“Steal this Story, Please!” is the reporting manifesto of the fiercely independent journalist and trailblazer Amy Goodman.
Many know her best as the host and co-founder of the progressive global news show “Democracy Now!” which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
Over that time, Goodman has held the powerful accountable and platformed marginalized people worldwide, telling the stories deliberately silenced by mainstream and corporate media. Her philosophy implores us to give voice to the silenced — to “steal” their stories and make their oppression known.
“Steal This Story, Please!” is a new documentary directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and named after Goodman’s journalistic philosophy. The film chronicles her career and the meteoric rise of “Democracy Now!”
It’s both a celebration of resistance and a call to action to preserve independent, nonprofit journalism as our greatest asset in the effort to save American democracy amid rising fascism and corporate consolidation.
Goodman and Lessin spoke with Mission Local over Zoom about the future of independent journalism within San Francisco’s media ecosystem, the recent No Kings rallies and, most important, how ordinary citizens can join the fight for social justice and push for concrete policy change.
“Steal This Story Please!” opens on April 17 at the Roxie Theater, where Goodman and Lessin will appear for in-person Q&As at the April 18 and 19 screenings. It runs at the Roxie until April 23. You can purchase tickets here.
Mission Local: Even with San Francisco’s dense media ecosystem, many marginalized communities, such as working-class people, the homeless and immigrants, still feel misrepresented or overlooked by mainstream and prestige publications.
Speaking from the success and longevity of a fully viewer-supported platform like “Democracy Now!,” what would be your advice to smaller, independent nonprofit newsrooms like Mission Local that are also trying to fill that gap left by legacy media?
What would you say to outlets that are also trying to serve the public and platform marginalized people — or, as you guys would say, steal their stories?
Amy Goodman: I would say to go to where the silence is. Go to where most people are because, on television and so often in the legacy media, you get these know-nothing pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. We’ve got to go closest to the story, to the people who are experts in their own lives, or particular experts on different subjects.
You know, I really do think that those who care about war and peace, those who care about climate change, the fate of the planet, those who care about equality, racial and economic injustice, who care about LGBTQ issues, are not a fringe minority.
They’re not even a silent majority, but the silenced majority — silenced by the corporate media, which is why we have to take the media back, why it’s so important for communities to have community media.
That’s what I came out of at “Democracy Now!” I came out of Pacifica Radio, which was founded over 75 years ago in Berkeley, California, by a man named Lou Hill with a group of people. He was a war resistor.
He came out of the detention camps, and he said there’s got to be a media outlet that’s run by journalists and artists, not by corporations that profit from war. We need an independent media.
Tia Lessin: I think this is a really tough time for local and community media. I mean, just this past January, after 58 years of providing funding for locally owned radio and TV stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting went out of business.
And why? Because the Trump administration and Congress eliminated public funding, federal funding, for public media. And who does that hit the hardest? It hits communities like yours. It hits rural communities. It hits communities that have public media and indigenous communities.
It’s a really important time to have these voices heard. I guess I’d say a variation of what Amy just said, which is: If you point the camera in the other direction — if you go somewhere and see all the cameras focused on one scene — I always like to look at what they’re not framing.
Nermeen Shaikh, one of Amy’s co-hosts, put it so beautifully in our film “Steal This Story, Please!” She said that mainstream media usually keeps voices at the margins, while “Democracy Now!” centers those voices. So the best advice is to center the voices that other people ignore, just as Amy said.
ML: As we’ve discussed already, the film is a call to action for journalists to, you know, steal those marginalized stories that are left out by legacy media.
But what does that call to action look like for ordinary people who are not journalists? What should they do?
TL: Well, I would just say there are so many regular, ordinary people out there with cell phones that are filming important stories. I mean, we wouldn’t know about the murders of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, George Floyd, if it weren’t for people with their cell phone cameras. So that’s one thing I would say, is, you know, everybody has a camera they can pick up, right?
AG: Following what you just said, Tia, we need citizen journalists everywhere. And when I say citizen, I mean citizen of the world. It makes you a citizen of the world, an active participant.
We have to really pay close attention. It’s a very dangerous time in the United States right now, as the President would like this country to descend into autocracy, and we see a pushback that isn’t being documented fully. You know, when I say go to where the silence is, it’s not quiet there. It’s loud. It’s raucous. People are organizing.
