Jessica Newman: What is Grow Radio, and where did you get the idea?

Bill Bryson: Well, going way back, I was involved in college radio in North Carolina and got my taste in radio from that. Music has always been my passion, so it was just a natural outlet for me. Then I moved to Gainesville to open up a live music club. Then over the years, being in concert promotion and publishing a magazine, I kind of evolved into radio as the next wave of what I’m doing here. I moved here in ’92, and between ’92 and 2008 or 2009, there wasn’t a lot of success with alternative radio in town. There had been pirate radio even long before I was here, coming and going. You kind of had to be in the know to get them. Then I helped the Civic Media Center get their low-power FM license, which has its limitations, as well. Then Kiss 105 let Wayne Erwin run their AM signal as an alternative community radio in the mid-’90s, as well. It was successful enough to indicate to me that there was demand for it in the community. Over the years, there have been a few attempts to get a student-run station going, but it’s never really gone anywhere. Then Classic 89 has always been an option, I thought, that could have really taken advantage of community resources to create more locally generated programming because they had a couple of shows like that. But it was limited in terms of the air time they were getting. They could have dedicated a lot more energy and effort to that for minimal input expense-wise and probably maximum output.
Grow Radio has evolved out of a combination of all those things. I want to make it into a hybrid in terms of the model of the station between community radio and student-run college radio. I’m going to try and fill the daytime shifts with college kids and give them as much of an educational, as well as an enjoyable, experience with it. We’ve also gotten started just by me tapping some of my immediate resources as far as people in the music community. We’ll have a good balance of community members who aren’t necessarily affiliated with the university and students that are affiliated with the university. Commercial radio now is very automated; program selection is very much determined from the top down. There’s very little DJ input in terms of what you’re hearing on the air, if there’s any DJ at all. Sometimes it’s all just computer-generated. So my point with this is to get human beings back behind the media. With that in mind, even though we’re using the Internet as our medium, we are operating as a local radio station. I think we can have a small but relatively significant impact as a local station, just in a different medium as opposed to FM. I believe in the power of radio; I believe radio can really reach people, even without visuals. Having a real person talking to you, especially someone that’s from Gainesville, presenting a very Gainesville perspective on what they’re broadcasting, creates the locality of it and creates the uniqueness of it that hopefully people will embrace here.

JN: Why did you decide to do Grow Radio online?

BB: Over time, the benefits of being on the web are just going to expand in terms of: if people are listening to this radio station while they’re living in Gainesville, and they move someone else in the world, they can still tune into their Gainesville station. And you talk about the Gator Nation; it’s all over the world. So eventually Grow Radio could have an expansive audience all over the world. It’s not our primary focus, but I think that’s just, down the road, what’s probably going to happen. The technology of podcasting just creates lots of options for the listener in terms of how they want to receive their radio, as well. So I think all those things combined are kind of what is creating Grow Radio. It’s still very much embryonic right now, and it’s going to evolve based on who gets involved, what kind of community support comes forward and so on.

JN: What kind of a business model are you using?

BB: We’re setting it up as a 501(c)3, so we’ll operate on the same model as public radio. We’ll be reliant upon listener donations for support, as well as grants and any other kind of sponsorship money we can get.

JN: When did Grow Radio go live online?

BB: We went live about a year ago. This past year has been kind of an experiment to see with very little promotion whether this idea would get legs or not, and it seems like it has.

JN: What kind of success have you guys had so far?

BB: I’m very encouraged. We’ve noticed a lot of people listening from work. And I think, once students become more aware and interested, that we’ll see a lot more listeners coming from UF.

JN: What kind of programming is there on Grow Radio, and what kind of people are on the air?

BB: Right now it’s mostly music, but we’ve got a couple of monthly shows that are not musical right now. I think they’re kind of figuring out what they’re doing as they go along, and that’s great. That’s sort of what this is about — teaching people who have an interest in creating something within the community. They can learn something from it, as well as get some reward by contributing something to the community. A few people have been on the radio before. But for the most part, it’s starting from scratch. So our production side of things is a little bit clunky and pretty loose. But personally, I find that charming. It keeps it fairly organic and grassroots because we’re letting people do this regardless of their experience. If they have the passion and the interest to do something like this, then here’s the platform for it.

