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

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. It originally aired on 5 Pacifica Radio stations. Goodman is the program's principal host, with Juan Gonzalez as frequent co-host.Jeremy Scahill, an investigative reporter for The Nation, has been a frequent contributor since 1997. 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.

Tavis Smiley (pronounced /ˈtævɨs/; born September 13, 1964) is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. 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.

Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, author, critic, actor, civil rights activist and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

West is a 1973 graduate of Harvard University and a doctoral graduate of Princeton University. He is currently a professor of African American studies at Princeton and of Religious philosophy and Christian studies at the Union Theological Seminary in New York.

West is known for his combination of political and moral insight and criticism and his contribution to the post-1960s civil rights movement.^{[citation needed]} The bulk of his work focuses on the role of race, gender, and class in American society and the means by which people act and react to their "radical conditionedness." West draws intellectual contributions from such diverse traditions as the African American Baptist Church, pragmatism and transcendentalism.

West was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up in Sacramento, California, where he graduated from John F. Kennedy High School. His father was a general contractor for the Defense Department, and his mother was a teacher and a principal. Irene B. West Elementary School in Elk Grove, California, is named for her.

Christopher Lynn Hedges (born September 18, 1956) is an American journalist, author, and war correspondent specializing in American and Middle Eastern politics and societies. His most recent book is The World As It Is (2011).

Hedges is also known as the best-selling author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A quotation from the book was used as the opening title quotation in the film The Hurt Locker (2009). The quotation reads: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug."

Chris Hedges is currently a senior fellow at The Nation Institute in New York City. He spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He has reported from more than fifty countries, and has worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News, and The New York Times, where he was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years (1990–2005).

Jeremy Scahill (born c. 1974) is an American investigative journalist and author whose work focuses on the use of private military companies. He is the author of the best-selling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, winner of a George Polk Book Award. He also serves as a correspondent for the U.S. radio and TV program Democracy Now!. Scahill is a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute and a frequent contributor to The Nation.

Scahill is from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Scahill started his career as an unpaid intern at Democracy Now!. While there he learned the technical side of radio, and learned "journalism as a trade, rather than an academic study."

He campaigned vigorously against US policy towards Cuba, arguing that the Helms-Burton Act "discards ... sovereignty ... and attempts to supersede International law with US law" and "creates a legal framework authorizing financial and military support for armed subversion of a sovereign nation".

Scahill and colleague Amy Goodman were co-recipients of the 1998 Polk Award for their radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship", which investigated the Chevron Corporation's role in the killing of two Nigerian environmental activists. Scahill has written extensively on national security issues and the military-industrial complex. His work appears frequently in Commondreams, Truthout, Huffington Post, Alternet, CounterPunch, and many other news sites.