OUR CONSTITUTION WAS a DELIBERATE FRAUD!
ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP: SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
by bob feldman
"The mass-circulation weekly TEMPO accused Ford of having once played,
at the urging of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, a covert role
in Indonesian political affairs by consciously supporting the work
of individuals who were deemed to be sympathetic to the
anti-communist aims of American foreign policy." --Chronicle of
Philanthropy, 12/13/01
"The Ford Foundation's history of collaboration and interlock with
the CIA in pursuit of U.S. world hegemony is now a well-documented
fact...The Ford Foundation has in some ways refined their style of
collaboration with Washington's attempt to produce world cultural
domination, but retained the substance of that policy...The ties
between the top officials of the Ford Foundation and the U.S.
government are explicit and continuing." --James Petras in "The Ford
Foundation and the CIA: A documented case of philanthropic
collaboration with the Secret Police" on 12/15/2001
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.
Part 1: PACIFICA / DEMOCRACY NOW / DEEP DISH TV
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman01.html
Part 2: FAIR / COUNTERSPIN / INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY / WORKING
ASSETS RADIO http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman02.html
Part 3: THE NATION INSTITUTE / RADIO NATION / THE NATION MAGAZINE
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman03.html
Part 4: ALTERNATIVE RADIO / Z MAGAZINE / SOUTH END PRESS
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman04.html
Part 5: MOTHER JONES / FOUNDATION FOR NATIONAL PROGRESS
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman05.html
Part 6: PROGRESSIVE
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman06.html
Part 7: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA &
U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY ‹ part 1
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman07.html
Part 8: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA &
U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY ‹ part 2
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman08.html
Part 9: FORD FOUNDATION, THE CIA &
U.S. ESTABLISHMENT CONSPIRACY ‹ part 3
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman09.html
Part 10: POLITICAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATES' EDELMAN-BUNDY CONNECTION
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/feldman10.html
COUNTERPUNCH's FERI/Roosevelt Dynasty Connection? ‹ part 1
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/cp_feri.html
More Nation Magazine ‹ Big Oil Links
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_bigoil.html
Project Censored's MacArthur Foundation Link
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/pc_macarthur.html
THE NATION's NED Connection
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_ned_1.html
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/nation_ned_2.html
NEW: Time For Ford Foundation & CFR To Divest?
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/ff_divest.html
The Ford Foundation's Skull and Bones Link
http://www.questionsquestions.net/feldman/ford_sb.html
commentary: Bob Feldman and Brian Salter reply to a reader (21 Sep
2002)
http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs0209/0920_response.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
original URL for this article:
http://www.questionsquestions.net/gatekeepers.html
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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ALTERNATIVE MEDIA CENSORSHIP:
SPONSORED BY CIA's FORD FOUNDATION?
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"
