'Steal This Story, Please!' Shows Why Independent Journalism Is Still a Lifeline

Not to sound biased, but journalism is incredibly important in the world today. Whether there’s a town board meeting with a budget up for discussion or an international war causing chaos, reporters help the public know what’s going on in every corner of the world. These intrepid muckrakers push through the toughest conditions to get the facts to people who need to know.

Someone who knows that all too well is Amy Goodman and, in a rare change of pace, she’s the center of an exposé in the form of the documentary “Steal This Story, Please!” which opens the Hamptons Doc Fest on Thursday, December 4, at the Bay Street Theater.

Directed by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the documentary focuses on the longtime journalist and her decades of experience covering politicians, police and so much more around the world. The Bay Shore original is documented going from her graduation from Harvard in 1984 to the launch of the independent news site Democracy Now! in 1996, covering harrowing world events along the way and well afterward.

According to the Oscar-nominated directors, their latest documentary has far-reaching implications.

“‘Steal This Story, Please!’ is about far more than one woman,” Lessin and Deal said via email last week. “It’s about the practice of journalism itself — about refusing to bend to power and confronting the failures of a profit-driven news media. We were struck by the fact that Democracy Now! launched just two weeks after the 1996 Telecommunications Act — a sweeping deregulation that accelerated the corporate takeover and consolidation of radio, television and newspaper outlets.

“Into the vacuum that was created stepped Amy and her fiercely independent broadcast team at Democracy Now!, determined to build something different. Nearly 30 years later, they are still at it.”

Lessin and Deal said they approached Goodman about doing a documentary four years ago. Though Goodman is in front of cameras frequently, being the focus of a film was a different challenge.

“Even though she’s on the air and in the public eye every day, she’s an extremely private person,” Lessin and Deal explained. “She’s also spent her career centering other people’s stories and keeping herself at the margins. But she knew us and respected our work, so she was open to hearing our pitch.”

The directors spent two years putting the documentary together and credited editor Mona Davis for finding the essential pieces among the “hundreds of hours” of footage and the decades of Goodman’s work that made up the source material. Unfortunately, not all of her stories could make it into the film.

“[D]eciding which ones to feature was the most challenging part of shaping the narrative,” Lessin and Deal said. “Still, it was incredibly rewarding to make this film — especially with a subject as remarkable as Amy and a topic as urgent.”

And what is that topic? Not just Goodman’s lengthy resume and contributions to the news of the world, but how the practice of journalism itself is under frequent scrutiny. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 124 journalists were killed in 2024 while on assignment in places like Gaza, Sudan, Mexico and Pakistan.

“Reporters are being harassed, intimidated, threatened, imprisoned, assaulted and murdered around the world,” Lessin and Deal explained. “Here in the U.S., we’ve watched journalists become increasingly targeted, finding themselves in the crosshairs of a president who has openly attacked press freedoms — and the very notion of truth.

“It’s no coincidence that we’re seeing a wave of documentary films featuring American journalists this year — from Amy Goodman to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, war photographer Lynsey Addario and the late filmmaker Brent Renaud.”

“Steal This Story, Please!” certainly covers a lot of ground in Goodman’s life. Lessin and Deal said the documentary shows how activism was always ingrained in Goodman’s family with her father being part of the task force that desegregated the Bay Shore public schools in the 1970s. It also includes dark moments in world history that Goodman has witnessed, including the Santa Cruz massacre on November 12, 1991, when Indonesian troops in East Timor killed more than 270 citizens during a memorial procession in the Santa Cruz cemetery.

“We can only begin to imagine what it was like for Amy to experience that firsthand,” the directors added. “We know it was profoundly traumatic, yet it also strengthened her belief in the power of journalism to bear witness and to drive change.”

Lessin and Deal are no strangers to covering shocking events themselves. The duo’s previous directing credits include “Trouble the Water,” their documentary which focused on New Orleans residents impacted by Hurricane Katrina and received an Academy Award nomination. They’ve also tackled projects that warrant the deep investigation journalists deal with every day. Take “Citizen Koch,” a look at how billionaires like Charles and David Koch use their vast wealth to influence the actions of Republican government officials. The pair have also produced films with Michael Moore, including “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Bowling for Columbine.”

“Like journalism, documentary filmmaking for us is a way of making sense of the world, interrogating power and also finding emotion and meaning in unexpected places,” Lessin and Deal said. “We are drawn to stories about people who discover their power through action. Women like Amy. We feel grateful that Amy welcomed us into her world — to be inspired by her pursuit of truth, to laugh at her irrepressible wit, and to carry her story to a new generation of bad-ass women and truth-tellers.”

When asked about what makes Goodman such a compelling subject, the directors praised her ability to include historical context in any contemporary story she works on. They also called her “relentlessly funny” despite some of the tragic events she’s witnessed over the years. In the end, the duo hope that Goodman’s story inspires others to look deeper at the news instead of just scrolling through it.

“With the rise of authoritarianism, social media misinformation, and clickbait and algorithm-driven media, journalists like Amy matter more than ever before,” Lessin and Deal added. “They inform the public, amplify dissenting voices and hold those in power accountable — which is precisely why they are often targeted and silenced.

“Our hope is for audiences to be transformed in some way by our film, to think more critically about the news they read or see and to be inspired to seek out and support independent media.”

“Steal This Story, Please!” screens as Hamptons Doc Fest’s Opening Night Film at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, December 4, at Bay Street Theater on Long Wharf in Sag Harbor. Directors Tia Lessin and Carl Deal and journalist Amy Goodman will all be in attendance for a Q&A. A cocktail reception follows the film screening. Tickets to the screening are $30 at hamptonsdocfest.com.