Media and Leadership
To promote its public policy goals, the Fund promotes public forums that offer accurate information and open debate. Strategies:
1. Increase the independence and integrity of mainstream media.
Free Press –$100,000
Year 2 of core support, to improve the diversity and independence of the media.
2. Empower and build independent, public or alternative media.
Democracy Now! - $230,000 over 10 months
General Support for their media reform efforts and their award-winning probing alternative broadcasts.
Independent Media Institute/Alternet - $150,000
In support of Alternet’s “Essential Media Reform Project,” to create an interconnected network of content providers whose collaborative work would challenge and overcome conservative supremacy in the marketplace of ideas.
Institute for Social & Cultural Change/South End Press - $25,000
General support for this publisher of books that encourage critical thinking and constructive action on the key political, cultural, social, economic and ecological issues shaping modern life.
Link Media Inc./Link TV $100,000
General Support, for programming on critical global issues, audience building for the network, and other activities designed to heighten civic participation and increase Americans’ awareness of global issues.
Public Communicators, Inc/Free Speech TV - $35,000
General support for Free Speech TV’s efforts at refining ways to use television as a catalyst for civic engagement and social change, as an antidote to the current unprecedented consolidation of media ownership which renders already marginalized populations invisible and silent.
3. Support independent watchdog initiatives to expose bias, inaccuracy or incompleteness in the news.
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) - $25,000
Continued general support for their work monitoring and analyzing mainstream news media.
4. Oppose the aggregation of corporate control over media markets.
Media Access Project - $50,000
Continued general support for their work providing critical legal services to the media reform movement.
5. Provide the nation’s leaders with truthful and unbiased information about policy options and their consequences for real people, their communities, and the natural world.
Institute for Public Accuracy - $35,000
General support for their work gaining wide media access for a range of progressive researchers, activists, and analysts, to offset current media imbalances, where journalism has been replaced by infotainment and too often the “issues of the day” are debated within conservative frameworks that don’t reflect majority opinion.
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