Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 800 television and radio stations in North America. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press.
Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for “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.” She is also one of the the first recipients, along with Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald, of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. This month, she will be honored by the National Council of Teachers of English with the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
Her newest book, Breaking the Sound Barrier, is, according to her publishers, “a lively collection which allows the voices the corporate media exclude and ignore to be heard loud and clear. Written with all of the fierce intelligence and passion for truth that millions have come to expect from Goodman’s reportage, Breaking the Sound Barrier proves the power that independent journalism can play in the struggle for a better world, one in which ordinary citizens are the true experts of their own lives and communities.”
Arianna Huffington calls it “crusading journalism at its best” and Bill Moyers says “Amy, as you will discover on every page of this book, knows the critical question for journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they are to power.”
Goodman is the co-author with her brother, journalist David Goodman, of three New York Times bestsellers, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times (2008), Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back (2006) and The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them (2004). She writes a weekly column (also produced as an audio podcast) syndicated by King Features, for which she was recognized in 2007 with the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Reporting.
Goodman has received the American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Award; the Paley Center for Media’s She’s Made It Award; and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Her reporting on East Timor and Nigeria has won numerous awards, including the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award. She has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Project Censored.
Lowell Bergman, the Reva and David Logan Distinguished Professor of Investigative Reporting at the Graduate School of Journalism, will introduce Amy Goodman and offer opening remarks.