ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP: SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
by bob feldman

Part 2:

FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY

The FAIR/COUNTERSPIN/Institute for Public Accuracy alternative media
gatekeepers/censors--which includes COUNTERSPIN co-hosts/producers Steve
Rendall and Janine Jackson, Institute for Public Accuracy/MAKING CONTACT
executive director Norman Solomon, MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW PRODUCER Jeff
Cohen and WORKING ASSETS RADIO show producer Laura Flanders--have also
been subsidized by the Ford Foundation and other Establishment
foundations in recent years.

At a June 1988 street fair in Manhattan's Union Square which marked the
35th anniversary of the Rosenbergs' execution, MSNBC DONAHUE SHOW
producer Jeff Cohen sat behind a table selling copies of his
recently-created Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting [FAIR] group's
journal, EXTRA!. Within a few years, Cohen's FAIR alternative media
group was airing a weekly media watch show called COUNTERSPIN on
Pacifica's WBAI station in New York City. What listeners of COUNTERSPIN
were not told in the 1990s, however, was that around 30 percent of
FAIR's funding was coming from foundation grants, including grants from
Establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Family Fund, the
MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford
Foundation.

In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Family fund
"for general support." And then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started
to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in Chicago. In an early
1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the
MacArthur Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told
AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN magazine: "MacArthur is funding Fairness & Accuracy in
Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of
operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same
level. It was slightly higher a few years ago, when the media budget was
a little bigger." Boero also told AQUARIAN/DOWNTOWN in 1997 that one
reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR was that FAIR was
already being funded by other foundations such as "the Rockefeller
Family Fund."

Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was thrown in FAIR's
direction by a MacArthur "genius grant" program--which was then headed
by a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] board and
NATION magazine's Nation Institute Board, named Catharine Stimpson. A
dancer who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's
COUNTERSPIN radio show was given a $290,000 individual grant by the
MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS board member
Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from
the MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of
$150,000 by the MacArthur Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur
Foundation of $125,000 was given to FAIR.

Another Establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive
Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation also began subsidizing FAIR's
alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance,
Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support
promotion of book THE WAY THINGS AREN'T," which was co-authored by
COUNTERSPIN co-host/producer Steve Rendall. And in 1996, an additional
grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president, Public
Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon
Johnson's press secretary in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996
FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers' Schumann Foundation,
including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In
addition, one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN show,
Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a group, Citizens for Independent
Broadcasting [CIPB]. In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave the
Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued
support for activities of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting
[CIPB]."

The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING
CONTACT alternative media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's
1997 form 990 as being the "president" of FAIR and has been a FAIR
associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's
Institute for Public Accuracy, with an annual income of $267,000, has
been subsidized by Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers'
Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's IPA/International
Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of
accuracy."

In addition to being subsdiized by the Rockefeller Family Fund, the
MacArthur Foundation and the Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also
began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the mid-1990s. As the
WORKING ASSETS RADIO web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the
Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR [WORKING ASSETS RADIO
producer-host Laura] Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford
Foundation for a collaborative project to combat racism and sexism in
the news. The resulting book, REAL MAJORITY, MEDIA MINORITY: THE COST OF
SIDELINING WOMEN IN REPORTING, was published to rave reviews by Common
Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to
FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help subsidize the alternative media work of its
Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation
was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, yet another $150,000
grant was given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to
monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United
States."

In recent months, the Ford Foundation and Schumann Foundation-subsidized
"media watchdogs" from FAIR and the Institute for Public
Accuracy--Norman Solomon and Steve Rendall--have seemed more interested
in preventing 9/11 conspiracy researchers and journalists from receiving
any airtime on Pacifica's radio stations than in revealing the
historical links of their funders to the CIA or the Johnson White House
to their alternative media listeners and readers. And WORKING ASSETS
RADIO--which is aired on San Francisco's KALW and produced by a former
co-host/producer of FAIR's COUNTERSPIN and a forme Pacifica Network News
staffperson--has apparently not been eager to welcome 9/11 conspiracy
researchers and journalists onto the show.

