`Democracy Now!' and FAIR/`CounterSpin'''s Park Foundation Connection--Conclusion

At the time of his death on October 25, 1993, Roy H. Park was still the Park Communications’ Chairman of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer, and the owner of the 90 percent of the Park Communications’ stock that the Park family and its Park Foundation then inherited. And on December 10, 1993, Roy Park’s widow, former Park Communications board member/board secretary and Park Foundation president emeritus Dorothy D. Park, was authorized to act as the Personal Representative of Roy Park’s estate.

As Personal Representative of her husband’s estate, Dorothy Park then informed Park Communications board member and former U.S. Senator Harry Byrd Jr. and her other colleagues on the Park Communications board of directors (at a Special Meeting on March 25, 1994 of the company’s board of directors) that the Park family had decided to sell all the Park Communications stock that the family and its Park Foundation had inherited. And, in response, the Park Communications board of directors voted to hire the Goldman Sachs investment banking firm on Wall Street to help it arrange the sale of the entire Park Communications media empire.

A private investment concern, Park Acquisitions, Inc., (that was headed by Alabama real estate developer Gary Knapp and Lexington, Kentucky stockbroker Donald Tomlin) then agreed on October 25, 1994 to purchase the Park Communications media empire for $711.4 million. But $573.4 million of the $711.4 million that the Park family, the Park Foundation, and the other Park Communications received from the sale of Park Communications apparently came from a “loan” of public pension fund money of The Retirement Systems of Alabama [RSA] to Knapp and Tomlin’s Park Acquisitions, Inc..

And the remaining $138 million that the Park family, the Park Foundation and the other Park Communications stockholders received from their own company’s sale was just “derived from cash on the Company’s books at the closing of the acquisition,” according to a 1995 S.E.C. financial filing. As the American Journalism Review noted in its May 1999 issue:

“…David Bronner, head of the Alabama pension fund…provided the money when two businessmen, Donald Tomlin and Gary Knapp, first acquired Park Communications from the estate of media mogul Roy Park; in effect, it had loaned money…. Bronner, 54, is known for such unorthodox ventures as the $120 million, seven-course Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail across Alabama and a half dozen downtown Montgomery high-rises… Bronner says he earns…$240,000 a year…”

After Bronner’s Retirement Systems of Alabama [RSA] pension fund “loaned” $573,4 million in public money for the purchase of Park Communications (that eventually ended up in the hands of the Park family and its Park Foundation), the RSA pension fund then “spent $2.5 billion to take control of Raycom Media, a television chain that has grown under its ownership from six small stations to 34 stations in 18 states…,and…invested $1.8 billion in Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., which now owns hundreds of small daily and weekly newspapers around the country,” according to a December 2002 article by Rob Gurwith, “David Bronner: High-Roller,” that was posted on the www.governing.com website. The same article also noted that Bronner’s RSA/Raycom Media/Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. “pension fund” also “bought 55 Water Street, one of the largest office buildings in Manhattan” and “owns real estate throughout Alabama, including a project to build a 35-story hotel in Mobile.” Coincidentally, “the newspapers and television stations” that Bronner’s pension fund in Alabama “controls are required to give the state free publicity.”

At the time of its 1994 sale to the recipients of the $573.4 million Retirement Systems of Alabama “loan”, the following television and radio broadcasting stations were then controlled by Park Communications:

WBMG-TV (CBS) Birmingham, Alabama
WTVQ-TV (ABC) Lexington, Kentucky
KALB-TV (NBC) Alexandria, Louisiana
WUTR-TV (ABC) Utica, New York
WNCT-TV (CBS) Greenville, North Carolina
WDEF-TV (CBS) Chattanooga, Tennessee
WJHL-TV (CBS) Johnson City, Tennessee
WTVR-TV (CBS) Richmond, Virginia
WSLS-TV (NBC) Roanoke, Virginia

