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 and education
Amy Goodman was born 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 was born in New York City, but later lived in Bay Shore, New York. 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: 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.