What is Democracy Now?

DEMOCRACY NOW! IS A SYNDICATED program of news, analysis and opinion that, as of 2007, airs on over 500 radio and television stations, on cable TV, and on both satellite television networks in North America. The program’s full name is Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report and it is the flagship national program of the Pacifica Radio network. It also airs on NPR and community radio stations; public access cable television stations; and both Free Speech TV and Link TV –as well as over the Internet, in both streaming audio and video.

The program was founded in 1996 at WBAI-FM in New York City by journalists Amy Goodman, Larry Bensky, Juan Gonzalez, Salim Muwakkil, and Julie Drizin. The program focuses on issues related to war and peace; US foreign policy; human rights; democracy, both at home and abroad; and domestic issues such as poverty, worker rights, race relations, and police abuse. It highlights stories and perspectives that are overlooked or bypassed in mainstream news coverage, notably those of antiwar activists and conscientious objectors. Frequent contributions include Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Isabel Allende and Norman Finkelstein. The program’s characteristic tagline is “the exception to the rulers”.

Democracy Now! enjoys the support of the vast majority of progressive activists and intellectuals in the US and abroad. Notable media critic professor Robert McChesney has described Democracy Now! as “a lifeline [...], probably the most significant progressive news institution that has come around in some time”. The program and its staff have received dozens of journalism awards, including the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship. Other awards include the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Prize, and the Pinnacle Award for American Women in Radio and Television.

Democracy Now! is listener-supported. It does not accept donations from corporations nor any government funding. Although it receives syndication funds from NPR stations that play it, the program does not accept grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting because its producers believe that funding from any government entity limits the independence of their programming.

Shortly after September 11, 2001, Democracy Now! began broadcasting simultaneously on radio and television every weekday. It is the only public media program in the country that airs on radio, satellite and cable television, short-wave radio, and the Internet.