WNLS-AM/WTNT-FM Tallahassee, Florida
KWLO-AM/KFMW-FM Waterloo, Iowa
KJJO-AM/FM Minneapolis, Minnesota
WPAT-AM/FM serving the Greater New York City Area
WHEN-AM/FM Syracuse, New York
WNCT-AM/FM Greenville, North Carolina
KWJJ-AM/FM Portland, Oregon
WNAX-AM/FM Yankton, South Dakota
WDEF-AM/FM Chattanooga, Tennessee
WTVR-AM/FM Richmond, Virginia
KEZX-AM/FM Seattle, Washington

Between Roy Park’s death and the finalization of its sale of Park Communications in 1995, the Park Foundation president emeritus, Dorothy D. Park, was both the Park Communications chairman of the board and the corporate board’s secretary. And besides former U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr., the Park Communications board of directors included a Goldman Sachs executive named J. Markham Green, a Wachovia Bank of North Carolina executive named John McNair III, a Park Foundation director named Wright Thomas and Roy H. Park and Dorothy Park’s son: Park Outdoor Advertising of New York Chairman of the Board, President and CEO Roy H. Park Jr..
In addition, Park Foundation and Park Communications directors Dorothy Park and Wright Thomas also sat next to Park Communications and Park Outdoor Advertising of New York director Roy H. Park Jr. on the board of directors of RHP Incorporated, Inc. –which was wholly owned by the Estate of Roy H. Park, Dorothy Park and a marital trust for the benefit of Dorothy Park. And, coincidentally, according to its February 24, 1995 S.E.C. financial filing, Park Communications “purchased 10 buildings and one tower from RHF Incorporated and its subsidiaries at the…market value of $4,415,000” in 1994; and during 1994, Park Communications “placed $84,298 of promotional advertising with Park Outdoor Advertising of New York Inc., which is controlled by Roy H. Park Jr. a director of the company.”

After the Park family and its Park Foundation added most of the $711.4 million from the sale of its Park Communications media empire to its personal and foundation bank accounts in the mid-1990s, the son and daughter of Roy H. Park apparently decided to divide the Park Foundation into two different foundations: the Triad Foundation (run by Roy H. Park Jr.) and the Park Foundation (run by Adelaide Park Gomer ).

As president and chairman of his tax-exempt, “non-profit” Triad Foundation, Roy Park Jr. was paid an annual salary of $220,706 in 2010 by the Triad Foundation for spending only 20 hours a week “working” for his own foundation, according to the Triad Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing for the year beginning August 1, 2010 and ending July 31, 2011. And the grandson of Roy H. Park—Roy H. Park III—was paid an annual salary of $173,492 in 2010 by the Triad Foundation for “working” only 13 hours a week as an executive vice-president and secretary of his family’s Triad Foundation.

Of the over $226 million in assets that Roy Park Jr.’s Triad Foundation controlled in 2010, over $110 million consisted of stocks and bonds in both foreign and U.S. corporations and over $68 million in hedge fund and limited partnership investments Between 2008 and 2011 the Triad Foundation owned large chunks of stock, for example, in the following companies: Royal Dutch Shell; BASF; Daimler Chrysler; Bank of America; Boeing; AOL, Inc.; Apache Corp.; Bank NY Mellon; Caterpillar; ConocoPhillips; Dreamworks; General Electric; Honeywell; Marathon Oil; McDonald’s; Pfizer; Merck; Time-Warner; Viacom; Wells Fargo; Occidental Petroleum; Microsoft; Newmont Mining; Halliburton; JP Morgan Chase; Goldman Sachs; and the New York Times Company. And from its stocks and bonds portfolio, the Triad Foundation received around $2 million in dividends and interests between August 2010 and August 2011. After over $39 million of Park Foundation president emeritus Dorothy Park’s personal wealth was “contributed” to the Triad Foundation during this period, the revenues of the “non-profit” Roy Park Jr.’s foundation between August 2010 and August 2011 ended up exceeding the foundation’s expenses by over $40 million; and the foundation’s assets increased from over $174 million to over $226 million between 2010 and 2011.

