Q&A with journalist Amy Goodman and director Tia Lessin. Moderated by Ruth Baldwin

Sunday, Apr. 12 2026, 5:00

This event is over. View all of our upcoming events.

• Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,400 public television and radio stations worldwide.The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard honored Goodman with the 2014 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence Lifetime Achievement Award. She is also the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award. She is the first co-recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone, and was later selected for induction into the Park Center’s I.F. Stone Hall of Fame. The Independent of London called Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! “an inspiration.” Goodman has co-authored six New York Times bestsellers. Her latest, Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America, looks back over the past two decades of Democracy Now! and the powerful movements and charismatic leaders who are re-shaping our world.Goodman has received the Society for Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence; American Women in Radio and Television Gracie Award; the Paley Center for Media’s She’s Made It Award; and the Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship. Her reporting on East Timor and Nigeria has won numerous awards, including the George Polk Award, Robert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press. PULSE named Goodman one of the 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009.She has also received awards from the Associated Press, United Press International, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and Project Censored. Goodman received the first ever Communication for Peace Award from the World Association for Christian Communication. She was also honored by the National Council of Teachers of English with the George Orwell Award for Distinguished Contribution to Honesty and Clarity in Public Language.
• Tia Lessin (together with co-director Carl Deal) made the critically acclaimed feature documentary Trouble the Water, about survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which was nominated for an Academy Award and won the Gotham Independent Film Award and Sundance Grand Jury Prize. Their second feature, Citizen Koch, documenting the origins of the MAGA movement and the extremist takeover of the Republican Party in the Midwest, premiered in competition at Sundance and was shortlisted for an Oscar. Most recently, Lessin directed The Janes (with Emma Piles), a film about the underground abortion service in 1960s Chicago, for HBO Original Documentaries. After its premiere in competition at Sundance, The Janes was awarded three Emmy Awards (Outstanding Documentary, Best Social Issue Documentary, and Best Directors), the DuPont Columbia Journalism Award, and was on the 2023 Oscar shortlist. Amongst other projects, Tia also line-produced Martin Scorsese’s Grammy Award-winning No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (PBS). Her work on the groundbreaking satirical series The Awful Truth (Bravo/BBC) earned her two Primetime Emmy nominations and one arrest. Lessin is a recipient of the Women of Worth Vision Award from L’Oréal Paris and Women in Film, The Ridenhour Prize, The Reel Women Direct Award for Excellence in Directing by a Woman, and the Black Lily Lifetime Achievement Award.
• Ruth Baldwin is the Editorial Director of The Marshall Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonprofit newsroom that covers the U.S. criminal justice system and immigration. She leads editorial operations and oversees the organization's digital strategy and partnerships, focusing on multiplatform storytelling and connecting The Marshall Project's high-impact work to broad and diverse audiences. The recipient of a Murrow Award and ONA Award for Innovation, she is a supervising producer on Inside Story, The Marshall Project's Emmy-nominated video series for incarcerated people.