Amy Goodman announcing the dismissal of charges against her outside the Morton County Courthouse in Mandan, North Dakota (Democracy Now!, 10/17/16).
North Dakota District Judge John Grinsteiner stood up for the First Amendment by dismissing “riot” charges against Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman (Democracy Now!, 10/17/16). That’s more than you can say for most of Goodman’s corporate media colleagues.
After Goodman reported on the use of pepper spray and attack dogs against Native American demonstrators opposing the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (Democracy Now!, 9/4/16), North Dakota State’s Attorney Ladd Erickson charged her with criminal trespassing. Realizing that he couldn’t make that charge stick, he sought to charge her instead with participation in a “riot”—based on Erickson’s contention that Goodman “was not acting as a journalist” because “everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions” (FAIR.org, 10/15/16).
Few corporate media journalists took note of a fellow reporter being charged with trespass for doing her job (FAIR.0rg, 9/15/16). When the prosecutor upped the ante by trying to build a criminal charge based on his perception of a reporter’s point of view, this still did not provoke much attention—let alone outcry—from outlets whose lucrative commercial enterprises are dependent on the protection of the First Amendment.
A handful of journalists at commercial outlets did weigh in to defend Goodman. Will Bunch, columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News (Philly.com, 10/16/16), wrote that “the First Amendment was created to prevent exactly this: the jailing of a writer for his or her political point of view.” The LA Times‘ Michael Hiltzik (10/17/16) called out the charges as “an attempt to quash legitimate news reporting.” Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone (10/13/16) noted the odd fact that Erickson is an avowed fan of Taibbi’s work—but nonetheless urged him to stop prosecuting Goodman, saying she is “as close to the ideal of what it means to be a journalist as one can get in this business.”
That’s about it for journalists in the corridors of corporate media who defended Democracy Now!‘s reporter. A few others took note of the threat she was under; AP‘s James MacPherson and Blake Nicholson wrote a piece that was picked up by outlets like the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Idaho Statesman, Fresno Bee and Arizona Daily Star. Public Radio International‘s The Takeaway (10/17/16) ran a 12-minute interview with Goodman.
A few new media outlets covered the riot charges, like Jezebel (10/15/16) and TechCrunch (10/16/15). Some journalism sites also weighed in, like The Wrap (10/15/16) and Poynter (10/17/16)—though Poynter’s James Warren buried the item under ten other items, heading his one-paragraph report “Post-Pipeline Protest Hoopla,” a headline that may accurately convey the degree of importance corporate journalism accords to First Amendment threats to alternative reporters.
That would explain why people who wanted to be informed about an independent journalist facing criminal charges based on her presumed opinions mostly had to go to overseas outlets (BBC, 10/17/16 ; Independent, 10/17/16) or to alternative sources like The Nation (10/15/16) and CommonDreams (10/15/16).
Commercial journalists are rightfully alarmed by Donald Trump’s increasingly shrill attacks on the press, which he asserts has an
agenda is to elect crooked Hillary Clinton at any costs, at any price, no matter how many lives they destroy…. For them, it’s a war. And for them, nothing at all is out of bounds. This is a struggle for the survival of our nation. Believe me. And this will be our last chance to save it.
This kind of apocalyptic rhetoric is an invitation to violence against reporters, and it needs to be opposed. But the only effective response to threats against freedom of the press is solidarity; if those with the biggest megaphones don’t stand up to the already-occurring efforts to clampdown on the press, someday they may be writing poems that begin, “First they came for the Pacifica reporters, and I didn’t say anything, because I wasn’t a Pacifica reporter….”
If there are any regretful reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post, the broadcast or cable news outlets, or any of the other media properties that neglected to cover Goodman’s case when she stood accused of thoughtcrime, they can make up for it by reporting on the still-pending case of documentary filmmaker Deia Schlosberg, who is facing up to 45 years in prison based on three felony counts derived from her reporting on the Dakota Access protests (Reuters, 10/13/16). The First Amendment you save may be your own.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @JNaureckas.
Expecting the corpress to give a rat’s ass about Goodman’s persecution is akin to presuming that Madame Mayhem would care about the hell endured by mothers around the world because she happens to be one as well.
(Of course, she’s helped raise much of that hell, hasn’t she?)
