The host of Democracy Now!, which I think is the best U.S. (although imperfect) alternative news source out there, is lauded at Common Dreams.

Some excerpts from the piece by Vermont journalist Joyce Marcel:

First, you are the anti-Judith Miller, the discredited New York Times reporter who beat the drums for Bush and Cheney's illegal war, who embedded her journalistic integrity for a chance to play with the big boys. Were they really that big, Judy? Really?

You, Amy Goodman, sneer at the very word "embedded." You treasure journalistic independence. For twenty years, first as news director of WBAI in New York, one of Pacifica Radio's flagship stations, and since 1994 the lovely and formidable one-non-blonde eye at the center of the growing whirlwind of horrible truths that is "Democracy Now!," you have reported news free of corporate underwriting. ...

You have proved your bravery as a reporter in the field. In East Timor you had guns pointed at your head and watched innocent people slaughtered. Your friend's skull was shattered as the Indonesians made a last-ditch grasp to keep their power. You barely escaped with your life. You were rewarded with a trip back to see the Timorese, having paid such a high price for freedom, celebrate its return.

And now your dark and deadpan eyes are focused with the strength of lasers on the lies and corruption of the Bush administration. You are on the side of the angels, standing shoulder to shoulder with Cindy Sheehan and the other mothers who have lost their sons and daughters to this despicable war. ...

The news you report every night is brutal. Torture camps, Abu Ghraib, our use of chemical weapons - napalm-like substances and white phosphorus that burns bodies to the bone, the massacre at Fallujah, Bush saying in Panama "We do not torture" while Cheney openly searches for ways to exempt the CIA from anti-torturing legislation. My only question is how you keep from slitting your wrists in despair.

"I'm inspired by the people I cover, the people I work with," you said when I called you to ask. "People in the most difficult circumstances. In East Timor, in the middle of the slaughter, they always had hope, had the belief that things can be better. In the US in the middle of these difficult times, people continue to organize. Think of Rosa Parks and what she faced and what African-Americans have faced for centuries. She made the right move by not moving. At a moment, something like that can launch a movement. What's the alternative? To give up hope is like breathing, You really have no choice."

I read Goodman's book, Exception to the Rulers, although being an MSM hack, I found it a bit ... utopian in places (I just said that to ensure my head would get bitten off).

A certain amount of utopianism isn't a bad thing. It can fire the energy to change, so even if the world doesn't become a perfect place, it's a better place for having tried to achieve perfection.

OTOH, she gets a little Michael Moore-ish (or a little Bill O'Reilly-ish, if you prefer) at times in how she interprets her facts.

She blasts the media's defence of war by how the story of former Sen. Bob Kerrey -- a one-time Navy SEAL, conducted one mission in Vietnam in which about a dozen unarmed civilians were killed in a village -- was handled. However, while blasting Newsweek, she neglected to say that the New York Times and CBS's 60 Minutes II did go with the story.

She then goes on to describe being attacked by a bunch of Fox News commentators (well, duh!) and says:

These media personalitiesare right about one thing: These questions would not be asked by them or their Beltway buddies.

I didn't see any kudos to the Times or CBS for going with the story -- but frankly, you'd have to live to a ripe old age as an MSM journalist to be ever credited with anything by some on the alternative side.

That being said, Democracy Now! is first with some important stories and provides a place for some voices that deserve to be heard.

But as with any journalist, I would caution against treating Amy Goodman as an infallible god and practice good media literacy with her too.