The very name of your programme seems to cast doubt on the popular belief that exists. Isn't there democracy in the United States?

We are a news of popular initiative and, among other things, democratic movements are one of our focal points. There is a tendency to speak of “pro-democracy” movements when speaking of foreign affairs. In my opinion, the same name can be used when talking about many initiatives within the United States. Democracy is something that you work on every day, every day you fight for it, but you never get it all.

What is the role of the mass media? Do you do honest journalism?

The most important thing about the independent media is that when we talk about war we do not have the support of the arms industry, when we talk about climate change we do not have the coal and oil industry behind us, when we talk about health coverage we do not have the lines of opinion of the insurers behind us. The corporate media does, they debate war and peace, and they say: “We’ll keep talking about this, but before we do Boeing a while,” or another armer. We do not serve those commercial interests, but democracy.

And does an independent media have enough strength to reach the general public?

We got to more than a bunch of CNN and MSNBC broadcasts, we completed America's largest public collaboration among the media. Millions of people see, hear and read Democracy Now!. We therefore compete with the corporate media, and we have created what we call “bottom-filtering journalism”: the big media often calls us in search of contacts, because they do not know some street movements – we do, because we have followed them from the very beginning – and they come to their radar screen, they are out of play, they are lost, and they are heading for us.

Democracy Now! It's not just other news, it's another view of the news. You said: “If you say something that big media never says, you need time.” Is this reflection interesting, microformats and current superficialities do not work when you have to explain a “different” view?

Sometimes we're telling a story that most people haven't even heard, and many times we have to undo what the mainstream media has told us. This is a lot of work, because many times what people think is often totally unfounded.

In the book you say that you treat “forgotten communities and untold news.” Why are big media not interested?

Because they serve commercial interests. For a long time, some communities have lived with concern about police violence, and suddenly the issue jumps to those media, where there have been mass protests over these events, such as the murder of Michael Brown, and around it there are initiatives like Black Lives Matter. In the Occupy movement, for example, thousands of people began to congregate in the Zucotti Park and the corporate media did not follow up on the issue. But the time had come when the movement had become so big that it was necessary to continue. At first he laughed: "What you want, worried about so many things: climate change, discrimination, peace and war, death penalty, LGTB claims... They don't even know what they want. They wanted to symbolize a mess to show the weakness of their discourse, but they worry that the protesters perceive it as something linked, precisely by these issues.

We have followed these movements throughout the journey, before, during and after those great protests. We've interviewed all kinds of people, but they have a small, closed cast of people who know so little about so many issues, to explain the world so badly ... And these kinds of issues are only interested when they come to a critical mass.

Funding is also different, as they receive money from people’s contributions.

In many villages, people only understand two types of media: public and commercial. We have non-profit media, readers and viewers appreciate and give their work: 5, 10 or 20 dollars... Whatever each one can.

You have just published the book, collecting some of the main themes that you have worked on in your session. It's hard to summarize 20 years in a book, right?

Anyway, we've written more books in the last 20 years, this is the sixth, and we haven't tried to make a top ten of the program, it's just a way of looking back and observing the following movements: Black Lives Matter, LGBT movement, anti-war movement, immigrant rights advocacy, equal pay, climate change, death penalty...

You are on tour with the book and anniversary, making presentations, conferences and interviews across the country. How are people responding?

We've been on a hundred city tour, and the response of people has been impressive. We have coordinated with the radio and television stations on which our program is broadcast, to raise the money we have received at local events, not for us. They are community media and it is very important to protect them in this way, as they are very important in their community. We connect points in the United States and the world, Sweden, Japan, South Africa, Europe ... We translate our headlines into Spanish every day, by audio and in writing. If you are studying English, you can listen and read the session at the same time or compare English with Spanish. Many teachers use our session in language schools.

