Amy Goodman has worn out her welcome

[Ultimajock]

I have been told it is impossible to be an activist and a good talk show host, do you believe that?

...I most certainly don't. Michelangelo Signorile on Sirius OutQ has one of the best lefty shows there is, and Mike Malloy was a social activist in Atlanta before signing on with WSB. Abbie Hoffman would have made one helluva talk radio host. It's the people who take social activism to be serious as a heart attack (read "farty old left" in Jello Biafra's terminology -- and Jello probably would make a good radio talker, too) or who pattern themselves too heavily on someone else's motif (read "Jim Hightower > Will Rogers") who can't cut it...

[jaymarvin]

They wouldn't if they didn't keep in mind the first thing you have to do is entertain  and the second is inform. The third would be formatics. Pure agenda driven radio is hard to make work.

[Lando Griffin]

Does it bother any of you that Amy Goodman's socialist agenda and propoganda is being subsidized by our tax dollars?   The entire Pacifica netowlr shuold be disbanded if it can't survive through non-public streams of income.

[Gnarlodious]

if you did that, all that would be left is corporate-driven propaganda stations.

The situation rminds me of Amateur Radio (Ham). In the early days of radio, it was commonly known that the electromagnetic spectrum belonged to the American Public. But commercialization was a force that douldn't be resisted.  So the FCC made up a service called "Amateur" so the public could have a little sliver of spectrum. This allowed the FCC to let the corporations have free reign with a clear conscience. Well, that is the role Public Radio now serves.

[KJCB]

Amy Goodman is not on many "public" radio stations. She's on Pacifica and Pacifica-type community stations run out of donated garages by whackos.

As to the free market's interference in radio, who would you like to have run it?  I agree CC and others may own too many stations in any given market, but whether they have ruined radio or not, if 11,000 or so radio stations were run by 11,000 or so individuals with only enough money to own one station, we'd have the personal views of a lot of nuts on many of those stations.  Just look at many cheap, poor-signaled AMs owned by individuals in this country.  How else do you think the Genesis network gets cleared?   

[j henry waugh]

Amy Goodman is not on many "public" radio stations. She's on Pacifica and Pacifica-type community stations run out of donated garages by whackos.

Wow, what a smear.

Disagree with Amy Goodman's politics you may, but she's on at least a couple hundred stations, and her Democracy Now podcast is the top 25 or 50 news downloads on iTunes. She may not be a household name, but her site gets more traffic than all the other talkers except the big giant syndicated hosts.

She's a bulldog and I wish more journalists had her ethics and conducted their job with the same zeal.

[KJCB]

I didn't say she wasn't on a couple hundred stations (many of them public access TV), or that her podcast wasn't successful (this is a radio board, not a podcast board), or that it was bad not to be a household name.  I have been to more than one of the community radio stations that run her station (in medium markets) and it is a joke.  I salute these people for putting something on the NCE band other than listener-supported CCM or shortwave preachers, but they don't have a huge impact.

[Lando Griffin]

Amy Goodman is not on many "public" radio stations. She's on Pacifica and Pacifica-type community stations run out of donated garages by whackos.

As to the free market's interference in radio, who would you like to have run it?  I agree CC and others may own too many stations in any given market, but whether they have ruined radio or not, if 11,000 or so radio stations were run by 11,000 or so individuals with only enough money to own one station, we'd have the personal views of a lot of nuts on many of those stations.  Just look at many cheap, poor-signaled AMs owned by individuals in this country.  How else do you think the Genesis network gets cleared?   

She is on many taxpayer-subsidized Pacifica radio stations;  also,  Goodman finds her way on college campus radio stations,  which are mostly taxpayer-subsidized (private colleges also take public financial aid money,  which is also applied to the Student  Activities "tax" that helps find these stations.  Also,  many of them receive direct government grants to run.

While it shuold be okay in America for Goodman's propaganda to exist,  why should the taxpayers have to pay for it's survival? 

[Dale Jackson]

While it shuold be okay in America for Goodman's propaganda to exist,  why should the taxpayers have to pay for it's survival? 

Bingo!

[jaymarvin]

I gew up with KPFK. I don't think they take our tax dollars. Grants yes. Our tax dollars no. By the way there are a ton of right leaning shows on PBS and they get tax dollars. It doesn't change the fact she is not mainstream and can be very boring. She has her niche and good for her.