As part of the Jonathan and Maxine Marshall Distinguished Lecture Series, Arizona State University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences invited Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! to speak at the university’s Tempe campus on Thursday night. The lecture took place at Old Main, inside the Carson Ballroom on the building’s third floor.

A capacity crowd was treated to excerpts from Goodman’s new book “Democracy Now! Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America.” Goodman also spoke about her experiences covering many of these events with the indepedent and nationally-syndicated news program, such as Occupy Wall Street, the Troy Davis execution and most recently the Dakota Access Pipeline protests.

Goodman was arrested covering the latter. She was first charged with criminal trespass and later with rioting. Both charges were later dropped.

“I think it’s very important that the media go there [to North Dakota],” Goodman told Northeast Valley News. “It’s our job to go and report, to go to where the silence is.”

Goodman insisted that Democracy Now! would continue to cover the protests in North Dakota on its program.

During her lecture, Goodman discussed how the protests in North Dakota – and the police force’s reaction to them – speak to a larger point about the press’ importance and Democracy Now’s mission

“We have to take the media back,” she said. “The media is important – it’s the way we communicate with each other.”

Many Native Americans were present in the audience, including a young woman named Desira Deschine from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. She brought a poster that read “No DAPL” on one side and “#WaterIsLife” on the other. Goodman also related the story of a young man from Standing Rock who flew to New York for a Democracy Now! taping and constructed a teepee outside of Hillary Clinton’s campaign headquarters in order to tell her to take a stand on the pipeline.

The public’s right to know this kind of information is crucial to Goodman.

“The public’s right to know is intimately connected with the freedom of the press,” she said.

Democracy Now! airs daily on over 1,400 stations nationwide, including KPHX 1480 in Phoenix.