JN: Why does Grow Radio need to exist, and why is it important to Gainesville?

BB: It’s real personal for me. Music has always been a really important part of my life, through both my personal and my business life. I think through both of those avenues I’ve learned that I’m not the only one. It can help a community flourish, not just by adding to the musical culture, but also creating a platform like I’ve been describing where the community can actually get involved with this and give people the opportunity to create a creative culture within their own community without having to be a performer or a filmmaker or a writer.

Free Press is a non-profit organization that believes in reforming media to transform democracy. She conducts strategic communications and outreach activities to advance Free Press’ legislative and movement building initiatives. She works with community-based organizations, public interest groups, academics and other allies to encourage participation in Free Press campaigns and events, with a particular focus on the SaveTheInternet.com campaign. Prior to joining Free Press, Misty was the statewide grassroots organizing coordinator for Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. She holds a master’s degree in community development and planning from Clark University in Worcester, Mass.

JN: Can you explain the concept of net neutrality and why it is important in our increasingly Internet-dependent world?

MPT: Net Neutrality sounds complicated, but it’s actually a very simple concept. Net neutrality ensures that Internet users can connect to one another freely and access the content and applications they choose, without interference from Internet service providers. It’s the guiding principle that underlies the open Internet and allows users to control their own online experience – making it so that you can go anywhere on the Web, read, watch and share what you want and access the content you like.

The Internet is no longer a luxury; it’s a necessity, and making sure that the Internet remains open to users and free of gatekeepers is essential to the overall value of the Internet. It is the future of communications, and we need to keep it open, accessible and affordable for everyone. More and more people are turning to the Internet for news and information, communication with friends and family, to search and apply for employment and for entertainment. It’s become a great platform for small business development and growth. If Internet service providers are allowed to control our online experience once we log on, they could decide to prioritize their sites, services and applications over those of competitors.

Can you give an example, real or hypothetical, of the consequences of not having net neutrality that might be relevant to our readers?

Phone and cable companies have violated net neutrality many times. Comcast blocked file sharing and then lied about it. Internet service providers have blocked innovative applications – like Internet-based phone calls — that they view as unwanted competition. Without net neutrality, the Internet will look more like cable TV where you choose from a menu of premium tiers rather than having unfettered access to the Internet. Internet providers will decide which channels, content and applications are available; consumers will have to choose from their menu.
Access to content along with the ability to create content is an invaluable piece of the Internet. Protecting net neutrality is essential to protecting the Internet we have come to rely on for so much of our communications.

Why would net neutrality be important for an alternative publication like The Fine Print and alternative, independent media in general?

Net neutrality prevents Internet service providers from prioritizing their web sites, media and content over alternative and independent media. Without it, Internet service providers could charge more to content providers to speed up their sites, which could prevent alternative media and citizen journalists from competing on a level playing field. This would put even more media power in the hands of a few corporate media outlets. Having a level playing field, where content and applications are treated equal means I can access The Fine Print’s web site with the same ease that I can access mainstream media news sites. In a world without net neutrality, we could imagine a scenario where Comcast would rather I access news sites that they own and slow down or block access to competing publications.

Why is net neutrality important to the preservation of democracy and democratic communication?

At its core, the fight for net neutrality is about democracy. It’s about giving people access to the information and tools they need to engage in our democracy. The Internet is an avenue to information about political candidates, current legislators, policy debates and decisions, as well as the tools to engage in our democracy. We can use the Internet to access information and tools to hold our leaders accountable and shape the decision that affect our lives.

How close, or far, are we from net neutrality in the states?

The FCC has proposed creating new rules to fulfill President Obama’s promise to protect net neutrality and are currently gathering data and input from the public to help with those rules. We hope the FCC will create a strong net neutrality rule within the year.

