I have been reflecting a lot these days on Democracy Now!, the daily TV/radio news show that broadcasts from New York, and the important role it serves as a much-needed independent media organization in a world dominated by corporate versions of news. So, before any more time goes by, let me share a few thoughts on this topic with you.

The idea of establishing an independent news media in Japan on the model of Democracy Now! is something I have been floating among progressive friends for a few years now. Or if that was not possible, I maintained, we at least need to invite Democracy Now! someday to broadcast live from here in Japan.

It was with great delight, then, when I heard a few weeks ago in mid-January that that “someday” had arrived: that DN! host/executive producer Amy Goodman and crew were indeed in Japan and would be broadcasting over a few days from Tokyo. It was their first time broadcasting here, and I was eager to see what they would be covering in the coming days.

Fukushima, certainly, would be the top story, I knew. But there were other important stories from here in Japan that usually don’t get a lot of in-depth media coverage in the United States — the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade talks, U.S. military bases in Okinawa, Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution, among them — and I hoped DN! would fill in those news gaps while they were here.

It turned out to be everything I had hoped for, and more.

For a look at what Democracy Now! reported on in Japan during its shows for January 15-17, 2014, check out this page. If you haven’t seen these programs already, I encourage you to set aside a little time in your busy schedule to watch them. They will keep you well updated on the important issues being discussed here in Japan that you are not likely to see covered in any real depth by other news media, certainly not in the U.S.

Live in Kyoto

Most of Amy Goodman’s time in Japan was necessarily spent in Tokyo, of course, as one of the world’s major media capitals. She was scheduled to make only one public appearance outside of Tokyo and luckily that was a lecture in Kyoto, in the region of Japan where I live.

The last time I had had a chance to attend a talk by Goodman was about 10 years ago in the U.S., when she was to speak at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California — located in the North Coast redwood country, where I was then living with my family — as part of a national speaking tour. I couldn’t make her speech at that time, though, due to family obligations. But the wait was worth it: a decade later, and here she was coming overseas into my “territory” in Japan.

So on the chilly winter’s night of Sunday, January 19, I commuted a couple of hours (one way) to Kyoto and joined around 200-300 other members of the audience at the auditorium of the Kyoto Kyoiku Bunka Center, a public education/cultural center in downtown Kyoto. On the bill to speak were Goodman and Japanese journalist Yasumi Iwakami, head of Independent Web Journal (IWJ), a broadcast media outlet. Serving as MC would be John Junkerman, an independent filmmaker based in Tokyo whose works I have long admired and who I had recently met in person at the university in Kyoto where I teach journalism part-time.

“I think media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth,” Goodman said at one point in her talk. “Instead, it is wielded as a weapon of war — and that has to change.” The news media have been hijacked by powerful corporate interests, she added, and “we have to take it back”.

She touched upon a number of subjects I had seen her speak about before on the Web, so it was nothing new. Goodman tends to improvise when she speaks, jumping from one point to another, sometimes jaggedly, sometimes smoothly, but always confidently and with passion.

Those who are concerned about issues of climate change, war and so on, she said, “are not a fringe minority — not even a silent majority, but a silenced majority: silenced by the media.” She went on to say that “We are not supposed to be a part of the state, as journalists. We’re supposed to be apart from it.” It was a message that I hoped at least some corporate news hacks in Japan would hear and heed.

One interesting point that she brought up was official government pronouncements and corporate propaganda in the form of “static” — that irritating buzz-sound we hear on TV or radio. She mentioned how it is the job of independent media everywhere in the world to cut through the sound barrier of that official static to expose the truth about important issues in society and, whenever we can as citizens and journalists, to create our own static that essentially challenges the status quo and demands change and openness in society.

Class Lecture

But for me, the best part of all of Goodman’s speech in Kyoto that night came when she opened up a copy of her 2004 book The Exception to the Rulers and began reading passages from Chapter 16 of the book, “Hiroshima Cover-Up: How the War Department’s Timesman Won a Pulitzer”. The chapter concerns a New York Times reporter, William Laurence, who had once worked as a propagandist for the U.S. government during World War II, and also Wilfred Burchett, an Australian who was the first foreign journalist to report from the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima back in 1945.

