By Anne Jardine

Amy Goodman, chief correspondent of Pacifica Radio’s award-winning news program Democracy Now, delivered the most recent of the Mir Lecture series in Castlegar on April 8.

The Mir Centre for Peace is part of Selkirk College. Ms. Goodman is an investigative journalist and author who has much to offer to the conversation about democracy as a tool for peace. She has traveled to some of the world’s most dangerous places covering stories that the some of the powerful and wealthy world leaders don’t want us to know.

An audience over 1,000 people of all ages gathered in the auditorium of the Brilliant Cultural Centre to listen to this two-hour talk.

Ms. Goodman recounted some of her experiences in getting arrested for daring to record and report the news. These encounters occurred not only in the war-torn corners of the Third World, but in the United States, and even in safe, mild mannered Canada.

Investigative reporting often requires persistence, patience, and courage. In interviewing Native American water protectors at the Dakota Access Pipeline Standing Rock Camp, Ms. Goodman was arrested by pipeline security forces along with dozens of peaceful demonstrators and hauled off to jail. She and her camera crew had recorded images of the security forces using water cannons, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, and attack dogs to subdue the months long demonstration.

These images, particularly those of the bloody teeth and jowls of the dogs lunging at the torn and terrified demonstrators, were uploaded to the net just before the security officers confiscated the team’s equipment and deleted the footage. But through the power of the Internet, the story and its chilling images went viral. After a few hours, Ms. Goodman and her team were released from custody and ordered out of North Dakota. The story, by then, had reached millions of viewers around the world.

A few days after her release and expulsion from North Dakota , Ms. Goodman was invited to speak at the Toronto International Film Festival. At customs, she was detained and interrogated at length by the Canadian Border Services, but eventually allowed to enter Canada and keep her speaking engagement. There, she received a message that a warrant had been issued for her arrest back in the United States. It turned out that the pipeline corporation was pressing charges against her. The original arrest for trespass had been changed to “Rioting,” a crime that carries a sentence of up to several years in jail.

Ms. Goodman returned to the United States, crossing the border in New York without incident, and then immediately went back to North Dakota and turned herself in to the authorities. Soon after, a North Dakota judge ruled that the charges were not valid. There was no evidence that anyone was rioting (except, perhaps, the security forces with their overly harsh tactics). The Standing Rock Sioux stood down their pipeline protest camp, thus ending the story for now.

The implications for freedom of the press are, however, not so clear. The United States Consitituton’s first amendment guarantees freedom of speech, assembly, and freedom of the press. Ms. Goodman believes that the judge’s refusal to accept the “rioting” charge is a triumph for freedom of the press.

“We shouldn’t have to get a record when we put things on the record,” she concluded. Though the Judge was sympathetic to the Constitutional implications, the ruling itself did not refer to the right of free speech but only to the failure of the prosecutor to prove evidence of intent to riot.

“Democracy is a messy process, and sometimes it includes more than the decrees and rulings of the politicians, pundits, and the usual invited guests; it also includes the actions of the uninvited people out in the streets and on the lines standing up for their rights.

“The press is not the enemy of the people, as some would claim,” she warned. “Freedom of the press is fundamental to the function of democracy. We need a media that covers power, not covers for power.”

“The airways are not private property,” Goodman said. “Lately we have been engaging in a global civics lesson.”

“You do not just achieve democracy. You have to stand up for it every day. The press, especially the corporate media, too often perhaps, have been used to manufacture consent for war, for undue use of force.”

Recently there have been many statements made about the media and so-called “fake news.” In Ms Goodman’s view, the news is only fake when it tells just one side of the story. That’s why there will always be a need for investigative reporting and independent media, and book stores.

She acknowledged the work of Kootenay Co-op Radio (which is celebrating 40 years of broadcasting, and Otter Books in Nelson as just one of the independent bookstores still operating in the region).

Ms. Goodman and the Independent Radio Networks, of which Pacifica is but one, adhere to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting – a statement of standards that calls for getting all sides of a story: fact checking and verifying all information, respecting the rights of news sources, and telling as much of the truth as can be found.

Interestingly, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of the press in Section Two, fundamental freedoms: freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom of belief, freedom of expression, freedom of the press and of other media of communication, freedom of peaceful assembly, and freedom of association.

Amy Goodman champions these fundamental freedoms wherever she goes. Two hours flew by with no other visuals than a modest woman standing at a simple wood podium telling her truth and connecting it to the need for thoughtful conversations towards peace, freedom, and democracy. The appreciative audience rose to its feet and applauded at length to acclaim her clear voice and courageous work in our global history lesson.

Lead image: A protester at Stand Rock. Democracy Now image

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