Many opponents to net neutrality argue that the principle will inhibit innovation online and also impose unnecessary regulations on an already unlevel playing field. What is your response to this?

Net neutrality has always been part of the Internet since its inception. The Internet was built on the very same open architecture that net neutrality rules would codify. Net neutrality – the open Internet – fosters innovation by providing a low bar of entry and a level playing field for entrepreneurs and innovators. If Internet service providers are allowed to act as gatekeepers it will stifle innovation, economic growth, and communication. Net neutrality is the reason that start ups like Facebook and Google have been able to succeed online and it’s the reason that some new company – yet to be named- has the potential to succeed online and become the next Facebook.
Essentially ISP‘s oppose net neutrality because they see a way to extract even more profits from consumers by seizing control of the Internet in the same way that these companies have done with radio, television, and cable before it. The phone and cable companies are pulling out all the stops against Net Neutrality. These companies (including AT&T, Verizon and Comcast) have spent more than $50 million to deploy nearly 500 lobbyists in Washington.

The public has spoken, and nearly 2 million people have demanded strong net neutrality protections once and for all. To join our efforts to save the Internet, visit www.savetheInternet.com to learn more.

Colin Whitworth started Moon Magazine, a free Gainesville alternative monthly that focused on local politics and entertainment, with four other journalists in 1990. He graduated from UF in the late ’80s and worked at The Alligator during his college years, which he described as a “very idealistic place when it came to journalism.” After graduation, Whitworth went to work at the daily paper in Leesburg. But he wasn’t happy with his job at the profit-driven news organization, so he and some friends decided to start Moon Magazine, where Whitworth could focus on the in-depth reporting that got him into journalism in the first place.

Jessica Newman: What inspired you and your cohorts to start Moon Magazine back in 1990?

Colin Whitworth: Each of us probably had our own reason for wanting to do it. A couple of us, when we were in college, talked about starting a magazine. We actually tried to devise an idea, and we just realized, we’re in college. There’s no way we can do this. After college, I was working in mainstream journalism at a newspaper. Two of the other people were out in Seattle, Matt and Mark, working in independent journalism and as canvassers for political campaigns and issues. I was living in Leesburg. I wanted to get out of town and do something different. I went back to the idea of having my own magazine. But it was kind of like, yeah right. I’ll do journalism for 25 or 30 years, and maybe someone will make me editor of their magazine one day. And I’m talking to Matt and Mark on the phone, and they’re like, well out here they have these small magazines everywhere–in Seattle, Washington and Oregon. So they sent me the stuff in the mail, and we just started talking about it. We had a meeting down at my house in Leesburg and said, what are we going to do? Everyone had done all this research because they had all these people like yourself and myself out in Seattle. They went to them and said, how do you start a paper? Personally, my desire mostly was I liked magazine journalism. They brought the whole political kind of advocacy, left-leaning journalism thing.

JN: As you got more involved, when did you fall into the line of thinking that Moon would be the ‘anti-Gainesville Sun’? And when did you decide to forgo the mainstream model of objectivity for a philosophy of ‘fair but pointed’?

CW: When I worked at The Alligator, it was a very idealistic place when it came to journalism. People really looked at themselves as the eyes and ears of the people in a way that we all took our job very seriously and our goal was to do really good articles that really showed what was going on. Then you go out into the real world and you have all these old crusty people who are working for a paper that’s owned by a giant corporation. At the Leesburg paper, our publisher was heavily involved in influencing the news coverage, specifically the business part of the paper. I had also come to the realization that everybody has an opinion, no matter what, about anything. When you write an article, you can consciously try and edit out your viewpoint, but it affects every decision you make in preparing the story–what questions you ask, the people that you try to find to interview, the types of questions you ask to them and how you place that stuff into the story. I don’t think that you have to be objective in order to be fair. We stated from the outset in Moon that we were a left-leaning organization. Honestly, I became more political after I got fired from my temporary job at the City of Gainesville. [The city] redid the Downtown Plaza, and I wrote this thing about how I didn’t like the idea of them having to cut down all these trees. It was very beautiful. Apparently the city attorney, my boss’s boss’s boss, was friends with the people behind the renovations and saw that and through a number of steps got me fired. I wrote in another article about what went down and why they fired me. Then The Gainesville Sun did an article about it. They interviewed all the people involved. It made me look great; it made them look stupid.

