Democracy Now! is a United States daily progressive, nonprofit, independently syndicated program of news, analysis, and opinion,^[2] aired by more than 950 radio, television, satellite and cable TV networks in North America.^[3] The award-winning one hour War and Peace Report is hosted by investigative journalists Amy Goodman^[4] and Juan Gonzalez.^[5][3] The program is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations and does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting, or government funding.^[3]

Background[link]

The show was located in the DCTV firehouse building (a converted firehouse) in New York City's Chinatown.

"For true democracy to work, people need easy access to independent, diverse sources of news and information."

— Democracy Now!^[3]

Democracy Now! was founded in 1996 at WBAI-FM in New York City by progressive journalists Amy Goodman, Juan Gonzalez, Larry Bensky, Salim Muwakkil, and Julie Drizin.^[6] It originally aired on 5 Pacifica Radio stations.^[2] Goodman is the program's principal host, with Juan Gonzalez as frequent co-host.^[7] Jeremy Scahill, an investigative reporter for The Nation, has been a frequent contributor since 1997.^[2] The Spanish version includes the daily headlines, as well as a weekly summary of the news and was begun by Andres Thomas Conteris in May 2005. The program focuses on issues its producers consider underreported or ignored by mainstream news coverage. Television broadcasting began in September, 2001.^[2]

Syndication[link]

Democracy Now! is the flagship national program of the Pacifica Radio network.^[8] The television simulcast airs on Public-access television stations; on satellite via Free Speech TV and Link TV, and free-to-air on C Band.^[9] Democracy Now! is also available via the Internet as downloadable and streaming audio and video.^[10] In total, over 950 television and radio stations broadcast Democracy Now! worldwide.^[1]

Awards and reaction[link]

Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television;^[12] 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;^[13] 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.^[14]

On October 1, 2008, Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award,^[15] often referred to as the "Alternative Nobel Prize",^[16] in connection with her years of work establishing Democracy Now!.

Coverage[link]

Democracy Now! is notable for its global coverage of current events, such as Occupy Wall Street, often featuring live interviews with participants.^[2]

2008 Republican National Convention arrests[link]

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.^[17] Salazar was filming as officers in full riot gear charged her area. As she audibly 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, also clearly marked as a member of the press, he too was arrested, assaulted by the police 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. She was arrested after being pulled through the police line by an officer, and subsequently (as well as Kouddous) had her press credentials for the convention physically stripped from her by a secret service agent.^[18] All were held on charges of "probable cause for riot."^[19] 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.^[20]

Goodman, Salazar, and Kouddous subsequently filed a lawsuit against the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis as well as other defendants.^[20] 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.^[21]

Notable guests, interviews, and on-air debates[link]

In alphabetical order

• 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.^[22]
• Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve — by Amy Goodman and Naomi Klein, journalist and author of The Shock Doctrine, September 24, 2007.^[23] In a follow-up interview, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele, based on their October 2007 article in Vanity Fair,^[24] 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.^[25]
• 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 US presidential election, 2000.^[26] 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."^[27]
• 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.^[28]
• 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.^[29]
• 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.^[30] Morales was again interviewed on April 23, 2010 after the World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change in Cochabamba, Bolivia.^[31]
• 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 (1969–70) transformed the nominating process.^[32]
• 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.^[33]
• Gore Vidal — US-author, essayist, and political activist; interviewed sparsely on a few occasions.
• Greg Palast — Frequent guest; US-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.^[34]
• Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela — Interviewed in September 2005.^[35]
• 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.^[36]
• Jimmy Carter — Interviewed by on 10 September 2007; former US President: author of Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.^[37]
• Joseph Stiglitz — Recurring guest; Columbia University economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner (2001), and author
• Paul Krugman — Recurring guest; Princeton University economics professor, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner (2008), and author
• Lori Berenson — Interviewed^[38] 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.^[38]
• Manuel Zelaya — multiple interviews with the ousted president of Honduras^[39]
• Michael Eric Dyson — Regular guest; Georgetown professor, writer & radio host.
• Michael Moore — Filmmaker, author, political commentator; interviewed on March 10, 2011^[40] & on September 28th, 2011^[41]
• 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.^[42]
• Naomi Klein — Author, public intellectual, and critic of globalization and corporate capitalism. Interviewed on March 9, 2011.^[43]
• Noam Chomsky — A regularly interviewed guest; MIT linguistics professor, political analyst, and author.
• Ralph Nader — A regularly interviewed guest; consumer activist, corporate critic, author, and former presidential candidate.^[44]
• 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.
• John Pilger — Frequent guest; Australian journalist and film-maker.
• Scott Ritter — Interviewed; former UN weapons inspector who disputed the Bush administration's claims about weapons programs in Iraq.^[45]
• Tariq Ali and Christopher Hitchens — took opposing sides in two debates over the Iraq War, on December 4, 2003^[46] and October 12, 2004.^[47]
• Tawakel Karman — The 2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipient appeared 21 October 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.^[48]