The United States shows a certain ideological duality towards the world: on the one hand, the interventionist power of the twentieth century and the pioneer of anti-communism; on the other hand, the origin of many left-wing pioneering movements and thinkers. How far does anti-communism go and how far does left-wing initiatives in the United States today stop?

Many borders have been broken in these elections, because Bernie Sanders, a socialist democrat, can have a lot of strength, precisely because he is a socialist, not a socialist. People continue to hear proposals that seemed impossible to make. Nelson Mandela said that “it always seems impossible until it materializes.” So far, people would say: "A socialist? No, no! We're not going anywhere." Suddenly, a Socialist has faced the great candidacy. People have not set themselves on the label, but on their own visions, and they are socialist visions.

In this electoral duel it seems that the aforementioned duality is more evident than ever: on the one hand a populist of the right, voting on afflicted people who accuse minorities of all problems; and on the other hand, a socialist with left-wing proposals ... Then there's Hillary Clinton. Has this apparent polarisation benefited from the candidature of the latter?

Yes. He didn't benefit in the elementary schools, because he didn't expect Sanders to be so strong, thousands of people going to his mittens... Nobody expected it. Sanders insisted that Clinton is imprisoned on Wall Street and he would not have had to give an answer if Sanders had not obtained such great support... But he's done it, and even now, despite his inner triumph in the party, Clinton can't stand up to Sanders' supporters, because he needs them, and they're strong. Clinton is not looking for Republican voters, but his challenge is to convince those who are not going to vote. Around Sanders, young people have been empowered, especially young women. Although Clinton may be the first woman to preside over the White House, Sanders has failed to attract women. Clinton will have to endorse some of Sanders' visions to get these sectors on board. How far will it go? That is in the hands of social movements.

However, he has denounced that the media has paid little attention to Sanders, who has denied any doubt.

The media has supported Donald Trump, and television has become a mere means of extending its discourse to all American homes. He's the magnate, a TV celebrity, his racism, xenophobia and islamophobia are amazing, not yet seen in an electoral struggle. Who was going to say that the Ku Klux Klan was going to be a topic of debate in the 2016 campaign? I come from Pacifica Radio, the radio network created 67 years ago, five radios in EE.UU, the fourth was the KPFT Houston. Shortly after taking off in 1970, the KKK blew it up with a bomb. They threw themselves back on him and assaulted him again. Klana doesn't want people to talk for themselves. Why? When you hear someone talking about their experience, whether it's a Palestinian mother or an Afghan or an Iraqi mother, borders and walls are broken. You say: look, it reminds me of my mother, my father or my uncle. For hate groups that is a threat, that is the power of the media: they can be the largest peace-making force in the world, but they are a weapon of war too often. That is why we have to recover the media.

Reagan, who also received clan support in 1980, rejected Reagan's support. But Trump doesn't.

When asked, Trump said he "had to look at the issue further," referring to Trump. When did you hear him say that on another subject? What should you look more deeply at because you don't want to generalize the whole KK? It's terrible. On the other hand, it represents economic populism, you know, it says it's against free trade agreements, like Sanders is, he claims the return of jobs to the United States. But he does some of his productions in Mexico or China. He went to bankruptcy over and over again ... We need media that tell the truth, that give people a voice.

You're against election polls. Why?

Because they're very wrong, they're not right, the media is always talking about them, and after the election, they spend the time where they've been wrong. It seems crazy, but the polls give their approval. The key is in that, in politics, the corrupt effect of money. The United States electoral system works this way and television networks do not pose it as a problem, as they are the recipients of the money that the candidates are earning for the campaigns. Hence the need for independent media.

If there were no superdelegates, would Sanders have had options to beat Clinton?

Yes, because from the beginning Hillary has used the number of superdelegates he has in his favor, as if it were a stick, to drive away his competitors. It's amazing, but most people don't know how the Democratic Party's super-representative system works. Why, even though Bernie Sanders wins primaries and caucus, does Clinton have more representatives? Because a few decades ago they realized that they didn't want the candidate to be elected by the people, because there's a risk that the candidate who really wants people to come out and not the party establishment. Thus, a system was created in which the governors, senators and members of that party ' s establishment automatically travel to the national assembly as superdelegates.