JN: The stuff that you guys were writing about, this wasn’t stuff that Gainesville residents could get anywhere else, right?

Colin Whitworth and his children.

CW: Not as well. The Sun used to be a lot better, back in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. The Gainesville Sun got a new publisher, this guy John Fitzwater, back in the late ’80s, that radically transformed that paper. He came in and had the complete mentality of, “This is here to make money.” He squashed a lot of stuff. He really became our nemesis at the paper. The Gainesville Sun left a humongous void that people in this community were hungry for. That’s why we were successful; The Gainesville Sun made it easy on us.

JN: What about where we are today? How important are alternative media outlets like Moon in a world dominated by corporate, profit-driven media?

CW: I think it’s definitely important. I think media now has a business-down model versus an editorial-down model. What I mean by that, it used to be that the business side of a media organization existed to make sure that the newspaper could get published. It was there to serve the news interests of the paper. Now it’s flipped. Now the content is what it’s called, and that’s there to serve the larger goal of making the company profitable. I think in the long run there’s going to be a prolonged period of suffering and change in the news media but that eventually we’re all going to be getting everything through the Internet or on our phones or on some other device. I think what journalism is going to change into is hard to know. There’s a need to have reliable news-gathering organizations everywhere. We’re a bright species. I think that we’ll probably figure something out.

Singing newspaper woes

Jessica Newman: One of the things you’re most famous for is breaking wide open the Iran-Contra scandal while working for Associated Press and Newsweek magazine. Do you think you could see this type of investigative journalism coming out of these mainstream news organizations today? Why or why not?

Robert Parry: There are still many fine journalists at mainstream news outlets, and I believe they genuinely want to do the job right. However, many pressures now exist that have distorted the news product. The Right’s heavy investment in media and in anti-journalism attack groups has had a powerful impact, though most mainstream journalists try to deny this. The Right’s clout was amplified by the American Left’s retreat from media over the past three decades.
Actually, in the early-to-mid 1970s, the Left had a media advantage over the Right, but then closed down or sold off key media assets, from shuttering Ramparts to selling the New Republic to neocon Marty Peretz. Much of what the Left kept was located in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away and three hours behind the East Coast news centers. Simultaneously, the Right began committing millions and then billions of dollars to a media infrastructure focused on Washington. Over time, that asymmetry had a telling effect. To keep careers, mainstream journalists saw little choice but to tilt right. Those who didn’t — regardless of how good their journalism was — found themselves constantly under attack and marginalized.
So that makes doing the kind of difficult journalism that many reporters were doing the 1970s and that we tried to continue in the 1980s, around the Iran-Contra scandal, that much harder and therefore less likely to undertake. The consequences to the United States, I would argue, have been grave. The watchdog role of the American news media was transformed into a lapdog role except, of course, on trivial matters like a politician’s sex life. There were few mainstream journalists willing to challenge the likes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney when they were marching the country off to war after 9/11.

JN: How has your career as an investigative journalist changed over the last 20 years? Do you find it harder to support your line of work? Is there less of an outlet/audience for your type of reporting?

RP: No question it is much harder. In the 1980s, I was working at the AP and then Newsweek. My income was never that high; but the pay was regular, and there were benefits like health insurance. After I lost out on the Iran-Contra battles inside Newsweek and left in 1990 (I was insisting that a cover-up was underway, but the top editors wanted the issue to simply go away), I wrote a couple of books and did some contract work for Frontline. But — in the era of O.J. Simpson and Monica Lewinsky — the space for serious journalism was rapidly closing.
That’s why I founded ConsortiumNews.com in 1995, looking for a way to apply the emerging Internet technology with old-fashioned serious journalism. But I was never able to persuade large foundations or rich individuals to provide the support necessary. When we ran out of money in early 2000, I took an editing job at Bloomberg News so I could pay off the bills. I kept the web site going on a part-time basis, but sadly we didn’t have the impact that we could have had in Campaign 2000 or after the 9/11 attacks. I’ve kept ConsortiumNews.com afloat almost entirely with small donations from readers.