See also[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official Website
• VIDEO: Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times, Democracy Now! host, Amy Goodman, and her brother, David Goodman, from their recent book tour, April 14, 2008, Portland, Oregon.
• "Democracy Now! History in the Making", An article by Angela Alston about the innovative distribution of the Democracy Now! TV show, published in The Independent (June 2002)
• Democracy Now! at the Internet Movie Database

Tavis Smiley
Tavis Smiley, 2011
Born	(1964-09-13) September 13, 1964 (age 47) Gulfport, Mississippi United States
Education	Indiana University (B.A., public affairs, 2003)
Occupation	Talk show host Author Entrepreneur Advocate Philanthropist
Notable credit(s)	Tavis Smiley host (2004–present) The Tavis Smiley Show from PRI (radio) host (2005–present) "Smiley & West" co-host (2010–present) BET Tonight with Tavis Smiley host (1996–2001)
Religion	Christian
Website
http://www.tavistalks.com/

Tavis Smiley (pronounced /ˈtævɨs/; born September 13, 1964) is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist.^[1][2] Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, and grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of Los Angeles. Smiley became a radio commentator in 1991, and starting in 1996, he hosted the talk show BET Talk (later renamed BET Tonight) on BET. Controversially, after Smiley sold an exclusive interview of Sara Jane Olson to ABC News in 2001, BET declined to renew Smiley's contract that year. Smiley then began hosting The Tavis Smiley Show on NPR from 2002 to 2004 and currently hosts Tavis Smiley on PBS on the weekdays and "The Tavis Smiley Show" from PRI. In 2010 Smiley and Dr. Cornel West have joined forces for their own radio talk show, Smiley & West. They were featured together interviewing musician Bill Withers in the 2009 documentary film Still Bill.^[3]

Early years[link]

Tavis Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, the son of Joyce Marie Roberts, a single mother who first became pregnant at age 18.^[4] On September 13, 1966, just shy of his second birthday, his mother married Emory Garnell Smiley, a non-commisioned officer in the U.S. Air Force.^[5] It would not be until a few years later that Tavis would learn the identity of his biological father, whom he identifies in his autobiography, What I Know For Sure: My Story of Growing Up in America only as "T."^[6]

His family soon moved to Indiana because his stepfather had been transferred to Grissom Air Force Base near Peru, Indiana. Upon arriving in Indiana, the Smiley family took up residence in a crowded mobile home in the small town of Bunker Hill, Indiana.^[7] Smiley's immediate family size was increased following the homicide of his aunt, whose death left five children with no stable home. Smiley's parents agreed to take in and raise their five orphaned nieces and nephews. Joyce and her husband also had eight children of their own over the years, resulting at one point in 13 children and Mr. and Mrs. Smiley all living in the trailer-home. Smiley's mother was a very religious person, and the family attended the local New Bethel Tabernacle Church, part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of the World.^[8] The Smiley children were forbidden from listening to secular music at home and going to the movie theater and could watch television shows that their parents felt were family-friendly.^[9] When Tavis Smiley was in seventh grade, New Bethel pastor Elder Rufus Mills accused Tavis and his siblings of "running wild, disobeying their teacher, disrespecting their teacher, disrespecting the sanctity of this building, and mocking the holy message being taught" during Sunday School.^[10] According to Smiley's account of the incident, Smiley's Sunday School teacher became more confused as she was asking questions about the Book of John, and while other students "responded by giggling and acting a little unruly", he and his sister Phyllis "remained quiet".^[11] Garnell whipped Tavis and Phyllis with an extension cord, wounding the two children.^[12] The next day at school, administrators found out about the children's injuries.^[13] The local newspaper in Kokomo reported on the beating and the legal proceedings against Garnell, and Tavis and Phyllis were sent to foster care temporarily,^[14] Garnell told his children that the judge decided that he had "overreacted" and found he and Joyce as "concerned parents who were completely involved in our children's lives and well-being".^[15]

Smiley became interested in politics at age 13 after attending a fundraiser for U.S. Senator Birch Bayh.^[8] At Maconaquah High School in Bunker Hill, Indiana, a school that Smiley described as "98 percent white",^[16] Smiley was active in student council and the debate team, even though his parents were "skeptical of all non-church extracurricular activities".^[17]

College and political career[link]