The other day, Thomas Frank, author of the liberal book Listen, about the Democratic Party, said in his session that the party decided in the 1970s that it didn't want to be the workers' party, in the 1990s it was already circling Wall Street and is now completely tied. But it is true, on the other hand, that a left-wing candidate has never gone so far. Is it possible that in future the parties will be directed towards social democracy?

Everything can happen whatever social movements want. They have power and they have to feel that, make requests. The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass said that “power gives nothing if there are no intermediate demands, it never does and it never will.”

Others propose that this shift to the left be made outside the Democratic Party, such as Jill Stein.

He is a doctor, he presents himself as a Green Party candidate. It is presented as a third party, as is the Libertarian Party, but if a third party is presented in all states, it would require an enormous amount of money. De facto, the United States is a bipartisan system.

As for the foreign policy of the United States, Trump proposes a policy of austerity that, in the view of many, is more interventionist than Obama. What will be the consequences of the triumph of one or the other at international level?

Hillary Clinton is a neoliberal hawk. He voted in favour of the Iraq War, is closely linked to Wall Street, has supported her husband's policies, defended the 1994 anti-terrorist law that involved mass incarceration of black, Latino and poor... It comes from this tradition. You can't know in advance what Trump is going to do, he's a lender who has made money at the expense of the workers fraudulently. Hillary is profoundly interventionist and pro-war. Having said that, I am not going to say that this is the way forward if you become president, because it can be conditioned by the strength of social movements.

Has the Obama Government lowered interventionism?

By no means. Obama has been president of one of the longest wars in history, that of Afghanistan. Obama was elected by anti-racist, anti-terrorist, immigrant rights advocates, environmental, gay and lesbian movements... The world was very reassured when they elected him, a door opened, but the door closed again violently. When Obama was elected in 2008, there was a racist retreat, the Birther movement was created, supported by Trump, which says that Obama was not born in the United States, and with those attacks, the movements stopped criticizing their policies for the problems they cared about so as not to harm Obama.

They had achieved the impossible, to investigate an African-American. Obama had already announced that he would close Guantánamo, but seven years later he has not yet done so. He said he was against the war in Iraq, but the war has spread, like the drone war in Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya ... Most of the prosecutions of whistleblowers have been recorded since their arrival at the presidency. The immigrant support movements, which started working within the White House, initially supported him, but it was the same movement that later named Obama sport-in-chief, for having deported more immigrants than any other president of history. The movements gave him the torch and went back, but that's a mistake, because a single person can't be in the White House and resist the demands of those in it, if he can't point to those outside and say, "If I do, they'll take over the Bastille." If there are no people out there, it has a big problem.

At least, it seems that Cuba is there an exception, a sign of the new positions.

He wants to leave the legacy for the future, demonstrate that it has new ways and make an effort in Cuba to normalize relations, but the blockade is still there and that is the next challenge for Cuba. It is the first American President to visit Hiroshima, bombed by the United States, in which he speaks in favour of nuclear disarmament, but during his term of office $3 billion has been earmarked for the development of nuclear weapons.

Do people here know the commercial treaties of TTIP and TPP, or do the media pay little attention to it as they do in Europe?

Corporate media are aligned with corporations, so they don't explain, they don't address the issue or they provide some explanations that favor corporations. Like Hillary Clinton, Obama is aligned with Wall Street, a TPP that looms people, that threatens the environment, that protects people. It is up to the media to explain these issues. Those who care about war, about climate change are not a minority, not a silent majority, but a majority silenced by the corporate media, so we need to get the media back. We live in the digital age, but all we get is noise, distortions, lies. We need media that talk about power, not power. Rather than in favour of the state, we need means of communication that are the fourth state, that account for movements that produce interference and make history.