JN: This is broad, and I apologize ahead of time: What do you see as the biggest problem with the mainstream media today? What steps should our country and we, as journalists, be taking to rectify this?

RP: The biggest problem is that Americans, especially those on the Left, don’t understand the necessity of supporting journalism. Perhaps because of the quality journalism of the 1970s — Watergate, Pentagon Papers, etc. — thoughtful Americans, including many liberals, concluded that mainstream journalists would do the heavy lifting on providing accurate information. That freed them up to focus their attentions elsewhere.
When the Right began its massive investment in media, there was disbelief among liberals on the need to counter the propaganda machine. By the time, liberals recognized the danger from Rush Limbaugh, the Washington Times, Wall Street Journal, Fox News, etc., it was regarded as too hard to build the kind of truthful independent media that was necessary to counter the propaganda and the lies.
So the American Left mostly stayed in the stands, shouting down at the mainstream press (and politicians) to do better. The Left remained spectators to the nasty contact sport that was playing out on the field of information.
The only way that dynamic can be changed is for the American Left (especially wealthy liberals) to get off the sidelines and into the game. Well-meaning people of means must invest in building a strong independent media that’s determined to do the work right. In that, I think the Internet does provide an important opening. Money, however, is the key.

JN: ConsortiumNews.com is a non-profit, reader-supported news organization. Is this a realistic and sustainable model for future media outlets in the long run? Why or why not?

RP: I’m not sure there is a business model for responsible journalism that works well. The old approach of family newspapers or TV networks that saw news as a civic duty is dying. Under economic strain, newspapers are closing. Others are publicly traded and thus under pressure from Wall Street for high profits. Networks see news as a revenue stream. Regarding the Internet, advertising remains a problem. You also can’t charge for access because very few people would sign up. So, soliciting contributions — while annoying — may be the only feasible approach, at least at this time. Whether ConsortiumNews.com can survive is an open question.

But what you won’t see in even the token liberal media like the New York Times or National Public Radio is an analysis of what “democracy” actually meant to the countries on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. The fall of communism in these nations translated to a prime opportunity for American corporations to come in and privatize everything they could, from the labor market to the previously public utilities system to natural resources. For the citizens of the countries of the former Eastern bloc, democratization brought with it what Michael J. Jordan of the Christian Science Monitor calls a series of “negative consequences”, in his article about the nostalgia for communism in these countries.

“Each positive development of “democracy” ushered in negative consequences: Free-market competition brought soaring prices and joblessness; free elections brought extremist parties; free press brought incitement; free movement brought cross-border crime and westward ‘brain drain.’”

In a perfect world, with a mass media that isn’t under corporate control and searches for the true story, maybe we would have seen a different type of story surrounding the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, one with a little less celebration and a lot more reality.

Don’t laugh… It’s my first time. I’m excited, but I’m also a little bit nervous. Will I look like a complete fool? Will my readers come back for a second go at it, or will they disappear and never call?

In the future, this blog will feature commentary from us, the editors of The Fine Print, on the future of journalism and the role of journalists in preserving democracy. We’ll also be providing criticism of mainstream media coverage and of ourselves. We’ll also use this as a platform to give The Fine Print’s perspective on the most important issues facing not only students and Gainesvillians today, but also the country as a whole.

So be on the look-out for new posts, and don’t laugh. It’s my first time.

Crisis is also an opportunity for creativity and for the emergence of new models.    -KVH

Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor-in-chief and publisher of The Nation, a weekly progressive magazine that’s been around since 1865. The Nation is based on a for-profit model, but is still largely reader-supported and relies little on advertising sales. Like most print publications, The Nation is facing challenges in its efforts to transform its model in order to keep up with a transitioning journalism industry. I talked with vanden Heuvel about her thoughts on the future of the media and what The Nation is doing to preserve quality journalism for the long run.

