It's that Faustian bargain made by too many mainstream journalists in the United States: They won't ask people in power tough questions as long as the people in power keep talking to them.

That's why you see CNN's Wolf Blitzer accept everything national security advisor Condoleezza Rice says or why NBC's Tim Russert doesn't call Vice-President Dick Cheney out on his lies.

But independent journalist Amy Goodman won't play along. Which is why, in 2000, when President Bill Clinton appeared on her unique live TV/radio show Democracy Now! (democracynow.org), he called her "hostile, combative and even disrespectful."

But few journalists manage to get at the truth by being friendly, passive and compliant.

"We have media that is acting as a megaphone for those who are in power," she told me over the phone yesterday, from the old New York City firehall where her show is based.

Her "daily, grass-roots, unembedded, international, independent newshour" is a lifeline for many in a country where even National Public Radio (NPR) is seen as so co-opted that it's been dubbed National Petroleum Radio by some.

Goodman's refusal to play the game is also why you haven't seen her on all the morning news shows plugging her hot-potato new book: The Exception To The Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, And The Media That Love Them. Why would the targets of her scathing critique expose themselves?

But Goodman, 47, more than makes do with Democracy Now! which is heard by millions via some 270 TV and radio stations, and the Internet.

Although it has been getting very little mainstream media publicity, Exception To The Rulers is flirting with the bestseller lists, a testament to how starved for dissenting views many Americans feel.

In her book, Goodman not only relates her own terrifying first-hand experiences in East Timor, Nigeria and on The Sally Jesse Show, she reminds citizens of how, before, during and after the invasion of Iraq, they were short-changed by the media giants which rule the airwaves.

Take, for example, this week's controversy over Sinclair Broadcasting, the largest TV station owner in the United States, with 62 affiliates reaching more than a quarter of all Americans. Last week, it was reported that the company, owned by a man with very close Republican ties, has ordered its stations to air a 42-minute attackumentary against Democratic candidate John Kerry later this month.

This is the same company that, last spring, prevented its ABC affiliates from carrying a Nightline special honouring the fallen American troops because, as a spokesperson put it, it was a blatant attempt to "influence public opinion." Meanwhile, the anti-Kerry program is deemed to be "news" by Sinclair, a company which has made its on-air personnel broadcast statements in support of Bush.

"You can't call that documentary a program," Goodman insists. "It's a political ad."

No doubt Goodman will discuss that here tomorrow night at 7 when she appears at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor St. W.) as part of this week's Media Democracy Day activities. (http://www.mediademocracyday.ca)

Friday morning at 8:30, she guest hosts for Anna Maria Tremonti on CBC Radio One's The Current, in simulcast with her own Democracy Now! (Next Friday's guest host is David Frum.)

"Media is now the most powerful institution in the world, certainly in the United States," says Goodman.

"Media is the way we all come to know each other if we don't know each other personally — and the way the rest of the world comes to know us.

"That is being projected through a corporate lens and it is very dangerous."

© 2004 Toronto Star

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