Green Festivals - Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman began her career in community radio in 1985 at Pacifica Radio's New York Station, WBAI. She produced WBAI's Evening News for 10 years. In 1990 and 1991, Amy traveled to East Timor to report on the US-backed Indonesian occupation of East Timor. There, she and colleague Allan Nairn witnessed Indonesian soldiers gun down 270 East Timorese. Indonesian soldiers beat Amy and Allan, fracturing Allan's skull. Their documentary, "Massacre: The Story of East Timor" won numerous awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, the Armstrong Award, the Radio/Television News Directors Award, as well as awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Click here to see Amy speak at the San Francisco Green Festival.

In 1996, Amy helped launch Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!. Two years later, Amy and producer Jeremy Scahill went to Nigeria. Their radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship" exposed Chevron's role in the killing of two Nigerian villagers in the Niger Delta, who were protesting yet another oil spill in their community. That documentary won the George Polk Award, the Golden Reel for Best National Documentary from the National Federation of Community Broadcasters, and a Project Censored award. In 1999, Amy Goodman traveled to Peru to interview American political prisoner Lori Berenson. It was the first time a journalist had ever gotten into the prison to speak to her.