ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
by bob feldman
The multi-billion dollar Ford Foundation's historic relationship
to the Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] is rarely mentioned on
Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW / Deep Dish TV show, on FAIR's COUNTERSPIN
show, on the WORKING ASSETS RADIO show, on The Nation Institute's
RADIO NATION show, on David Barsamian's ALTERNATIVE RADIO show
or in the pages of PROGRESSIVE, MOTHER JONES and Z magazine. One
reason may be because the Ford Foundation and other Establishment
foundations subsidize the Establishment Left's alternative media
gatekeepers / censors.
PACIFICA / DEMOCRACY NOW / DEEP DISH TV
Take Pacifica / DEMOCRACY NOW, an alternative radio network
with annual revenues of $10 million in 2000, whose National Program
Director was paid $63,000 in that year. In the early 1950s--when
the CIA was using the Ford Foundation to help fund a non-communist
"parallel left" as a liberal Establishment alternative to an independent,
anti-Establishment revolutionary left--the Pacifica Foundation
was given a $150,000 grant in 1951 by the Ford Foundation's Fund
for Education. According to James Ledbetter's book Made Possible
By..., "the Fund's first chief was Alexander Fraser, the president
of the Shell Oil Company."
Besides subsidizing the Pacifica Foundation in the early 1950s,
the Ford Foundation also spent a lot of money subsidizing many
other noncommercial radio or television stations in the United
States. According to Ledbetter's Made Possible By..., between
1951 and 1976, the Ford Foundation "spent nearly $300 million
on noncommercial radio and television."
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pacifica relied primarily
on listener-sponsor contributions to fund the operations of its
radio stations. And in the early 1970s, Pacifica also began to
accept funds from the U.S. Establishment's Corporation for Public
Broadcasting [CPB], according to Rogue State author William
Blum--who worked as a KPFA staffperson in the early 1970s. But
in the early 1990s, some Pacifica administrators decided to again
seek grants from the Ford Foundation and other Establishment foundations.
As former Pacifica Development Director Dick Bunce wrote in the
appendix to the "A Strategy for National Programming" document
which was prepared for the Pacifica National Board in September
1992, entitled "Appendix Foundation Grantseeking National Programming
Assumptions for Foundation Fundraising":
The national foundation grantseeking arena has changed enough
in recent years to make activity in this arena potentially worthwhile--for
organizations prepared to be players and partners in the same
field as NPR, APR, maybe some others...The foundation funding
of interest is in gifts of $100,000 or more a year, for several
years...Three of America's six largest foundations (Ford, MacArthur,
Pew) have begun to fund public broadcasting, public radio in particular,
and evidently intend to continue doing so. Pacifica requested
meetings with each of these foundations earlier this year and
was treated seriously enough in subsequent meetings to give us
some hope of securing funding possibly from all three. A `Report
Sheet' on this work is included in Appendix 3.
Beyond these three foundations there are no others among the
country's 100 largest which have made substantial grants to public
broadcasting. So the second tier of foundation prospects look
substantially different from the first tier requiring more work
on our part to open doors, establish `standing' and find a workable
`fit.'
There are nonetheless a number of interesting prospects--in some
cases only because of particular people who are currently involved,
or because of formal criteria which we could try to fit. The second
tier list includes several from the top 100--Rockefeller, Irvine,
Surdna, George Gund--Nathan Cummings--and a number of smaller
foundations, but still capable of 6 figure grants: Aaron Diamond,
Revson, Rockefeller Family & Associates, New World, Winston Foundation
for World Peace.
Once we drop to the $35,000 to $75,000 grant range, the list
enlarges, but these take as long to cultivate as the bigger ones,
so it makes sense to start from the top.
Foundation fundraising at this level has extraordinary payoffs--but
it takes senior staff time, not `grantwriting' but in communicating.
It is therefore expensive, and not successfully done as an afterthought
to everything else in the day. It also requires `venture capital
visits' to the foundations to open doors and conversations that
lead to partnerships.