The market value of assets controlled by Adelaide Park Gomer’s Park Foundation in 2011, however, still apparently exceeded the market value of assets controlled by her brother’s Triad Foundation. According to the Form 990 financial filing for 2010 of the Park Foundation, the foundation that funds Democracy Now! Productions, F.A.I.R./CounterSpin, and Mother Jones magazine, as well as NPR and the PBS NewsHour, controlled over $315 million in assets in 2010—including over $233 million worth of corporate stocks and bonds—and received over $3.3 million in dividends and interests from its stocks and bonds portfolio in 2010.

The January 2007 will of Park Foundation president emeritus Dorothy Park originally indicated that the $200 million personal fortune that she was expected to leave behind was “to be split evenly between the Park Foundation and Park Jr.’s Triad Foundation,” according to an article that appeared in the November 11, 2010 issue of Cornell University’s student newspaper, The Ithacan. But as The Ithacan observed:

“On Aug. 7 [2010], Dorothy Park signed a power of attorney agreement naming Park Jr. as her agent, including a New York Statutory Major Gifts Rider that would grant him the right to contribute major gifts on her behalf….According to court documents, Dorothy Park’s will was altered Aug. 15 while Park Jr. was designated as her agent...The change made Aug. 15 designated $120 million to go to the Triad Foundation and $80 million to the Park Foundation….”

A big chunk of the “charitable” grants that Roy Park Jr’s Triad Foundation distributes goes to help fund “needy”, tax-exempt, “non-profit” institutions like the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism and Cornell University. Between 2008 and 2011, for example, nine grants, totaling nearly $4 million, were given to the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism by the Triad Foundation; while 22 “charitable” grants, totaling over $2 million, were given to Cornell University in 2010 alone, by the Triad Foundation. And besides giving “charitable” grants to the University of North Carolina and Cornell University, the Triad Foundation—whose president and chairman was the Park Outdoor Advertising of New York’s chairman and CEO during the 1990s—gave, coincidentally, two “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to the Foundation for Outdoor Advertising Research and Education between 2008 and 2010.

Like his sister’s Park Foundation, Roy Park Jr.’s Triad Foundation also uses some of its tax-exempt foundation money to help fund various politically partisan media groups and think-tanks. But, unlike the Park Foundation, the Triad Foundation helps fund politically partisan right-wing conservative media groups and think-tanks like National Review Institute/National Review magazine, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, the Heritage Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute. Between 2008 and August 2011, for example, the Triad Foundation gave “charitable” grants to the following right-wing conservative or neo-conservative organizations:

1. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to National Review Institute/National Review magazine—whose editor and president, Kate O’Bierne, was paid an annual salary of $240,000 in 2010 by the “non-profit” National Review Institute;

2. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $10,00, to the David Horowitz Freedom Center for “support for…Defense of Israel campaign”;
3. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $25,000, to the Heritage Foundation;

4. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $60,000, to the American Enterprise Institute;

5. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $20,000, to the Media Research Center;

6. A $2,500 “charitable” grant to Capital Research Center;

7. A $7,500 “charitable” grant to the Independent Women’s Forum;

8. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $10,000, to the Cato Institute;

9. A $10,000 “charitable” grant to the Manhattan Institute;

10. A $5,000 “charitable” grant to the American Conservative Foundation;

11. Four “charitable” grants, totaling $27,000, to the Young America Foundation [YAF]—including a $12,000 “charitable” grant “to bring Mike Huckabee to speak at Cornell in Spring 2008”; and

12. A $500 “charitable” grant to the George W. Bush Foundation.

So although the brother of the big Democratic Party campaign contributor (whose Park Foundation helps fund Democracy Now!, F.A.I.R./CounterSpin and Mother Jones magazine) doesn’t contribute as much money to the Republican Party as his sister, Adelaide Park Gomer, contributes to the Democratic Party, some of the surplus wealth that the Park family obtained from the sale of Roy Park Sr.’s media empire in the 1990s is also being used to fund right-wing conservative groups in the 21st-century. (end of article)