Jessica Newman: A lot of what we hear today about the journalism industry centers around the death of print media and journalism as a sinking ship. What’s your perspective on this, being a print publication and operating on a semi-traditional model?

Katrina vanden Heuval: Well I have to say that The Nation has never operated on the traditional model. We’re for-profit, and as someone said the other day, we’ve been a profit-seeking but not necessarily profit-attaining organization for 144 years. The model that we have had is one that I think now is ascendant in many ways, which is going to emerge because of the crisis of the corporate, more traditional model. That is reader-supported journalism. We have partners in the magazine; we have a circle of 100 supporters; and we have 30,000 Nation associates who give a small amount each month and each year above and beyond their subscription price to help us do the journalism we’ve been doing – investigative journalism, deep reporting, analysis that you don’t see in the mainstream.

JN: But you don’t see much investigative reporting these days in the newspapers that are dying every day. Does this mean journalism as we know it is dead?

KVH: The corporate model, if I can call it that, has failed. I think we’re seeing the failure of that around us as newspapers are folding. But as I said earlier, crisis is also an opportunity for creativity and for the emergence of new models. The Nation’s model is going to be one of the models. There are non-profit models. Those are possibly going to be part of our future. But I do think another model we need to look at is one that people sometimes shy away from but which is worth thinking about, which is how we use our tax and postal and regulatory policies to create a framework where we can support and sustain journalism. That would be low-profit journalism, not-for-profit journalism, public journalism, public interest journalism that is dying as the for-profit traditional model collapses. There are many people, many organizations, lots of conferences going on as people think through how we can not only sustain the newspapers – because those are really the ones that are like canaries in the coal mine that are going first – but how do you sustain quality, public interest journalism, which is vital for a democracy?

JN: What about the idea of government support for the media? How do you feel about using our tax dollars to keep journalism alive?

KVH: What’s important to remember is that the media system we’ve lived with for many decades didn’t arise just out of the ground. It was supported by regulatory policies and government subsidies. But these were subsidies that helped build those big media conglomerates. What we need to do now is think creatively about how do we use tax money to sustain quality journalism.  What we think of as government sounds scary. But I’m not talking about censorship; I’m not talking about government intervention in any way in journalism. But the frame work that would support high quality journalism – by the way, as other countries do in Norway and in France where there is support for people who take subscriptions or support for publications that have a very low ad ratio so that there’s more public interest journalism. So I think that’s the challenge ahead.

JN: Can quality journalism translate to the Internet?

KVH: I would recommend to you an article in the New York Review of Books this issue by someone who’s written for The Nation over the years as well, Michael Massing. He has some good examples of quality Internet journalism. So I do think if we can maintain journalism and that kind of journalism, which is really what this country should be about, which is tough-minded, questioning, rigorous journalism that holds power accountable – watchdog journalism. I’m not here to say that the journalism we’ve had over the last few decades in the newspapers that are now collapsing has been exemplary because think about the failure of the media, as I spoke about, in the lead-up to the War in Iraq or the failure to alert citizens to the financial collapse, to even question the bubble economy that we were living in. No, I’m talking about the possibility of a journalism that may die. But seriously, think of the Michael Jackson coverage. All due respect to him, but the coverage was out of control. So in terms of where our TV and our cable are going, where radio is going, it becomes harder to find high quality journalism. So that is important to sustain. There’s a reason we have these vast corporate media conglomerates. I think that anything we can do to sustain, in the midst of this crisis, a kind of pro-democracy, smaller scale media, we need to do. It’s critical.

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Amy Goodman is the co-founder and host of Democracy Now! where she is dedicated to giving a voice to the silenced. Democracy Now! is one of the most successful independent media outlets in the world broadcasting for free online, on the radio and on television. As an investigative journalist, Goodman has exposed human rights violations, asked tough questions of high-ranking officials and was even arrested at the 2008 Republican National Convention while covering an anti-war protest. She and her brother have co-written three inspiring books, and she was the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize.

