Democracy Now
My daily commute home from the office has maintained a predictable pattern for nearly a year -- brake, gas, and a radio dial that constantly flips between NPR's All Things Considered and the myriad of conservative commentators on AM radio. ATC (and public radio in general) has always been a personal favorite, but AM radio is a more recent interest, for like the Fox News Channel, sometimes the straight-and-narrow editorial line isn't as tasty as a fat slice of right-wing political mud slinging.
Between NPR, Limbaugh, Hannity, and virtually all of AM radio, radio listeners are offered a simple political choice -- middle of the road, or right-wing conservative. Or so I thought, until a few weeks ago when I discovered Democracy Now!, hosted by Amy Goodman, on WRFG, a local community radio station.
WRFG is an anomaly in America radio, for it is a public, non-profit, "community" radio station not supported by a college, university, or church and airs nothing from NPR or PRI. Most people automatically assume "Public Radio" means NPR, which in most areas of the country is true (hell, most towns are happy just to have one non-Clear Channel station). But Atlanta is lucky enough to have a radio dial jammed full of college radio stations (WRAS from Georgia State, last time I checked, is the most powerful college station in the country), two NPR affiliates, and...WRFG, which does just about whatever it wants and answers to nobody but the general public.
WRFG's placement of Democracy Now! at "drive-time" is a brilliant programming move, for it captures the ears of radio listeners scanning the left-end of the dial. Now! sounds like a NPR/PRI broadcast, and could likely be confused with All Things Considered. But listen for a few minutes, and it becomes clear you've stumbled into a program that makes NPR seem like the media arm of the Republicans.
I've been listening almost exclusively to Democracy Now! since that first day I heard it, and the program has been relentless in their editorial slamming of the President and the war in Iraq. Nowhere have I heard liberals and media-darling Democrats like Michael Moore, Al Franken, and Noam Chomsky get as fired up -- that's right, liberals actually getting pissed -- as they do on Now!.
For Goodman and her cherry-picked guests, there is never a conservative, or even moderate side to a story. They're all about Halliburton collusion, the civil rights of political-prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, the American-bombed civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq, and pro-Palestinian / anti-Israeli stories. And when they've run out of dirt there, they air conspiracy stories from older US-involved wars, including Korea and Vietnam.
After listening to the show for a number of weeks, I can honestly say it has changed what I hear from all the other networks; television included. Fox News sounds even more overbearingly conservative. NPR sounds moderate, if not right-leaning at times. CNN, the poster-child for conservatives and their "liberal media" viewpoint, sounds passive and disinterested. None however -- including Fox, the most politically biased of the bunch -- can hold a candle to the bravado and dogged editorial bias of Democracy Now!. And that's what makes the show so exciting.
My enthusiasm for the show has nothing to do with my own political viewpoints. As a matter of fact, I probably agree with a third (or maybe even less) of what they "report." And for all their chest-thumping about being a non-corporate, unfiltered, "unembedded" media outlet, the program is more biased and politically motivated than Fox. But the fact that Democracy Now! is heard on 160 stations across the country tells you something -- it taps into a seemingly small, yet collaboratively large group of Americans that are disgusted with our current foreign policy and President. And in the oncoming election year, hearing every side of an issue is needed more than ever.
