Independent Media In a Time of War

In this important, powerful, and timely lecture, Amy Goodman -- independent journalist and host of the popular radio show Democracy Now! -- speaks about the corporate media's coverage of the 2003 Iraq War. She discusses the way that the U.S. media downplayed civilian causalities and glorified military combat, and she asks her audience to consider the costs of coverage that is both sanitized and sensationalized. At the core of her lecture is a deep commitment to the ethics of journalism -- she believes that the role of reporters is to ferret out the facts, to question those in power, and to "go to where the silence is, and say something." Goodman uses the concrete example of the Iraq war to ask her audience to grapple with a larger question -- what impact does the commercialization and consolidation of the media industry have on journalism and democracy?