From Staff Reports

Liberal pundit Amy Goodman ripped the corporate news media and discussed her new book, co-written with Dennis Moynihan, “The Silenced Majority,” on Sept. 7 at A-B Tech’s Ferguson Auditorium in Asheville.

About 180 people showed up, filling every regular seat, sitting in the aisles and standing in the back, for the “Take Back the Media” event. MAIN, the local Mountain Area Information Network and its low-power radio station 103.5 FM, hosted the program as a fund-raiser.

Afterward, a book-signing was held in the lobby outside the auditorium.

Wally Bowen, MAIN’s founder, noted that “MAIN started oin 1994-95 with the idea” of building a local media infrastructure.

Bowen, who appeared shaky and soon sat down, but continued to speak, explained, “As a lot of you know, I’ve been diagnosed” with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

“Sorry for this interruption,” Bowen said.

“That’s OK!” a young woman shouted, cheerily, prompting the crowd to applaud Bowen.

He spoke with pride of the fiber-optic network MAIN has built and said the operation will live on after him.

Continuing, Bowen said that soon, “we’ll be coming back on the air with a new stronger signal” for the radio station.

Bowen then noted that the night’s featured speaker, Goodman, “has been a hero to so many of us for so long.”

“So are you, Wally!” a woman shouted, again promting applause for the ailing Bowen.

Preceding Goodman on the stage was her partner, Moynihan, who “thanked Wally as not only an inspiration, but as a mentor, too.”

Moynihan prompted laughter from the audience as slammed what he termed the mainstream “corporate media,” noting that it serves “so dismally.”

“Corporations do have a lot of power” and that problem is compounded, he said, by the dominance of corporate media that caters to its fellow corporations.

“It’s great to be in Asheville, as we (the two-hour daily news outlet Democracy Now) travel the country,” he said. “It’s places like this you see the small ‘d’ in democracy in action.”

He noted that King Features contacted Goodman and him in 2009 to write a weekly column. Their new book, “The Silenced Majority” is “really just a compilation of those columns” they have written together. He added with obvious pride that “we got in four columns on the Aurora (Colo.) killings” in time to be included in the book.

Their book tour will last two month “and we’re glad we’re kicking it off in Asheville,” immediately following their coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte.

Goodman began her talk by showing off her media pass to cover the DNC, noting that it has an AT&T logo on its lanyard. She said that shows corporate influence in the political process in the U.S. — even in the Democratic Party.

While Goodman said the Internet “could be the greatest democratizing force in the world, corporations want to privatize it and reap the profits.”

Pausing, she asserted, “We’ve got to fight against that ... and be extremely vigilant.”

On the other side of her DNC media credential, she showed the logo of Time-Warner.

On the bright side, Goodman said, “It was amazing to see the Democrats (unofficially) rename the stadium (in Charlotte) Panthers’ Stadium, instead of its real name, Bank of America Stadium. She noted that BofA paid “millions of dollars” for the naming rights to the stadium.

“This corporate collusion has left so many people in trouble,” Goodman said, noting with pride that the Democrats managed to strike back, at least at BofA.

She then discussed the Republican National Convention, which was held in Tampa, Fla, noting that about 500 protesters came out to protest the RNC’s agenda.

With warnings of a possible hurricane, many of the 50,000 GOP attendees delayed attending for the first day, when the activities were canceled. “So the 500 protesters showed up, but not the 50,000 Republicans,” Goodman said, as the crowd cheered.

“In the afternoon, in the pouring rain, they announced from ‘Romneyville’ that they would be marching because they had felt ‘the pain of Bain” Capital, Romney’s firm..

To be equal opportunity critics, she said protesters set up an ‘Obamaville’ at the DNC convention. She said Romneyville and Obamaville were modeled after “Hoovervilles,” which existed during the Great Depression.

“You know, so much is made of the parisan bickering in Washington, but the major problem is the bipartisan consensus in Washington.” Goodman’s comment was greeted with loud applause by the Asheville audience.

She eventually turned her criticism back on the news media, asserting, “We’re so used to the media — these small groups of pundits who know so much and get so much wrong.”

Goodman added, “It’s so important that we open up the media” to independent news sources. “War and peace ... Life and death ... These are the important discussions we need to have” as a society.

She asked, “How many of you lisen to DemocracyNow.org?”

Most hands were raised, as Goodman smiled and noted that her program is “on over 1,100 (radio) stations right now. We’re trying to put the ‘p” back in public.” The crowd again applauded.

Goodman said corporate interests are “trying to influence the editorial pages of the surviving newspapers of this country ... I really do think the newspapers would be able to survive — and even thrive — if they opened up their opinion pages” to more non-corporate viewpoints.

Regarding her co-written book, “The Silenced Majority,” Goodman said it refers to Americans “silenced by the corporate media, which is why we’ve got to take it back.”

She said that Democracy Now, launched 16 years ago, “is a very scrappy little news organization ... We needed the Internet from the beginning because (renting) satellite (time) is very expensive ....

“That’s the power of independent media — it brings down barriers ... Independent media is so important because it allows people to speak for themselves,” Goodman said.