UW-Madison students and community members packed Wisconsin Union Theater Thursday night to listen to Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!,"" a national award winning news program.
Jennifer Loewenstein, associate director of UW-Madison's Middle East Studies program, introduced Goodman as ""one of a dying breed of genuinely independent investigative journalists.""
Goodman's speech, part of Wisconsin Union Directorate's Distinguished Lecture Series, drew 11 university co-sponsors, which Loewenstein said was rare.
""It is equally rare that Madison invites somebody as culturally indispensable or as politically captivating as Amy Goodman,"" Loewenstein said.
""It is our job as responsible citizens to demand the kind of coherent accounts of international and national events that Amy Goodman provides.""
Goodman discussed the important role the media plays in political activism. She cited UW-Madison Campus Anti-war Network's protest against Halliburton Corporation Sept. 20 and the 1967 campus demonstration against Dow Chemical Co. as specific examples.
""You have an amazing tradition [in Madison] - not to mention this hotbed of independent media,"" she said.
Goodman said the media is a powerful way to focus on a small incident to encourage U.S. citizens to speak out.
""It makes a tremendous difference when you do something - activism really does matter,"" Goodman said.
Goodman's show has traveled to ""Camp Casey"" the name given to the protest outside of President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas where Cindy Sheehan in 2005 waited to ask Bush for what ""noble cause"" her son Casey died, to Jena, La where an estimated 40,000 people protested against the injustice of the Jena Six earlier this month, as well as many international locations.
Goodman broke news to cheering audience members that Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six, was released from jail Thursday.
""When people heard this story, they were horrified,"" said Goodman, who traveled with ""Democracy Now!"" to report live from Jena, La. for the march.
She spoke against ""embedded reporting"" that corporate media has deployed in the Iraq war.
""If we saw for one week the babies dead on the ground, the women with their legs blown off by cluster bombs from Iraq to Lebanon, the soldiers dead and dying, the Iraqi people. Americans are a compassionate people. They would say, 'No. War is not the answer to conflict in the 21st Century.'""