When Goodmsn first received the warrant, I was surprised. It’s one thing for a cop to arrest a journalist at the scene and then release them a couple hours later, but a warrant in the mail usally means a prosecutor has looked at it. I was curious to see what kind of bonehead lawyer would do this. I looked for stories for about a week. I was not surprised MSM had ignored it.if they had heard about it half of them would be calling for her extradition. But even progressive media was silent. I think the Intercept and the Nation and a couple of bloggers ran short pieces and that was about it, with one exception. About few days later on 9/1616 I found one story in the MSM! You may have missed it. When I found it, I laughed. Vogue covered it. It would be interesting to know why.
http://www.vogue.com/13477294/dakota-pipeline-amy-goodman-democracy-now-standing-rock-sioux-protests/
When they start incarcerating journalists you know it’s over. Goodbye democracy. Hello plutocracy.
So atrocious, these times of censorship—though I refuse to live silently and so should every proletarian and professional! Now is the time to show up and make a case against Capitalism’s smashing arms of imperialist dogma. This world is one divided, by borders and subsequently geopolitical issues—instead of using automation to provide for base biological necessity we remain animals and prefer to brutally exploit the helpless and ignorant for private profit at the cost of our environment and health (ultimately our biological sustainability). The maximization of the American dream has been our poison, as we arrest measures of diplomacy with blind arguments of righteousness—we ‘democratically’ take from the darker places of the earth to ensure our lives of unconscionable surplus; that is a fact chiseled into the stones of historical conflict.
We should wear our hearts on our sleeves and challenge the non-sensical notions of formality and taboo in order to instigate a dialectical progression toward ethica and equality. We exist beneath a obvious power structure of amorality, however we can affect change through grassroots communication and identification with symbolisms of our observations (whether language or image).
We must defend the enlightenment and unshackle our neighbors with keys of cohesion, to take back what is collectively ours from the hegemonic profiteers of the earth before they sell us out of our existence.
NPR should certainly be included in the “corporate media” category.
NPR was completely silent about the whole issue of Goodman’s arrest.
They obviously do not consider Goodman a “real” journalist (which is actually very funny considering the hacks at NPR)
NPR only had a brief article about the dismissal of the charge, in which they made no mention of the first amendment issues or of the obvious attack on journalistic freedom.
They instead chose to describe Goodman as “the host of the left-leaning Democracy Now news program”, left open the question of whether the charges against Goodman might actually have been justified (because of trespass) and even implied that there was some “question” about whether the security personnel had actually intended for their dogs to bite protestors.
Note to the “geniuses” at NPR: when you set attack dogs loose on people, the intention is that the dogs will attack — not shake the hands (and lick the faces?) of the protestors and ask them to “kindly stop doing what you are doing”.
Of course, NPR no longer allows comments on their own site because too many people were pointing out ” inconvenient truths” ( NPR’s lies, half-truths, omissions and other propaganda)
So we have to point these things out elsewhere.
Here is good.
PS I am glad you have simple math problems as a verification (because that will keep NPR reporters from commenting).
NPR has been heading in the wrong direction for a while, but in the last year they have sunk like a stone, Too bad they’re not like HRC impervious to influence by big money donors haha.
FAIR
“But the only effective response to threats
against freedom of the press is solidarity”
Not hardly, for 95% of donations to NPR come from the corporate rich, all of mainstream media is owned by the corporate rich and anger hath no man as when you mess with his excessive wealth.
For freedom of the press means that the public has a worthless freedom of speech, as only the press has the right to be heard.
When the rich are jailed for attempting to own or invest in the press, then we can begin to talk about a true and open press.
I am from Vancouver,Canada and I wanted to say that I am glad that the charges against Amy Goodman has been dropped. She had a lot of support for telling the truth about Standing Rock.The corporate media never tells the truth.It was people like Amy Goodman that got the truth out about what was going on at Standing Rock.
Good piece as usual. Another journalist who did a good piece on Amy is Tony Norman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Tuesday, 10/18.
I have to point out this part of the article is entirely incorrect:
“When the prosecutor upped the ante by trying to build a criminal charge based on his perception of a reporter’s point of view, this still did not provoke much attention—let alone outcry—from outlets whose lucrative commercial enterprises are dependent on the protection of the First Amendment.”
Corporate media doesn’t depend on the First Amendment! The First Amendment is a threat to them.
Corporate media is US government propaganda, and absolutely nothing more – unless you think reporting on trivial garbage about celebrities is “news”.
Fair.org is wonderful—please keep fighting for transparency. This post-truth climate is truly sweltering… and I agree, grassroots activism is absolutely essential now if we are to proceed amicably into a future of enlightenment and bio-ethical sustainability.