And that’s where we all need to be, in that silence that is so loud, that’s really documenting authentic communities, and what they’re doing. Tia just mentioned the Corporation for Public Broadcasting being eviscerated. So we no longer talk about CPB, we’re now talking about CBP, Customs and Border Protection, these immigration agents who are terrorizing communities.
And I think here, this is where President Trump’s base is splintering, whether we’re talking about forever wars that he promised not to get involved with, or this terrorizing of communities, we have to show what’s happening on the ground.
ML: And speaking of the silenced majority being loud, I want to talk about the recent No Kings rallies.
Do you guys see this kind of mass public demonstration as a meaningful form of praxis, or would you argue that concrete political change and policy wins require something deeper and more sustained?
TL: I don’t think it’s a choice between protesting or doing other things. I think we all need to do everything we possibly can and lend our resources, our know-how, our time, to oppose this authoritarian regime.
This is the moment where none of us can be silent, and that’s why we ended our film “Steal This Story, Please!” on Amy’s simple but profound words: “We will not be silent.”
Because what autocracy depends on is our silence. And once we speak out and take action, we erode the regimes. So it’s one of the reasons why I think the Trump administration is trying so hard to silence dissent and also silence the press and silenced journalists.
When Trump came into office in 2017, he said that the press is the enemy of the people. And since then, I think that really incited so many assaults against journalists, whether they’re physical assaults or intimidation, doxxing, or people’s cameras being destroyed on January 6.
And now lawsuits are being waged against journalists and their organizations, and folks are getting arrested.
I mean, that’s not new. We see in the film that Amy was arrested a couple of times in the course of her 30-year career for committing the act of journalism. But I think we’re seeing this really on steroids now, this assault against the press freedoms that we hold so dear.
AG: And it’s predictable, because President Trump is a media creation. He knows the power of the press. He used that to gain fame and notoriety, and now he’s trying to shut it down when it tries to hold him accountable.
The idea that we have a Pentagon press corps that’s supposed to sign oaths that they will not reveal stories not approved by the Pentagon, the idea that you can have Associated Press this long history of very proud news organization that is prevented from doing full reporting at the White House because it refuses to adopt the President’s language when he calls the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
It’s the idea that President Trump particularly goes after women reporters of color and women overall, the women journalists, saying, “Be quiet, piggy,” or telling them they’re ugly or telling them they’re stupid. The press corps should respond all together, united, not be competitive with one another.
The press occupies a very special place in a democratic society. There’s a reason for the First Amendment; we talk about freedom of the press, but that’s about the people’s right to know, and that’s what is the underpinning of a democratic society.
ML: How can ordinary people push for things like housing, labor, immigration and climate policies when moneyed interests have so much more access and power?
TL: Well, as it pertains to the media, Amy has been sounding the alarm for the past 30 years about the dangers of the consolidation of the media by just a handful of corporations who now control so much of what we see, the news that’s gathered every day. And part of the impact of that is the almost total erosion of local news coverage.
There used to be reporters covering City Hall, covering local school board elections, covering community issues on the ground, and so much of that has been eliminated because these are profit-making businesses that these news organizations are in. In many cases, don’t make much money on that kind of local coverage.
So I think people are uninformed, and in some cases, purposefully, because information is power. And so, there’s a great coalition of news organizations called Rebuild Local News.
It’s a coalition of groups around the country that are fighting to restore funding for local coverage, which I think is empowering to people so they can make informed choices about voting on city budgets, participating in civic life.
AG: We also have Jane Fonda, who relaunched the Committee for the First Amendment, a coalition aimed at opposing government censorship and defending free speech.
It was inspired by her father, Henry Fonda’s, 1947 group. The revived committee includes more than 500 entertainment industry figures, including Billie Eilish, and is pushing back against what it sees as pressure on artistic dissent.
Jane Fonda is also an executive producer of this film, “Steal This Story, Please!” along with musician Tom Morello and actor Rosario Dawson, which was so amazingly directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal.
ML: But also for just regular people — for people who are not working in the media — what kinds of political pressures are most effective when money dominates?
Supporting independent journalism, as you guys said, is very important. But what about things like labor organizing and boycotts? And Tia, I know you have a background as a labor organizer, so I’m curious what you have to say about this.
TL: I mean, personally, I think any kind of collective action is incredibly powerful and very threatening to the powers that be. And so for sure, all of the above, everything that you just mentioned, you know, fighting for workplace rights, fighting for racial justice. We don’t do that alone. We do that together because there’s power in numbers.
It’s one of the reasons why I think the extreme right is working so hard to try to suppress the elections because they understand how much power we have in voting and in voting en masse.