`Democracy Now!' and FAIR/`CounterSpin''s Park Foundation Connection--Part 2

“Mrs. Park is the Personal Representative of the Estate of Roy H. Park, former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Company and holder of…89.65% of the Company's outstanding Common Stock. 18,684,505 of the shares…are held by Mrs. Park…Under Mr. Park's will, an amount of shares previously held by Mr. Park equal to 51% of the Company's outstanding Common Stock was bequeathed to Park Foundation, Inc….Mrs. Park is the Secretary and one of three current members of the Board of Directors of Park Foundation. The other two Directors of Park Foundation are Wright M. Thomas (President, Chief Operating Officer and a Director of the Company) and Adelaide Park Gomer, daughter of Dorothy D. Park and the late Roy H. Park…The residue of Mr. Park's Estate…was also bequeathed to Park Foundation. On March 25, 1994, at a Special Meeting of the Company's Board of Directors, Mrs. Park…informed the Company of the Estate's decision to sell the Estate-held shares of the Company. In response to this announcement, the Board voted to seek a sale of the entire Company…Park Foundation has consented to the decision to sell the Estate-held shares…”

--from a 3/31/94 SEC filing of Park Communications

Democracy Now! and FAIR/CounterSpin’s Park Foundation Connection—Part 2

Not surprisingly, much of the tax-exempt “charitable” grant money that the Park Foundation has been pouring into alternative media groups like Democracy Now! Productions, Mother Jones magazine and F.A.I.R./CounterSpin and into subsidizing various PBS news-oriented programming in recent years is derived from the $3 million-plus in Wall Street dividends and interest that it obtains annually from a Park Foundation stock and bonds portfolio—whose fair market value exceeded $233.5 million in 2010, according to the Park Foundation’s Form 990 financial filing.

Until Roy Park’s family sold its Park Communications media empire for $711.4 million in October 1994 to an Alabama real estate developer and a Lexington, Kentucky stockbroker (who subsequently re-sold the media properties to the Media General media conglomerate in 1996), most of the Park family’s Park Foundation “charitable” grant money was apparently derived from owning around 90 percent of the stock in Park Communications—whose annual revenues exceeded $148 million in the late 1980s.

Prior to October 26, 1983, 100 percent of the stock in the Park family’s mainstream media empire was just owned by Roy Park and not sold on any of the Wall Street stock exchanges. And in their 1980 edition, the editors of Everybody’s Business: An Almanac described how Roy H. Park went about accumulating much of the surplus wealth that he later used to set up his tax-exempt Park Foundation:

“…He has stations in a dozen cities stretching from Birmingham, Alabama, to Seattle, Washington. The biggest of his TV stations is Birmingham’s WBMG, a CBS affiliate...There’s nothing to stop Park from gathering newspapers. And he keeps picking them up, one after another. In mid-1980 he had 42 under his belt, all small-town papers: 17 are dailies, 12 are weeklies; and 13 are shoppers’ weeklies that are given away…


“Park operates through a maze of companies—about 50 of them—and they are not consolidated under any one corporation…The two principal corporate entities are Park Broadcasting and Park Newspapers. But Park’s interests extend to other areas too; he’s in the outdoor advertising business (renting billboard space), and he’s active in real estate. How much of his estimated $60 million annual sales comes from publishing and broadcasting is not known, nor is Park required to tell anyone. His companies are private…In addition to his media empire, Roy Park owns citrus groves in Florida, a real estate enterprise in South Carolina, farm and timberlands in North Carolina, and a lot of real estate in Ithaca, including 88,000 square feet at the Terrace Hill complex…”

In 1980, for example, the Park family owned the following mainstream television and radio broadcasting stations:

