Amy Goodman

Raised in New York, Amy Goodman graduated in 1984 from Radcliffe College, Harvard University, with a degree in anthropology. She studied for a year at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine.

In 1991, covering the East Timor independence movement, Goodman and fellow journalist Allan Nairn reported that they were badly beaten by Indonesian soldiers after witnessing a mass killing of Timorese demonstrators: what became known as the Santa Cruz Massacre.

Goodman had been news director of Pacifica Radio station WBAI in New York City for more than a decade when she co-founded Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report in 1996. Since then, Democracy Now! has been described as "probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time" by professor and media critic Robert McChesney.

In 1998, Goodman and journalist Jeremy Scahill (later a founding editor of The Intercept, along with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras) documented Chevron Corporation's role in a confrontation between the Nigerian Army and villagers who had seized oil rigs and other equipment belonging to oil corporations. Two villagers were shot and killed during the standoff. On May 28, 1998, the company provided helicopter transport to the Nigerian Navy and Mobile Police (MOPOL) to their Parabe oil platform, which had been occupied by villagers who accused the company of contaminating their land. Soon after landing, the Nigerian military shot and killed two of the protesters, Jola Ogungbeje and Aroleka Irowaninu, and wounded 11 others. Chevron spokesperson Sola Omole acknowledged that the company transported the troops. Omole said that Chevron management had requested troops from the government to protect their facility. The documentary made by Goodman and her colleagues, Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, won the George Polk Award in 1998.

Goodman has received dozens of awards for her work, including the Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting (1993, with Allan Nairn) and the George Polk Award (1998, with Jeremy Scahill). In 1999, she declined to accept the Overseas Press Club Award, in protest of the group's pledge not to ask questions of keynote speaker Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and because the OPC was honoring Indonesia for their improved treatment of journalists despite the fact that its forces had recently beaten and killed reporters in occupied East Timor.

When President Bill Clinton called WBAI on Election Day 2000 for a quick get-out-the-vote message, Goodman and WBAI's Gonzalo Aburto challenged him for 28 minutes with human rights questions about AIM activist Leonard Peltier, racial profiling, the Iraq sanctions, Ralph Nader, the death penalty, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the normalization of relations with Cuba, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Clinton defended his administration's policies and said that Goodman was "hostile and combative".

In 2001, the show was temporarily pulled off the air, as a result of a conflict between some Pacifica Radio board members and staff members and listeners over the direction of the station. During that time, it moved to a converted firehouse, from which it broadcast from January 2002 for nearly eight years, until November 13, 2009. Democracy Now! subsequently moved to a studio located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

On October 2, 2004, Goodman was presented the Islamic Community Award for Journalism by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. On November 18, 2004, she was presented the Thomas Merton Award. In 2006 she received the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship.

In 2006, Goodman narrated the film One Bright Shining Moment: The Forgotten Summer of George McGovern, a documentary that chronicles the life and times of George McGovern, focusing on his failed 1972 bid for the presidency.

In September 2007, Goodman suffered a bout of Bell's palsy. She practices yoga.

During the 2008 Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota, several of Goodman's colleagues from Democracy Now! were arrested and detained by police while reporting on an anti-war protest outside the RNC. While trying to ascertain the status of her colleagues, Goodman was also arrested and held, accused of obstructing a legal process and interfering with a police officer. Fellow Democracy Now! producers, including reporter Sharif Abdel Kouddous, were held on charges of probable cause for riot. The arrests of the producers were videotaped. Goodman and her colleagues were later released, City Attorney John Choi indicated that the charges would be dropped. Goodman (et al.) filed a federal civil lawsuit against the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments and the US Secret Service for the illegal arrests. The agencies reached a $100,000 settlement, and agreed to educate officers about the First Amendment rights of members of the press and public.

On November 25, 2009, Goodman was detained for approximately 90 minutes by Canadian agents at the Douglas, British Columbia border crossing into Canada while en route to a scheduled meeting at the Vancouver Public Library. Immigration officials asked questions pertaining to the intended topics of discussion at the meeting. They wanted to know whether she would be speaking about the 2010 Olympic Games to be held in Canada.

On March 31, 2009, Goodman was the recipient, along with Glenn Greenwald, of the first Izzy Award (named after journalist I. F. "Izzy" Stone) for "special achievement in independent media". The award is presented by Ithaca College's Park Center for Independent Media.

In May 2012, Goodman received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from DePauw University in recognition of her journalistic work. She also received the Gandhi Peace Award from Promoting Enduring Peace, for a "significant contribution to the promotion of an enduring international peace".

On May 16, 2014, Goodman received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Purchase College, SUNY in recognition of her progressive journalism.

In February 2015, Goodman (along with Laura Poitras) received the 2014 I.F. Stone Lifetime Achievement Award from the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard.

In September 2016, Goodman covered the Dakota Access Pipeline protests in Morton County, North Dakota; footage from her reporting "showed security personnel pepper-spraying and siccing attack dogs on demonstrators." After Democracy Now! aired the footage, Goodman was charged by state prosecutor Ladd Erickson with criminal trespass. After the court dismissed that charge, Erickson charged her with riot, gaining a warrant for her arrest. Erickson said that Goodman acted as "a protester" rather than a journalist, because "Everything she reported on was from the position of justifying the protest actions."

On October 17, 2016, the case was dismissed by District Judge John Grinsteiner, of the South Central Judicial District, who found no probable cause to support a riot charge. The charges against Goodman reportedly increased the public awareness of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Goodman had presented that day's Democracy Now! broadcast from in front of the Morton County Courthouse. Reporter Deia Schlosberg was arrested in similar circumstances while reporting on pipeline-related protests.

In 2016, Goodman and Democracy Now! (along with Laura Gottesdiener, John Hamilton and Denis Moynihan) received a Sigma Delta Chi Award for excellence in journalism from the Society of Professional Journalists in the category of Breaking News Coverage (Network/Syndication Service/Program Service) for their piece, “Standoff at Standing Rock: Epic Native resistance to Dakota Access Pipeline.”

On February 14, 2019, Amy Goodman was among the recipients of the Frederick Douglass 200 award and was honored at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. The Frederick Douglas 200 award is a project of the Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives and the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington D.C.