In 1982, Smiley enrolled in Indiana University Bloomington (IU). Because Smiley's parents refused to complete financial aid papers, Smiley entered Indiana University with only $50 and a small suitcase.^[18] Administrators let Smiley complete the paperwork to become a full-time student.^[19] The summer after his freshman year, Smiley worked, attended summer classes, and lived off campus with Indiana Hoosiers men's basketball players, then being coached by Bob Knight.^[20] Smiley was accepted into the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity during his sophomore year and became business manager of his dormitory, a member of the student senate, and director of minority affairs.^[21] After his friend Denver Smith was killed by Indiana police officers who claimed to have acted in self-defense, Smiley helped lead protests to defend Smith, whom he believed had been wrongfully killed.^[22] Those protests led Smiley to a work-study internship at the office of Bloomington mayor Tomilea Allison. Being paid $5 an hour, Smiley wrote letters to local residents, researched for Mayor Allison, and helped write positions on local issues. Mayor Allison rebuked Smiley for padding his time sheets and had Smiley work off the extra hours without pay.^[23] During his first semester of junior year, Smiley was under academic probation and blamed his extracurricular activities for interfering with his studies.^[24] When Smiley visited Los Angeles to attend a national student leaders' convention, the cousin of his roommate introduced Smiley to football star Jim Brown. Brown introduced Smiley to fellow football player George Hughley, who worked for Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley and connected Smiley to Mayor Bradley's staff.^[25] Every week since meeting Bradley's staff, Smiley wrote a letter to the mayor's office asking for an internship and once personally flew to Los Angeles to appeal. However, by summertime he received a letter from the city stating that all internship positions were filled.^[26] Smiley then handwrote a letter to the mayor that he said represented his feeling "from the heart", and Bradley called Smiley to say that he had a position available for Smiley.^[27] As the internship was unpaid but counted for college credit, the Bloomington Community Progress Council funded Smiley with $5,000 for living expenses in Los Angeles, and Brown allowed Smiley to live as a houseguest during September 1985. Starting the next month, Smiley lived in the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity house in the University of Southern California. At City Hall, Smiley worked at the Office of Youth Development on the 22nd floor.^[28]

Twice, Smiley considered quitting college, first during junior year,^[29] and then after finishing his internship with Mayor Bradley. Bradley successfully convinced Smiley to return to college, and Smiley did.^[30] Smiley took the LSAT twice, as he was considering attending Harvard Law School.^[31] However, in his senior year, he failed a test in a computer class after being accused of copying another student's, so he failed that class and several others and lacked nine hours of credits and thus did not graduate from IU.^[32] Following a hiring freeze by the government of Los Angeles, Smiley served as an aide to Mayor Bradley until 1990.^[33] A 1988 article in the Los Angeles Times identified Smiley as "a Bradley administrative assistant who works in South Los Angeles".^[34] In 2003, Smiley officially received his degree from Indiana University in public affairs.^[35]

Radio and television career[link]

Campaigning for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 1991 against incumbent Ruth Galanter, Smiley finished fourth among 15 candidates. Smiley became a radio commentator, broadcasting one-minute daily radio segments called The Smiley Report on KGFJ radio.^[8] With Ruben Navarrette, Jr., Smiley co-hosted a local talk show in Los Angeles where his strongly held views on race and politics, combined with his arguments regarding the impact of institutional racism and substandard educational and economic opportunities for inner-city black youth, earned him attention on the Los Angeles Times. His commentaries focused on local and national current-affairs issues affecting the African-American community.^[36] For six months, Smiley worked on a community news program on a local cable network and spent six more months working on television in Montreal.^[37]

In 1996, Smiley became a frequent commentator on the Tom Joyner Morning Show, a nationally syndicated radio show broadcast on black and urban stations in the United States.^[38] He developed a friendship with host Joyner; together they began hosting annual town hall meetings beginning in 2000 called "The State of the Black Union", which were aired live on the C-SPAN cable television network. Each of these town hall meetings focused on a specific topic affecting the African-American community, featuring a panel of African-American leaders, educators, and professionals assembled before an audience to discuss problems related to the forum's topic, as well as potential solutions.^[39] Smiley also used his commentator status on Joyner's radio show to launch several advocacy campaigns to highlight discriminatory practices in the media and government and to rally support for causes such as the awarding of a Congressional Gold Medal to civil rights icon Rosa Parks. Smiley also began building a national reputation as a political commentator with numerous appearances on political discussion shows on MSNBC, ABC, and CNN.

Also in 1996, Smiley began hosting and executive producing BET Tonight (originally BET Talk when it first premiered), a public affairs discussion show on the Black Entertainment Television (BET) network. Smiley interviewed major political figures and celebrities and discussed topics ranging from racial profiling and police brutality to R&B music and Hollywood gossip. Smiley hosted BET Tonight until 2001, when in a controversial move, the network announced that Smiley's contract would not be renewed. This sparked an angry response from Joyner, who sought to rally his radio audience to protest BET's decision. Robert L. Johnson, founder of BET, defended the decision, stating that Smiley had been fired because he had sold an exclusive interview to ABC News without first offering the story to BET, even though Smiley's contract with BET did not require him to do so. Smiley countered with the assertion that he had offered the story — an interview with Sara Jane Olson, an alleged former member of the Symbionese Liberation Army — to CBS, which, along with BET, was owned by Viacom. Smiley ultimately sold the interview to rival network ABC, he said, only after CBS passed on the interview, and suggested that his firing was payback for the publicity he gained as a result of providing an exclusive interview to ABC.^[40] Ultimately BET and Viacom did not reverse their decision to terminate Smiley's contract.