1. WTVR-TV (CBS) and WTVR-AM/FM in Richmond, Virginia;

2. WBMG-TV (CBS) in Birmingham, Alabama;

3. WNCT-TV (CBS) and WNCT-AM/FM in Greenville, North Carolina;

4. WDEF-TV (CBS) and WDEF-AM/FM in Chattanooga, Tennessee;

5. WJHL-TV (CBS) in Johnson City, Tennessee;

6. WUTR-TV (ABC) Utica, New York;

7. WHEN-AM and WONO-FM in Syracuse, New York;

8. KEZX-FM in Seattle, Washington;

9. KWJJ-AM and KJIB-FM in Portland, Oregon;

10. WNAX-AM in Yankton, South Dakota; and

11. KRSI-AM/FM in St. Louis Park, Minnesota.

Yet in the early 1970s the Black Broadcasting Coalition [BBC] of Richmond opposed the FCC’s renewal, without any hearing, of the licenses of the Roy H. Park Broadcasting of Virginia, Inc. to operate the Park family’s WTVR-TV and WTVR-AM/FM television and radio stations in Richmond because of its stations' alleged racial discrimination in employment during the 1969-1972 license period and the inadequacy of their affirmative action effort both during and after that period. As the United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit and District judges observed in an April 20, 1977 decision in the Black Broadcasting Coalition of Richmond vs. FCC and Roy H. Park Broadcasting of Virginia, Inc. case:

“…. In short, the record disclosed responsible claims that WTVR had engaged in overt discrimination…In addition…BBC hotly contested the adequacy of WTVR's efforts to reach out into the minority community to recruit qualified or qualifiable minority employees…Perhaps the best statement of WTVR's attitude toward its obligation to reach into the community to develop contacts is its response to BBC's uncontested allegation that WTVR had had no contact with any of the black organizations which routinely assisted minority applicants in getting jobs…Appellant also alleged that the stations' initial ascertainment of community needs was defective in that it ignored the attitudes of blacks who lived outside the City of Richmond and took insufficient account of black interests within the City, which has a 42 percent black population…In the year immediately following BBC's petition to deny, WTVR hired six additional black employees. In the next year, however, only two and then one black was added, although total employment at the station increased by nine….Similarly, the movement of blacks into the upper four job categories…after an immediate increase by five in 1973, has slowed to two and then zero. Such a pattern of minority hiring and advancement is at best erratic and at worst demonstrates a declining trend…”

The small-town newspapers that the Park family’s Park Newspaper firm published were apparently quite profitable in some cases. For example “when Roy Park owned the [Jeffersonville, Indiana] Evening News, profit margins reached 40 percent,” according to an article by Mary Walton, titled “The Selling Of Small-town America,” that appeared in the May 1999 issue of American Journalism Review. And on October 26, 1983, Roy Park’s private company went “public” and began to sell some of its stock to Wall Street investors, when “the Company made a public offering of 2,219,625 shares…of the Company’s Common Stock, representing 9.5 percent of the total shares,” according to a 1995 S.E.C. financial filing.

Coincidentally, between August 22, 1983 and Roy Park’s death in October 1993, a former U.S. Senator from Virginia named Harry F. Byrd Jr. (who replaced his father, Harry Byrd Sr., in the U.S. Senate as Virginia’s representative in 1965 and held his family’s U.S. Senate seat there until 1983) sat next to Roy Park on the board of directors of Park Communications. According to Wikipedia, former Park Communications board member Byrd Jr. “like his father” had “a very conservative voting record;” and “in 1971, Byrd proposed a bill to allow the importation of various metals from Rhodesia, contradicting the position of…the United Nations Security Council which forbade most forms of trade or financial exchange with Rhodesia, which had a white-controlled government” and “the 1971 Byrd Amendment allowed Rhodesia to evade these sanctions.” Wikipedia also noted that:

“…Even as a senator, Byrd contributed regular editorial content to his newspapers, blending journalism and politics…Byrd served as Chairman of the Board of the Winchester Star that had been owned by the family for more than 100 years until 1990, and did not hire an African-American reporter until 2000…”

(end of part 2)

`Democracy Now!' and FAIR/`CounterSpin's Park Foundation Connection--Part 1

“…Roy H. Park accomplished something that broadcasting giants like CBS, NBC, and ABC have not been able to do yet: put together the biggest collection of broadcasting properties allowed under the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission.”