Amy Goodman: I can’t believe I’m doing this before coffee.

Jessica Newman: I know. Me either. Sorry about that.

AG: No, no. It’s fine.

JN: Okay. Well, the first thing I wanted to ask you about is how you got into journalism since you graduated from Harvard with a degree in anthropology.

AG: Well, I was doing journalism even before college. When I was in high school, I was involved in my high school paper and in junior high school. I just always saw it as a way to pursue issues of social justice, to hold those in power accountable, to really work hard to get at the truth, and to bring out the voices of people from many different communities, in one forum at one table – talk it out.

JN: Democracy Now! is one of the most successful independent media outlets in the world, if not the most successful. In many ways, you guys are far ahead the rest of the industry, which is struggling to find a successful, and profitable, way to embrace multimedia. Democracy Now! is online, on the radio, on TV, and even in print with hundreds of thousands of dedicated fans. Do you think this is possible in a for-profit system, like the mainstream media?

AG: It depends on what you mean by a “for-profit system.” For the profit of society, yes. I can only speak from my own experience with what we do, just deeply believing that we need to work on every kind of platform to get independent information out, which is why we’re on community radio and NPR, Pacifica radio and PBS, and public access TV and then on the Internet – video and audio podcasting, all the transcripts that are streaming there. Just every single platform. We’ve believed that from the very beginning, in working online and open source as well to contribute to that information pool so that everyone can get information out there. Part of the work is getting information out and the other part is shoring up these independent media networks. When we’re on a station, it’s bringing attention to that station, bringing resources to that station. Public access is under threat in the United States. You know, the telecoms and the cable companies don’t want to have these free channels. But they’re the ones – the cable companies – that get the monopoly in a town to have their cable network. They’ve got to give something back to the community. What better way to serve a community than to provide a space where people can make their own media, because the media are the most powerful institutions on earth.

JN: More recently with the Republican National Convention, you and a number of your colleagues were arrested while covering an anti-war protest. What does your experience say about the media’s role in this country?

AG: This is very important that we not have a situation where the media is cracked down on. When journalists are out on the street, we have to be able to put things on the record without getting a record. We were not alone in being arrested. There were more than 40 journalists who were arrested that week. We were covering the protests. And that’s very, very important, to be able to cover those voices on the street. It’s not just the one orchestrated voice that was coming out of the Excel Center, the Republican Convention, or for that matter, in Denver at the Democratic Convention. The story is all over – in the corporate suites, on the streets, on the convention floor. If journalists feel that if they go outside they’ll be arrested, unfortunately, for many journalists that will keep them inside. And that’s the orchestrated message. Democracy is a messy thing, and people are all over saying and working on what they believe in. We’ve got to capture all of that.

JN: I actually know a couple members of Iraq Veterans Against the War who were out there protesting. On the topic of protests and activism, you’ve been described by some as being too much of an advocate and not enough of an objective journalist. In your opinion, what line as journalists should we draw between advocacy and objectivity, or is there a line?

AG: You really can’t become more of an advocate than the corporate press. They provide the model. Just look at the lead-up to the invasion. All of the networks, over and over again, beating the drums for war. I know what every one of those journalists think because they talked about it all the time. The group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting did a study of the four major nightly newscasts on the two weeks around Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State giving his push for war at the UN before the invasion – NBC, ABC, CBS and the PBS News Hour. There were 393 interviews done about the war. Three were done with anti-war leaders. Three of almost 400. This is a time when the population was almost fully divided. Three of almost 400. That’s no longer even a mainstream media. That’s an extreme media beating the drums for war. When you bring in a different point of view – different point of view, I should say, because it’s not always two-sided. The issues are not just Democratic and Republican. There is a vast majority of people outside of that spectrum. That’s very narrow. As we saw in the lead-up to the invasion, the spectrum was almost nil. You had a few outspoken critics of the war, like Robert Byrd of West Virginia. But the main, leading Democrats – John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards – they joined with the Republicans in pushing for war, and the media reflected that. But the media should go beyond that because that’s where most people are and that’s our job. We advocate for bringing in more voices.