In initiating three top level contacts in April, May and June,
and attempting to capitalize on the opportunities apparent to
us, we have already been stretched beyond our capacity to really
interface effectively with these funders--although admittedly
much of the problem to date has been due to the fact that we don't
yet have a clear business plan for national programming.
Foundation grantmaking will most likely proceed as short-term
funding. Funders will want to `fund projects, not operations.'
We should presume that we can succeed in raising serious money
to launch or establish new programs, etc. but not to sustain them
beyond start-up. The standard of self-sufficiency will be required
for many proposals we submit, and our own planning will be most
successful if we relate to this funding source accordingly.
Short-Run Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grantseeking
Program
Seek Development Committee leadership in planning for Foundation
grantseeking.
Pursue 3 `anchor' grants to acquire funding beginning in FY'93
from the Big 3 foundations we've already begun to work with.
Long-Range Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grantseeking
Program
Initiate an informal `feasibility inquiry' of foundation support
for Pacifica's objectives by requesting visits with the dozen
top prospects to shape proposals and establish relationships...
Foundation Grants Summary: Late this spring we began our first
efforts in national foundation grantseeking on behalf of national
programming. We have a good chance of securing six figure grants
in the coming fiscal year from any or all of the 3 foundations
we're working with, but our approach is still dependent upon our
own organizational progress toward a business plan that we are
committed to following through on.
The second tier of foundation prospects is more challenging,
and will require increased staff resoucres, a modest feasability
inquiry and active planning with the Board Development Committee.
By 1995, billionaire speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute
had given the Pacifica Foundation a $40,000 grant. And in 1996,
the Carnegie Corporation of New York gave Pacifica a $25,000 grant
to launch its DEMOCRACY NOW show. In 1997 came a $13,000 grant
from the J.M. Kaplan Fund to Pacifica to provide support for DEMOCRACY
NOW. And in 1998 came a $25,000 grant to Pacifica from the Public
Welfare Foundation "to report on hate crimes and related issues
as part of its `DEMOCRACY NOW!" public-affairs radio program and
an additional $10,000 grant to support DEMOCRACY NOW from the
J.M. Kaplan Fund. That same year the Ford Foundation gave a $75,000
grant to Pacifica "toward marketing consultancy, promotional campaign
and program development activities for radio program, DEMOCRACY
NOW." In 1998 and 1999, two grants, totalling $22,500, were also
given to Pacifica by the Boehm Foundation, to support its DEMOCRACY
NOW show.
In early 2002, an additional Ford Foundation grant of $75,000
was given to Deep Dish TV "for the television news series, DEMOCRACY
NOW, to continue incorporating the aftermath of the September
11th attack into future broadcasts." Besides being presently subsidized
by the Ford Foundation to air Pacifica's DEMOCRACY NOW show, Deep
Dish TV, with an annual income of $158,000 in 2000, was also subsidized
by the MacArthur Foundation in the 1990s. Between 1993 and 1998,
$190,000 in grants were given to Deep Dish TV by the MacArthur
Foundation. And one of the members of Deep Dish TV's board of
directors in recent years has apparently been a WBAI staffperson
named Mario Murillo.
Another Ford Foundation grant of $200,000 was given in April
2002 to the Astraea Foundation, whose former board finance committee
chairperson, Leslie Cagan, is presently the chairperson of Pacifica's
national board. Three other grants have been given to the Astraea
Foundation by the Ford Foundation since 2000: two grants, totalling
$75,000, in 2000; and a $200,000 grant in 2001 "for general support
and subgrants to community-based organizations addressing social,
political and economic justice, especially those focused on lesbians
and other sexual minorities." The former finance committee chairperson
of the Ford Foundation-sponsored Astraea Foundation recently signed
a $2 million "golden handshake / sweetheart contract" with the
Ford Foundation-sponsored, soon-to-be-privatized DEMOCRACY NOW
producer (who has apparently been receiving a $90,000/year salary
from Pacifica in recent years for her alternative journalism work).
to part 2
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