-- from the 1980 edition of Everybody’s Business: An Almanac

“This is an appeal from orders of the Federal Communications Commission renewing without hearing licenses to operate Stations WTVR-AM-FM-TV over the opposition of appellant Black Broadcasting Coalition of Richmond (BBC). The appeal brings into issue the stations' alleged racial discrimination in employment during the 1969-1972 license period…The WTVR stations involved…include several…facilities which due to their size and influence are a major factor in the Richmond, Virginia broadcasting market. The BBC's opposition to renewal…alleged that during the three-year license term: (1) WTVR employed only one part-time black employee out of 62 full-time and six part-time employees at its television station, and no blacks out of 26 employees at its radio stations. (2) Qualified blacks had been available for employment but were rejected. (3) WTVR had been involved in two instances of discrimination against blacks (each instance being supported by affidavit): one involving a refusal to hire and the other a firing.”

-- from the U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit 1977 decision in the Black Broadcasting Coalition of Richmond v. FCC and Roy H. Park Broadcasting of Virginia, Inc. case.

“The Park Foundation was formed in 1966. Its…focus was on…grant making in communities where Park Communications had interests. When he died in 1993, Mr. Park bequeathed more than 70 percent of his holdings to the Foundation…The Foundation is dedicated to the…support of…selected areas of interest to the Park family…Broadcasting is a particularly meaningful recipient of funding…Mr. Park’s family continues an active involvement in the Foundation, with his daughter, and granddaughter serving as trustees, and his wife serving as President Emeritus.”

-- from the Park Foundation website

Democracy Now! and FAIR/CounterSpin’s Park Foundation Connection

Between 1990 and 2012, the daughter of the now-deceased super-rich Park Communications media mogul Roy H. Park—Park Foundation board of trustees president Adelaide Gomer—contributed over $400,000 to help fund the politically partisan campaigns of mainly Democratic Party politicians, according to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets website. (On September 21, 2006, for example, she gave a $10,000 campaign contribution to the DNC Services Corporation; and on February 20, 2012 she also gave a $5,000 campaign contribution to the Moveon.org. politically partisan group). In addition, between 2009 and June 30, 2012, the tax-exempt Park Foundation—on whose board of trustees Roy H. Park’s granddaughter Alicia Wittink also sits—provided over $12.7 million in “charitable” grants to various U.S. alternative and mainstream media groups and media organizations, according to the Park Foundation’s website. And, coincidentally, between 2009 and June 30, 2012 the Park Foundation provided four “charitable” grants, totaling $100,000, “for general operating support” to Democracy Now! Productions; and three grants, totaling $105,000, to the Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting [F.A.I.R.]/CounterSpin alternative media/left gatekeeper group.

Of the $105,000 given by the Park Foundation to F.A.I.R./CounterSpin between 2009 and June 30, 2012, $30,000 was given to help subsidize the “production and distribution” of F.A.I.R.’s weekly CounterSpin radio show; while $75,000 was given by the Park Foundation to F.A.I.R. “for F.A.I.R.’s `PBS and Public Interest’ research project.” And, coincidentally, the same Park Foundation which funded this alternative media group’s research project on PBS between 2009 and 2012 also helped fund some of the programming produced by and for the various mainstream media Public Broadcasting Service [PBS]-affiliated television stations. Between 2009 and June 30, 2012, for example, the Park Foundation that funds both Democracy Now! Productions and F.A.I.R./CounterSpin also gave “charitable” grants to the following PBS-linked mainstream media organizations:

1. Two “charitable” grants, totaling over $1.2 million, to the PBS-affiliated Educational Broadcasting Corporatio/WNET-Channel 13 mainstream media organization for “series support for NOW on PBS” and for “series support for `Bill Moyers Journal’”;

2. Six “charitable” grants, totaling over $2 million, to the PBS-affiliated Greater Washington Educational Telecommunications Associates/WETA-TV mainstream media organization for “coverage of environmental, media, political and social issues on `NewsHour with Jim Leher’” show, for a “Bizkids” show “aimed at teaching youth about money and business,” for the “PBS NewsHour,” show and for “Ken Burns’ PBS film series on Vietnam War”; and

3. Five “charitable” grants, totaling over $1.9 million, to the PBS-affiliated WGBH Foundation for “series support for FRONTLINE” and for production of a documentary.

