Democracy Now! is a daily progressive,
nonprofit, independently syndicated news
hour that airs on more than 1,250 radio,
television, satellite and cable TV
networks around the globe. The
award-winning one-hour news program is
hosted by investigative journalists Amy
Goodman and Juan Gonzalez. The program
is funded entirely through contributions
from listeners, viewers, and
foundations, and does not accept
advertisers, corporate underwriting, or
government funding.
Background 
Democracy Now! was founded on February
19, 1996 at WBAI-FM in New York City by
progressive journalists Amy Goodman,
Juan Gonzalez, Larry Bensky, Salim
Muwakkil, and Julie Drizin. It
originally aired on five Pacifica Radio
stations. Goodman is the program's
principal host, with Juan Gonzalez as
frequent co-host. Jeremy Scahill, an
investigative reporter for The Nation,
has been a frequent contributor since
1997. The program's first fifteen
minutes, called the "War and Peace
Report", are translated daily into
Spanish. The Democracy Now! website is
also available in Spanish. The program
focuses on issues considered
underreported or ignored by mainstream
news coverage. Democracy Now! began
broadcasting on television every weekday
shortly after September 11, 2001, and is
the only public media in the U.S. that
airs simultaneously on satellite and
cable television, radio, and the
internet.
= Studios =
Democracy Now! began as a radio program
broadcast from the studios of WBAI, a
local Pacifica Radio station in New York
City. In early September 2001, amid a
months-long debate over the mission and
management of Pacifica, Democracy Now!
was forced out of the WBAI studios.
Goodman brought the program to the
Downtown Community Television Center
located in a converted firehouse
building in New York City's Chinatown,
where the program began to be televised.
Only a few days later on September 11,
2001 Democracy Now! was the closest
national broadcast to Ground Zero. On
that day Goodman and colleagues
continued reporting beyond their
scheduled hourlong time slot in what
became an eight-hour marathon broadcast.
Following 9/11, in addition to radio and
television, Democracy Now! expanded
their multimedia reach to include cable,
satellite radio, Internet, and podcasts.
In November 2009, Democracy Now! left
their broadcast studio in the converted
DCTV firehouse, where they had broadcast
for eight years. The studio subsequently
moved to a repurposed graphic arts
building in the Chelsea District of
Manhattan. In 2010, the new
8500-square-foot Democracy Now! studio
became the first radio or television
studio in the nation to receive LEED
Platinum certification, the highest
rating awarded by the U.S. Green
Building Council.
= Syndication =
Democracy Now! is the flagship program
of the Pacifica Radio network. The
television simulcast airs on
Public-access television stations; by
satellite on Free Speech TV and Link TV,
and free-to-air on C Band. Democracy
Now! is also available on the Internet
as downloadable and streaming audio and
video. In total, over 1,200 television
and radio stations broadcast Democracy
Now! worldwide.
Awards and reaction 
Democracy Now! and its staff have
received several journalism awards,
including the Gracie Award from American
Women in Radio & Television; the George
Polk Award for its 1998 radio
documentary Drilling and Killing:
Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship,
on the Chevron Corporation and the
deaths of two Nigerian villagers
protesting an oil spill; and Goodman
with Allan Nairn won Robert F. Kennedy
Memorial's First Prize in International
Radio for their 1993 report, Massacre:
The Story of East Timor which involved
first-hand coverage of genocide during
the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.
On October 1, 2008, Goodman was named as
a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood
Award, in connection with her years of
work establishing Democracy Now!.
2008 Republican National Convention
arrests 
Three journalists with Democracy
Now!—including principal host Amy
Goodman, and news producers Nicole
Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous—were
detained by police during their
reporting on the 2008 Republican
National Convention protests. Salazar
was filming as officers in full riot
gear charged her area. As she yelled
"Press!" she was knocked down and told
to put her face in the ground while
another officer dragged her backward by
her leg across the pavement. The video
footage of the incident was immediately
posted on the Internet, leading to a
large public outcry against her arrest.
