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).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
original URL for this article:
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman01.html