be removed. And when it came to British accents,
Manchester became Liverpool, Yorkshire became Cardiff, and one actor’s
efforts wavered between Somerset and Sri Lanka.
But the American audience never missed what they had never known to
exist. And the accents were only troubling if you first knew and second
cared, which would have been true of few if any in the theater. And
in this example of the special relationship turned inside out, in
which British and American radicals meet to grieve over what has become
of the transatlantic alliance, there was national pride in saving
the biggest laughs for your own leaders. Americans laughed hardest
when Donald Rumsfeld emerged; in Britain, Jack Straw got the biggest
chuckle.
Compared with the political theater that has emerged from the US,
Guantánamo was subtle. Tim Robbins’ play Embedded,
which explored the relationship between the media and the military,
began: “If you don’t like it, get the fuck out and don’t
expect your money back.”
“I was expecting to have an intellectual response,” said
Sara Baerwald. “But it was very emotional. I cried.”
For those whose ducts welled up, there was help at hand. Outside the
theatre pink party bags, courtesy of Women Center Stage, were available
with lipstick, mascara, and and wrinkle remover for those whose frowns
at US and British foreign policy left permanent scars.
That Guantánamo opened as the city turns into a fortress,
as the police presence positioned themselves to quell protest in advance
of the Republican National Convention, was no coincidence. In a city
where, according to a poll in yesterday’s New York Times, more
than half the population is worried that there will be a terrorist
attack in the coming week, people need something to take their minds
off things. They have a festival of political art to chose from.
At the Roebling Hall Art Gallery in Williamsburg you can see Dan Ford’s
The Burning of The National Library in Baghdad: Troops Observing
Looters, in the style of Turner. Larry Litt’s Before You
Don’t Vote, an inspirational video of ordinary people talking
about democracy, will be showing at the Kitchen Arts Centre. And at
the Experimental Party Disinformation Center, Mark Amerika displays
Grandmaster Bush, a DJ who spins a rap song sampling presidential
speeches.
Indeed, if there was a concern about Guantánamo, it
was that the people likely to see it where those who agreed with it.
“This is the kind of play that should be seen by 30 million Americans,”
said Levy. “I think the people I sit across the table with during
negotiations would be moved by this. It could really make a difference
and change their understanding.”
Whether it would get this kind of reception outside New York city,
where cinemagoers queue around the block to see the Battle of Algiers,
is a different matter.
“It’s difficult to say,” said Jeremy Pikser, consultant
to the director on Reds, an Oscar-winning film about the Russian
Revolution. “When Reds came out, I thought ‘When
this opens in South Carolina, they’ll fire bomb it.’ But
they didn’t.”
“But did anyone in South Carolina go to see it?”
Pikser said: “No, not really.”
Source: Guardian (UK)
|
