Harry Browne’s “The Promise and Threat of Foundation-Funded Journalism” turns a critical eye towards the rise of interest from newspapers and news gatherers in foundation support, and towards the rise of interest from foundations in funding news production. Browne contends that foundation support, even from foundations with specific political interests, funds news coverage that is less radical than hegemonic.
He cites ProPublica as an example. “In the end, for its first major report, ProPublica not only subsidised a massive corporate news operation, it did so within traditional ideological constraints – the anti-Arab and pro-Israeli bias that has been so unhelpfully characteristic of the major US news providers.”
Browne also discusses the Center for Public Inquiry in Ireland, which collapsed after a major funder, Atlantic Philantrhopies, withdrew its support following a possible smear attempt by the Irish government against CPI’s head, Frank Connolly, which itself followed two investigative reports highly critical of the Irish government. And Browne reviews “Transitions Online,” a publication which covers the evolution of formerly Communist Eastern European nations. Supported by George Soros’s Open Society Institute, “Transitions Online” reflects and advances Soros’s business and philosophical interests according to a study by Nicholas Guilhot.
Nonprofit support of news, and nonprofit news organizations themselves, have promise; National Public Radio, both on the air and on the Internet, has proved itself to be an elite and innovative organization, particularly during the past ten years. The aforementioned case of CPI illustrates a major concern, though. If news organizations are funded by only one (or only a few) sources, they are, in effect, highly leveraged organizations. Just as for-profit news organizations have sought a wide advertising base in order to more comfortably absorb the loss of (or addition of) advertisers, so nonprofits should diversify their funding sources as well.
Last fall I wrote a paper modeling how different influences function inside a grant-supported nonprofit organization. I examined cases where grant support led to government influence in a public radio newsroom, where foundation support skewed newsroom agenda-setting (largely by funding reporting and production positions focused on specific beats), and how the structure of nonprofit boards introduces new influences to the news room in unexpected ways.
Nothing precludes a nonprofit organization from taking advertising or underwriting, in addition to grant support. Nothing precludes an organization like ProPublica from seeking funding beyond that of its seed donors. Which ProPublica does – it recently received a major grant from the Knight Foundation for a large collaborative online project with The New York Times. But to illustrate the new influences in the nonprofit or foundation-supported model: the chairman of the Knight Foundation sits on the board of ProPublica.
The broader issue is one of situational awareness; despite their desperation, news organizations must remain conscious of who is influencing their behavior and how it is influenced. This concern is even greater for those nonprofit organizations involved with investigative journalism, which, at some point, will conflict with the interests of foundations and their funders.
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