AG: You mentioned elections, Tia, and that’s absolutely critical. You know, we as journalists expose interference with democracy, and that is one of the key issues of the day, as President Trump’s popularity plummets with the unprovoked war on Iran, going after Greenland, imposing tariffs around the world.
He’s fearful that the midterm elections will be a catastrophe for his party, so he’s trying to limit the number of people who vote, and we have to be extremely vigilant about it.
The press has to document these threats of ICE agents being at the polls. You never achieve democracy; you have to fight for it every single day, and I think we have to remember it every day.
TL: And just to build on that, we see time and time again in the film how Amy’s reporting and the coverage of her team at “Democracy Now!” has actually created change, that there is a power of journalism to create change.
We see that early on, in 1991, when she and her colleague Alan Aaron covered the genocide in East Timor and the massacre of nearly 300 protesting civilians by the Indonesian military.
And because of Alan and Amy’s presence there, reporting about this atrocity, the Western media was no longer able to ignore what was happening. Until then, they’d ignored it for 17 years.
So that led to a huge solidarity move in the United States and elsewhere, solidarity with the people of East Timor. It led to the rescinding of funding for the Indonesian military. And ultimately, it led to the independence of the people of East Timor.
We see that time and time again, whether it’s that or Amy’s coverage of the climate catastrophe and giving voices to protesters on the ground and people in their communities.
It’s not just the reporting of the stories and empowering people with information, but it’s that once people have that information, they want to act on it. Change happens when people take action, particularly when they take collective action.
ML: You guys talk a lot about the people closer to the bottom of society who benefit from independent journalism to take action and be well-informed about their choices, politically, civically. But what about the people closer to the top?
How can we get those people to see that the systems that harm the most vulnerable in society could very much turn around and harm them as well?
AG: You know, I’ve always believed that when you honestly show what’s happening on the ground, that people will identify across the political spectrum, across economic classes, that we can provide a forum for people to speak to each other.
I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day. We are all a part of this when it comes to this country of the United States, citizens and non-citizens, and when we bring out the voices of people who are not usually heard, that provides a level playing field.
People at the top can pay millions for spokespeople for press operations, but the media serves as a democratizing force to elevate all voices and bring everyone together to have a serious conversation.
You know, it doesn’t benefit anyone when someone lives on the street, doesn’t have a home. It doesn’t benefit anyone, rich or poor, when the water is polluted, when you can’t breathe the air in a healthy way. This is what we show in the media, by having everyone talk about the challenges that they face.
TL: And I would add that one of the things we’re trying to do with this film, and one of the things we’re most excited about, is the opportunity to bring it to audiences beyond the choir, to everybody who loves going to the movies. And we’ve got a great movie for people to see.
It’s an exhilarating experience to watch this film in an audience full of people, full of strangers, because they’re not strangers. You know, after the movie ends, people are engaged in conversation. There are audible sounds. I’m making big generalizations, but I’ve seen audiences want to get up and take action and think, “What can we do?”
And that’s not any particular audience. In fact, we’ve been in a lot of film festivals over the last six months before theatrical release. While there tends to be an exclusive group of people that go to these festivals, festival audiences have been extraordinarily excited about this film.
So I think that there’s a way to reach people of all backgrounds, all demographics, through this film, and I’m very excited about that.
ML: Okay, we have time for one last question. So as you guys said, I’m also very excited for the San Francisco premiere of “Steal This Story, Please!” at the Roxie. I’ve already seen the screener, but I will be going out to the theater and inviting my friends as well.
You guys already kind of touched on this, but what do you hope that a San Francisco and overall Bay Area audience can take away from this film? After these people watch the film and leave the theater, what do you want them to go out and do?
TL: It’s one of the reasons we’re partnering with community organizations in every locale that this film is screening. Right now, nearly 100 theaters have booked the film, so that’s really exciting.
But everywhere we go, we’re partnering with organizations, from the League of Women Voters to local news coalitions to Greenpeace, Amnesty International and the Committee to Protect Journalists, and each of them has actions they’ll be encouraging audiences to take.
We also have resources on our website, StealThisStory.org, if you want to learn more, read more or take action. We can connect you with other people’s websites. We want to encourage all our audiences to donate to public media and to tune in to public media and nonprofit media.
AG: I always say nonprofit media profits us all. And I also think it’s important to go to StealThisStory.org, which is a new website that lets people know where they can experience this, and then the sky is the limit with what people do with it from all walks of life. The beauty is up to them.