When a second producer, Kouddous,
approached, he too was arrested, and
charged with a felony. According to a
press release by Democracy Now!, Goodman
herself was arrested after confronting
officers regarding the arrest of her
colleagues. The officers had established
a line of "crowd control," and ordered
Goodman to move back. Goodman claims she
was arrested after being pulled through
the police line by an officer, and
subsequently had her press credentials
for the convention physically stripped
from her by a secret service agent. All
were held on charges of "probable cause
for riot." A statement was later
released by the city announcing that all
"misdemeanor charges for presence at an
unlawful assembly for journalists" would
be dropped. The felony charges against
Salazar and Kouddous were also dropped.
Goodman, Salazar, and Kouddous
subsequently filed a lawsuit against the
cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis as
well as other defendants. According to
Baher Asmy of the Center for
Constitutional Rights, "[a]ll three
plaintiffs that are journalists with
Democracy Now reached a final settlement
with the city of Minneapolis and St.
Paul, and the United States Secret
Service, that will resolve the claims
that they had against them from unlawful
and quite violent arrests." The
settlement includes $100,000 in
compensation and a promise of police
training.
Notable guests, interviews, and on-air
debates 
Alan Dershowitz and Norman G.
Finkelstein – Finkelstein is a frequent
guest. This was a much publicized debate
about whether the Dershowitz book, The
Case for Israel was plagiarized and
inaccurate. Dershowitz has written that
he agreed to appear on the show after
being told he would debate Noam Chomsky,
not Finkelstein.
Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the
Federal Reserve – by Amy Goodman and
Naomi Klein, journalist and author of
The Shock Doctrine, September 24, 2007.
In a follow-up interview, Pulitzer
Prize-winning investigative journalists
Donald Barlett and James Steele, based
on their October 2007 article in Vanity
Fair, call Greenspan "flat wrong"
regarding claims by Greenspan in that
interview denying Federal Reserve
responsibility in the transfer of
billions of dollars from the Federal
Reserve to Iraq, $9 billion of which the
reporters claim has yet to be accounted.
Arundhati Roy – Recurring guest; Indian
writer, anti-war activist, and leading
figure in the alter-globalization
movement 
Bill Clinton – Interviewed after hours
on election day of the U.S. presidential
election, 2000, while president of the
United States. The heated interview on
the Clinton Administration's neoliberal
policies, bombing of Vieques, Iraq
sanctions, Leonard Peltier, the death
penalty, the Cuban embargo, racial
profiling, Ralph Nader, and the
Israel-Palestinian conflict resulted in
the outgoing President calling Amy
Goodman "hostile and combative." A
staffer at the White House press office
later criticized Goodman for straying
from the topic of getting out the vote
and for keeping Clinton on much longer
than the two to three minutes agreed.
Goodman replied "President Clinton is
the most powerful person in the world.
He can hang up when he wants to."
Bill Moyers – Interviewed; former
Johnson Administration press secretary
and former host of the PBS show NOW with
Bill Moyers and former host of the PBS
show Bill Moyers' Journal.
Cornel West – Scholar, currently a
professor at Union Theological Seminary,
formerly at Harvard, Princeton, and
Yale; activist; author.
Danny Glover – Regular guest; American
actor, film director, and political
activist.
Dennis Kucinich, Democratic presidential
candidate – Interviewed by Goodman and
Gonzalez on November 9, 2007.
Edward Said – was a regular guest;
Columbia University professor, literary
critic and Palestinian activist and
intellectual
Evo Morales, President of Bolivia –
Interviewed on September 22, 2006;
talked about his recent speech at the
United Nations in New York where he held
up a coca leaf and argued for
international drug law reform as well as
talked about the nationalization of
Bolivia's energy reserves among other
topics. Morales was again interviewed on
April 23, 2010 after the World Peoples'
Conference on Climate Change in
Cochabamba, Bolivia.