As Goodman read the passages aloud, a big grin spread across my face. This book by Goodman was the same book I had been using this semester as the course textbook in my university journalism class. In fact, I had scheduled the next class lecture on the following Thursday, just a few days later, to be on this very same Chapter 16 about Hiroshima.

It was all coincidental, but the timing was perfect. I only wished all the students of my journalism class had been there at the auditorium that night in Kyoto to receive our next class lecture directly from Goodman herself. As it turned out, one of my students, a visiting foreign-exchange student from Germany, was in the audience that night, and I knew she was getting a real treat by being there and hearing Goodman’s lecture firsthand. Too bad my other students had missed it.

Goodman noted toward the end of her talk that while in Tokyo she had done exclusive interviews with Kenzaburo Oe, the respected Japanese author and anti-nuclear advocate, and Naoto Kan, the former prime minister of Japan at the time of the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011. Goodman promised that these two interviews would be put on the DN! website sometime soon. Keep an eye out for them; they should be good.

After the lecture, as Amy Goodman was busy signing autographs and exchanging greetings with guests at a table set up in the lobby, I had a chance to go up and chat with her briefly. I told her we were keeping the spirit of Democracy Now! alive and well in my university journalism course by watching DN! in class and by using her book The Exception to the Rulers as the course textbook.

I offered my business card in the true Japanese way; Goodman studied it for a moment, then jokingly asked if that was my real last name. It was a pun I’ve been used to hearing for many years now, due in no small part to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, who made the phrase “covert operations” nearly a household word in the USA back in the 1980s during the big Iran-Contra scandal. (Thanks again, Ronnie!) I thought of coming back to Amy with any one of a number of wisecrack replies I’ve saved for just such occasions, but decided to go the polite route this time: Yep, that’s the name they gave me, I said.

As I talked with Amy Goodman, the one thing that surprised me was how short and thin she was physically. When you see TV personalities on screen they look larger than life, and I guess that’s how I expected Goodman to look too. But it says a lot about her personality and inner drive that even a small person in stature like her conveys such a commanding presence on the Democracy Now! show, and on a daily basis at that.

The sheer exhaustion from her demanding schedule in Japan over the previous days was apparent on her face, so I quickly took my leave, thanking her for everything she’s doing and letting her move on to the next guest in line.

I also had a chance to talk in the lobby with Denis Moynihan, writer and DN! staff member, who was busy handing out Democracy Now! bumper stickers to people. I told him how surprised I had been to see Democracy Now! broadcasting live from the Tokyo studio of NHK International, the English-language arm of NHK, Japan’s public broadcaster. After all, NHK has always been a political tool of the Japanese government, serving as little more than a propaganda service to one degree or another (especially so under the current neo-fascist prime minister, Abe). And I remembered well how back in the 1980s, when insiders had accused NHK International itself of censoring their news reports, particularly those concerning China.

Moynihan replied something along the lines that Democracy Now! and NHK International shared the same satellite cable linkage, and that there was no editorial influence at all exerted by NHK; they were just providing the studio space. That explanation made sense, but still: Democracy Now! and NHK? They are polar opposites when it comes to good journalism. Well, hopefully the good work that Democracy Now! does had rubbed off in some way on NHK during those few days in Tokyo.

In these times, when the corporate-dominated news media in Japan, the U.S. and other countries are facing serious political and legal challenges in reporting the truth of issues like the ongoing Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, it is reassuring to know that Democracy Now! is out there doing a first-rate job and setting a positive example for what successful independent news media could be and should be.

That said, though, I still look forward to the day when we here in Japan have a Japanese vernacular TV program of our own on the model of Democracy Now! — one that is nonprofit and truly independent, strongly supported by the Japanese public. I still want to see that realized someday. But at least DN! had made it here to Japan for a live broadcast, and that was a great place to start.

One can only hope that Democracy Now! will be back again in the Land of the Rising Sun, and not just once or twice but as often as possible. We can use all the help we can get over here in breaking the seemingly endless stream of official noise in Japan called “static”, and in getting the Japanese corporate-owned lapdog press more motivated to do a better job in exposing the ever-increasing layers of official static that cover up the truth.