[Air-l] The Exception to the Rulers

[Derek McMillan]

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<em>
Democracy Now!</em> 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 <em>Democracy
Now!</em> 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 students of independent media.



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