George McGovern, 1972 Democratic
presidential nominee – Interviewed on
March 11, 2008 about that year's
presidential race and how McGovern's
chairmanship of the Democratic Party
Reform Commission transformed the
nominating process.
George Monbiot, climate change activist,
and Helen Caldicott, debated nuclear
power after the Fukushima Dai-Ichi
incident "A Debate on the Future of
Nuclear Energy"
George Papandreou, Greek Prime Minister
– Interviewed on December 8, 2011 at
U.N. Climate Change Conference in
Durban, South Africa shortly after
resigning due to pressure from European
Union and financial institutions.
Gore Vidal – U.S.-author, essayist, and
political activist; interviewed sparsely
on a few occasions.
Greg Palast – Frequent guest; U.S.-born
writer and investigative journalist for
the BBC and The Observer.
Howard Zinn – Interviewed by Amy
Goodman; late historian and activist;
author of several books, including A
People's History of the United States.
Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela –
Interviewed in September 2005.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide – on March 16,
2004, the recently ousted Haitian
President accused the United States of
kidnapping him and overthrowing the
government of Haiti.
Jimmy Carter – Interviewed by on
September 10, 2007; former U.S.
President: author of Palestine Peace Not
Apartheid.
John Pilger – Frequent guest; Australian
journalist and film-maker.
Joseph Stiglitz – Recurring guest;
Columbia University economics professor,
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic
Sciences winner, and author
Julian Assange
Lori Berenson – Interviewed in 1999 in
Peru by Amy Goodman; political activist
arrested in 1995 and convicted for
collaborating with the Túpac Amaru
Revolutionary Movement, a Peruvian
leftist guerrilla organization. It was
the first time a journalist was able to
interview Berenson inside the prison
where she was incarcerated.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Manuel Zelaya – multiple interviews with
the ousted president of Honduras
Matt Taibbi – Frequent guest; U.S.-born
writer and investigative journalist for
The Nation
Michael Eric Dyson – Regular guest;
Georgetown professor, writer & radio
host.
Michael Moore – Filmmaker, author,
political commentator; interviewed on
March 10, 2011 & on September 28, 2011
Mumia Abu-Jamal – In its first year,
Democracy Now! was one of the first
national programs to air radio
commentaries from the controversial
journalist and former Black Panther
Party member, on death row in
Pennsylvania for the murder of a
Philadelphia police officer. The 1997
decision to air Abu-Jamal's commentaries
caused Democracy Now! to lose twelve of
its then 36 affiliates.
Naomi Klein – Author, public
intellectual, and critic of
globalization and corporate capitalism.
Interviewed on March 9, 2011.
Noam Chomsky – A regularly interviewed
guest; MIT linguistics professor,
political analyst, and author.
Norman Finkelstein – Author, activist
and scholar.
Oliver Stone - Director, producer,
screen writer.
Paul Krugman – Recurring guest;
Princeton University economics
professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in
Economic Sciences winner, and author
Ralph Nader – A regularly interviewed
guest; consumer activist, corporate
critic, author, and former presidential
candidate.
Ricardo Alarcón – President of the Cuban
National Assembly interviewed by Amy
Goodman.
Robert Fisk – Frequent guest; British
journalist who is Middle East
correspondent for The Independent.
Scott Ritter – Interviewed; former UN
weapons inspector who disputed the Bush
administration's claims about weapons
programs in Iraq.
Tariq Ali and Christopher Hitchens –
took opposing sides in two debates over
the Iraq War, on December 4, 2003 and
October 12, 2004.
Tawakel Karman – The 2011 Nobel Peace
Prize recipient appeared October 21,
2011, while she was in New York for a UN
Security Council resolution that would
create a path for Yemen President Saleh
to resign.
Yoko Ono – Musician, peace activist and
widow of John Lennon. Interviewed on
October 16, 2007.
See also 
References 
External links 
Official website
The Democracy Now! collection at the
Internet Archive
Democracy Now! at the Internet Movie
Database
