Amy Goodman isn’t precious about her stories. She doesn’t even consider them hers—she’s just the reporter for Democracy Now!, her long-running independent news outlet. Goodman would love it if mainstream media would steal her reporting on climate change, systemic oppression, government corruption, genocide, and broadcast it to the widest possible audience. But they won’t. At a Republican National Convention, Goodman asks fellow broadcaster Katie Couric if she’s going to cover the mass protests, the arrests, and the state-sanctioned violence against U.S. citizens happening outside the convention. We’re aware, Couric tells Goodman, but there are profiles of the people inside the convention that Couric’s team wants to get. Goodman has no interest in that kind of news coverage. The real story is out there in the street. That’s where Goodman will be. Couric can have the celebs on the inside.

Steal This Story, Please!, from documentarians Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, could’ve been a hagiography of Goodman, but I don’t think Goodman would have let that happen. Instead, the documentary about her life is more about her willingness to go where others aren’t and say something for the silenced.

And that’s all you get in Steal This Story, Please!, an engrossing doc covering Goodman’s many decades in journalism. We learn a little about Goodman’s upbringing in New York, her maternal ancestor in Ukraine, and the few times she visited Israel as a child. That’s about it. What romance Goodman has had, what personal hobbies she holds, what books she reads, what movies she likes, are nonexistent within the doc’s 90-plus-minute runtime.

Fitting for Goodman. Those details are the type of profile fluff Goodman herself would excise from a piece. Sure, they can build out the picture of a person, but they can also distract from the aim of the profile.

What we do get, beyond Goodman’s journalism, are sharp critiques of how mainstream outlets cover the same events Goodman does, and the chasm between their way and hers. As Goodman says—and Deal and Lessin illustrate through a clip show collage—journalists embedded with armed troops in a war zone can’t help but be swept up in the thrill of combat and the camaraderie of the corps. Can a reporter really be objective about the soldiers tasked with keeping them alive?

These are the moments that make Steal This Story, Please! sing. Goodman is on a mission, and Deal and Lessin do an excellent job of staying out of her way. If there’s one thing I learned from Steal This Story, Please! it is that you don’t want to get between Goodman and the truth.

Steal This Story, Please! (2025)
Directed by Carl Deal, Tia Lessen
Produced by Diana Cohn, Carl Deal, Tia Lessin, Karen Ranucci, Caren Spruch
Starring: Amy Goodman
Xceptional Communications, Not rated, Running time 98 minutes, Premiered Aug. 31, 2026, at the Telluride Film Festival

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