Besides funding both F.A.I.R.’s “PBS and Public Interest Research project” and some of the PBS programming and PBS-affiliated mainstream media stations that F.A.I.R. claims to be “independently” monitoring for accuracy and for conflict-of-interest and abuse of mass media power issues, the Park Foundation also funds Ithaca College’s “Park Center for Independent Media”—which, for example, was given a $25,000 “charitable” grant by the Park Foundation on June 30, 2010 for the “hiring of an associate director” at an annual salary of $75,000. And, coincidentally, the director of the Park Foundation-funded “Park Center for Independent Media,” in recent years has been none other than the founder of the F.A.I.R./CounterSpin alternative media group: Jeff Cohen.

In addition to funding the PBS NewsHour mainstream media television show, the foundation of Roy Parks’ family also has been dishing out large sums of “charitable” grant money to other alternative media/left gatekeeper groups besides Democracy Now! Productions and F.A.I.R./CounterSpin during the post-2008 endless U.S. economic recession. Between 2009 and June 30, 2012, for example, the Park Foundation gave tax-exempt “charitable” grants to the following alternative media/left gatekeeper groups:

1. Three “charitable” grants, totaling over $ 1 million, to the Free Press alternative media group for “general operating support”;

2. Six “charitable” grants, totaling $425,000, to Foundation for National Progress/Mother Jones magazine for “general operating expenses” and a “collaborative journalism initiative on climate change issues”;

3. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $70,000, to the Independent Media Institute/AlterNet “for AlterNet” and for the “expansion of AlterNet’s coverage of freshwater issues”;

4. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to The Nation magazine/Nation Institute;

5. Four “charitable” grants, totaling $60,000, to the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA] for “general operating support”;

6. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $64,000, to the “Institute for Media Analysis/GRITtv for “general operating support for and syndication of GRITtv,” “to help launch…a major promotion and distribution drive,” and for “the launch of `The Laura Flanders Show’ on public television”;

7. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $20,000, to Public Communications Inc./Free Speech TV for “network expansion of Free Speech TV”;

8. Five “charitable” grants, totaling $48,000, to the Pacifica Foundation/Pacifica Radio “for WBAI Community News Stringer Project”;

9. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $25,000 to Common Dreams Inc./Common Dreams for “general operating support”;

10. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to Truthout for “general operating support”;

11. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $225,000, to Proteus Fund, Inc. for “general operating support for the Media Democracy Fund, a collaborative grantmaking initiative to provide grants”;

12. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $40,000, to the Institute for Policy Studies [IPS] “to…provide support for OtherWords, an opinion syndicate”;

13. A $20,000 “charitable” grant to the Consortium for Independent Journalism;

14. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000, to the Positive Future Network/Yes! Magazine “for Yes! Magazine”; and

15. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $20,000, to the Earth Island Institute/Earth Island Journal.

In addition, besides subsidizing the producers of so many PBS mainstream media programs and so many U.S. alternative media/left gatekeeper groups with its tax-exempt “charitable” grants between 2009 and June 30, 2012, the Park Foundation also gave a “charitable” grant of $1 million to the Independent Production Fund for a “Moyers & Company multimedia project” and three “charitable” grants, totaling $300,00, to help fund the National Public Radio [NPR] mainstream media organization during this same period.

