Before there was Michael Moore, there was campaigning journalist Amy Goodman … and even if Moore seems to have gone a little quiet, Goodman is still there, doggedly asking questions, an earnest gadfly buzzing around the flinching faces of Trump placemen, challenging and provoking and annoying. With her listener-funded syndicated radio show Democracy Now!, on the air since 1996, Goodman is flying the flag for journalism of the unfashionably homespun progressive left, while America’s corporate news media are sheepishly capitulating to their tech oligarch owners.
This documentary from Carl Deal and Tia Lessin is a portrait of Goodman and her life and times. The title is her somewhat ironic mantra: please, everybody, by all means steal our stories about corruption and demagoguery. Sadly, the big news media are often uninterested (though sometimes they are forced to follow stories broken by Goodman and her team). In fact, the real demand is addressed to their audience: buy this story, please. Democracy Now! accepts no ads or sponsorship, and it relies on money from viewers, listeners and readers of its website, although this documentary is silent on how much it needs annually and how the cash is solicited.