WORKING ASSETS RADIO

WORKING ASSETS RADIO is a promotional/marketing tool of the $140
million/year, for-profi Working Assets, Inc. telecommunications company.
And besides funding its own alternative WORKING ASSETS RADIO show that
is aired on KALW in the Bay Area and over the Internet, Working Assets
Inc. also helps fund other alternative media groups such as
FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy
(IPA). In 1996, for instance FAIR/COUNTERSPIN was given a $59,723 grant
by Working Assets Inc. Among the alternative media groups funded by
Working Assets Inc. in 2000, besides FAIR/COUNTERSPIN and Norman
Solomon's IPA were Free Speech TV and the Independent Press Association.
That same year, Working Assets Inc. also helped fund a gorup with which
DEMOCRACY NOW producer/host Amy Goodman has worked closely, the East
Timor Action Network, as well as the National Public Radio News and
Information Fund, the Astraea Foundation, People for the American Way
Foundation, the Center for Campus Organizing, United for a Fair Economy,
Children's Defense Fund, the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights
Action League (NARAL), MADRE, and the American Friends Service
Committee.

Based in San Francisco, Working Assets Inc. is a privately-held,
secretive telecommunications company that discloses very little
financial information about its for-profit business to either its
400,000 customers or to U.S. consumers in general. One of its founders
was Tides Foundation President Drummond Pike. A trustee of Mills College
in recent years, Laura Scher, is a top executive at Working Assets Inc.
Another top Working Assets Inc. executive, Michael Kieschnick, has also
been involved until recently with the board of the National Network of
Grantmakers, which also includes representatives of the Funding Exchange
and the board of Mother Jones magazine/Foundation for National Progress.
Kieschnick still sits on the White House Project Advisory Board between
folks like PBS CEO Pat Michell and former U.S. Vice President Walter
Mondale. The White House Project Advisory Board was set-up to promote
the presidential candidacies of mainstream women politicians such as
U.S. Senator Rodham-Clinton. Another Working Assets Inc. official in
recent years, Lawrence Livak, has also been the Tides Foundation
Treasurer in recent years.

Because Working Assets Inc.'s stock is not sold on the stock market, it
is not legally obligated to post much financial information about its
business operations onto the Internet. In addition, executives at
Working Assets Inc. have been reluctant to reveal to Movement
writer-activists what kind of salaries it is presently paying its top
executives. Working Assets Inc. has also collaborated with J.C. Penney
in recent years on a "Shop for Social Change" business project.

Besides having the book she wrote in the 1990s subsidized by the Ford
Foundation, the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host/producer, Laura Flanders, also
had her journalism work subsidized for awhile in 1998 by another
foundation. After the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation gave a $50,000
grant to the Center for Democracy Studies of The Nation Institute, "to
monitor anti-abortion activities of several right-wing groups," Flanders
was employed briefly by that Nation magazine think-tank to write an
article on the subject, which subsequently appeared in The Nation
magazine. In 2000, the Rockefeller Foundation also gave the WORKING
ASSETS RADIO producer/host and two colleagues a $20,000 grant "to
support the creation and production of `Action Heroes,' a
multidisciplinary work." Members of the Rockefeller Foundation have
included World Bank manager, a Ford Motor Company director, a MacArthur
Foundation director, and an ITT Sheraton Corp. vice-president in recent
years.

Besides being the niece of COUNTERPUNCH editor Alexander Cockburn,
WORKING ASSETS RADIO producer/host Flanders is also the older sister of
Stephanie Flanders, who worked in the Clinton Administration as a
speechwriter/special assistant to Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.
Around the same time that former U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers was
named the new president of Harvard University, Stephanie Flanders began
working as a NEW YORK TIMES reporter. An October 1999 OBSERVER article
by Simon Kuper, entitled "The New Elite Who Run Our Equal Society"
indicated that the WORKING ASSETS RADIO host's younger sister is part of
a British elite group nicknamed "The Young Chiefs." According to Kuper:
"Members of this new elite were presented with thrilling opportunities
early in life... Another characteristic of the new elite is networks.
The Young Chiefs, who tend to live near each other in the centre of
London, got the big breaks from old friends or people they meet at their
friends' brunches or leaving parties. On the political side, the Young
Chiefs are so close that many of them are related. Ed Balls (Oxford,
Harvard and the Financial Times, economic adviser to Gordon
Brown)...studied in Boston...Ball's wife, Yvette Cooper (Oxford and
Harvard, now a Labour MP), is a Young Chief too, as is her sometime
tutorial partner at Oxford, Stephanie Flanders (Oxford, Harvard and the
Financial Times, senior adviser to the U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry
Summers)...Nick Denton (Oxford and the Financial Times, founder of
Moreover.com) was a friend of Flanders at the Financial Times and
through her met the elder Balls"

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