JN: Campus Progress really tries to encourage young people not only to become activists, but also to become active journalists. Hundreds of people around the country are in the same position that I am in, where we’re trying to create something from nothing, to make our own contribution to the forum of information. That’s really hard to do, especially right now with the economic crisis and the state of the media and fighting apathy on campuses. So what kind of advice do you have for aspiring independent journalists and activists?

AG: To do it, to not be afraid, to bring a lot of people into it and to work in different communities. Cover the stories of the different communities that make up your larger community. Then people will want to read about what’s happening with them and with other people. I see the media as a bridge between communities. Of course, work online and – do you have a community radio station?

JN: We do actually, WGOT.

AG: Do they run Democracy Now!?

JN: They do. It’s actually a low power FM station in Gainesville, 94.7.

AG: 94.7, great.

JN: But back to the questions. Barack Obama has now taken office and the media has turned him into a super celebrity. This is obviously a big shift from eight years of the Bush administration. How will the role of the media change, or should it change?

AG: The media has to be critical. The media has to ask serious questions. The media has to hold those in power accountable, whoever they are. There are massive issues to deal with, from global warring to global warming to the global economic melt down. The media has to bring many voices in. It’s not about one person. People are working on these issues in their communities in this country and around the world. We are now fully globalized around the world. Hearing what people are doing on different issues, not reinventing the wheel, but outside of the small power elite in Washington is very important. That’s the role of the media, is to bring out those voices, bringing out the voices of people who think outside the box because we’re talking about crises that challenge the fate of the earth. It’s got to go much bigger than the very narrow partisans that we’re used to hearing, that small circle of pundits who know so little about so much explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong.

JN: You are known for asking tough questions. Bill Clinton once even described your questions as hostile and dis
respectful. Does his reaction reveal a problem with how the media is perceived in this country? What is your take on that?

AG: I thought it was just interesting that he was surprised in talking to a journalist that I would ask tough questions. We didn’t make an agreement with him before. He was calling into radio stations on the morning of the 2000 election trying to get out the vote for Hillary, for Al Gore. We had a few minutes notice. They said the president was calling in, and that was it. He wanted to talk about getting out the vote. Well that was interesting to know what he wanted to talk about. That doesn’t determine what I ask him about. But that is why he was calling. So I asked him about that. I said some people are asking why vote. They believe corporations have captured both parties, and then give him a chance to speak. I mean that’s important, that he has a chance to express his point of view. And then I asked him about Leonard Peltier because it was the first time he was being asked publicly about whether he would be granting him executive clemency. He answered that question. In the end he did give clemency to Mark Rich. I guess Peltier wasn’t rich enough. Then I asked him about the bombing of Puerto Rico. He had called in during a Latino music show, so I was doing it with a guy who hosted the music show, Gonzalo Aburto. We were just asking about many different issues. I asked him about racial profiling. Al Gore had said that the first executive order he issued would be to ban racial profiling. So I said you guys have been in office for eight years. Why haven’t you done it until now? I asked him about the sanctions against Iraq and the number of people who died. And that was it. It was about a half-hour interview. The next day the White House called and said that I would be banned from the White House. I said, “Why? He called me, I didn’t call him.” They said, “We said he would talk about getting out the vote.” I said “That’s true. But I didn’t agree that those were the only questions I would ask.” “We told you he only had a few minutes.” I said, “True.” I said, “How many stations did he call?” They said 40. I said, nobody took more than a few minutes? They said no. I said, well that’s just a sad comment on the media. He is the most powerful person on earth; he can hang up if he wants to.

A portion of this interview originally aired on The Lighter Notes, the radio station sponsored by The Fine Print on 94.7 WGOT LP-FM.