The Exception to the Rulers
Created | Updated Aug 23, 2007
The Exception to the Rulers
By Amy and David Goodman
ISBN 1-4013-0131-2
Published by Hyperion
When you think of a journalist do you think of a sleazy individual only interested in pop stars, royalty and sex scandals? Amy Goodman can make you think again.
Amy Goodman is the reporter who faced the Indonesian military in East Timor in 1991 armed only with a microphone. She placed herself in harm's way hoping to help the brave civilians who were marching against the military and to tell their story to the world. The Indonesian military had a reputation for killing Australian journalists. Almost the first question they asked when they attacked her was "Australian?" "They had stripped us of our possessions, but I still had my passport. I threw it at them. When I regained my breath I said again 'We're from America! America!'
"Finally the soldiers lowered their guns from our heads. We think it was because we were from the same country their weapons were from. They would have to pay a price for killing us that they never had to pay for killing Timorese." Her coverage of repression across the globe has been a dangerous battle to bring the truth to the public, hindered rather than helped by the corporate media. Imagine for example putting her coverage of Chevron's blatant support for vicious repression in Nigeria alongside adverts for Chevron!
Amy Goodman and her brother have pioneered independent media in the United States. The hour-long TV program produced in New York and available over the internet at http://democracynow.org is a daily indictment of the war and the attack on civil liberties in the US and worldwide. It is surprising to watch as it has the format of a news program like any other but deliberately includes all the voices which the corporate media excludes.
That includes voices like that of Rita Lasar who lost her brother in the terrorist attack on the twin towers, a few blocks from the studios where Democracy Now! is broadcast. Rita's brother stayed in the building because he would not leave his quadraplegic friend behind. On September 14th Bush used his name and his story in his speech at the National Cathedral in Washington. "Rita quickly understood how her brother's gentle heroism was being used. She wrote a letter that appeared in the New York Times on September 18th 2001. "It is in my brother's name and mine that I pray that we, this country that has been so deeply hurt, do not do something which will unleash forces we will not have the power to call back." and of the fireman who lost four of his squad "As a rescue worker I can't say: we lost so let's kill six thousand more."
It is no accident that when the Democrat witch-hunt against Nader was at its height, when Michael Moore and Naomi Klein had crossed the picket line and supported Kerry, Democracy Now! Interviewed Nader and enabled him to expose the dirty tricks and the lies being used against his campaign.
Her book "The Exception to the Rulers" is a withering and closely argued indictment of "Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that loves them." If you want chapter and verse on the links between Big Business and the Bush administration; between the corporations and corrupt totalitarian regimes around the world and all of them with the media in the US: this is the book to read.
One example of the power of independent media among the many in the book is the battle of Seattle in 1999 - "My colleagues and I from Democracy Now! Spent long hours in the streets with journalists from the independent media centre, being gassed and harassed by police dressed in black futuristic body armour as we attempted to report what was happening to the world. "While the networks were quoting the police saying that they were not using rubber bullets, independent media reporters were uploading minute-by-minute images as we all picked up the bullets off the street by the handful."
In advocating independent media, Amy Goodman does not ask to be admired. She asks to be emulated.
You can get your local library to get a copy. It is very useful work of reference for socialists and for students of the media.