Between 2009 and June 30, 2012 the Park Foundation also distributed tax-exempt “charitable” grants to the following other organizations:

1. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $45,000, to the Media Access Project for “general operating support”;

2. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $30,000 to Media Matters for America;

3. A $10,000 “charitable” grant to Green America/Minuteman Media for “Minuteman Media and its…national distribution of…commentary to small circulation papers”;

4. A $20,000 “charitable” grant to Public Education Center Inc. for “reporting of National Security News Service”;

5. Two “charitable” grants, totaling $49,000, to the Trustees of Columbia University for “Columbia Journalism Review’s News Innovation about the challenges and opportunities facing journalism” and for Columbia Journalism Review’s “future of news initiative”;

6.Four “charitable” grants, totaling $100,000, to the Brave New Foundation/Dreamcatchers media organization; and

7. Three “charitable” grants, totaling $75,000, to the Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors organization.

Tax-exempt philanthropic foundation money grants are supposed to be given to "tax-deductible charity organizations" (to quote a Bob Dylan folk rock song from the Sixties) that actually help provide (in a politically non-partisan way) for the economic survival needs of the U.S. poor (especially during the endless U.S. economic recession);  and not be given to subsidize the politically partisan or self-promotional media work and bourgeois careerism of upper middle-class mainstream and alternative journalists. And when an inheritor of ultra-rich wealth gives a big money gift to a politically partisan journalist, one might think that some kind of gift tax on the donor would be required—even if the gift money to a politically partisan journalist is characterized as a “media grant” by the ultra-rich donor.

Yet groups like the Center for Public Integrity have apparently not been very interested in examining whether “charitable” philanthropic foundations like the Park Foundation should be allowed to use their tax-exempt grant money to create a 21st-century tax-exempt alternative/mainstream media empire network in the USA; in order to, perhaps, undemocratically push the Park Foundation’s particular politically partisan, Democratic Party-oriented agenda on the people of the United States. One reason might be because the Center for Public Integrity, itself, has been given large amounts of “charitable” grant money by the Park Foundation in recent years. Between 2009 and June 30, 2012, for example, the Park Foundation gave four grants, totaling $995,000, to the Center for Public Integrity for “general operating support.” (end of part 1)

Alterternative Media/Left Gatekeeper Censorship In 2002: Sponsored By CIA's Ford Foundation (and Roy Park's Foundation)?--Part 2

“Jeff Cohen is the founding Director of the Park Center for Independent Media and Endowed Chair / Associate Professor…In 1986, he founded FAIR…He…helped launch its magazine, Extra!, and its syndicated radio show, “CounterSpin…He was senior producer at MSNBC's Phil Donahue show until it was terminated on the eve of the Iraq war….--from the Park Foundation-subsidized Park Center for Independent Media of Ithaca College’s website

“The Park Foundation was established by the late Roy Hampton Park, Sr. — founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Park Communications, Inc….In 1949, Mr. Park launched a business relationship with famed restaurant expert Duncan Hines. The first product of Hines-Park Foods was the Duncan Hines Cake Mix…Procter & Gamble purchased the company in 1956, and Mr. Park launched his second career — mass communications. Ultimately, what became Park Communications, Inc. acquired or built 22 radio stations, 11 television stations, and 144 publications of which 41 were daily newspapers.


“Mr. Park's influence in the communications industry was felt across the country…The Park School of Communications at Ithaca College was named in his honor.


"The Park Foundation was formed in 1966. Its original focus was on education and grant-making in communities where Park Communications had interests. When he died in 1993, Mr. Park bequeathed more than 70 percent of his holdings to the Foundation….


“The Foundation is dedicated to the aid and support of …selected areas of interest to the Park family….Public broadcasting is a particularly meaningful recipient of funding…Mr. Park's family continues an active involvement in the Foundation, with his daughter, and granddaughter serving as trustees, and his wife serving as President Emeritus.” --from the Park Foundation website

“Stephanie Flanders was the Economics Editor for BBCs Newsnight programme from 2002. She often appears on other BBC television and radio programmes…She has also written for the…Financial Times…She left the FT in 1997 to become speech-writer and special advisor to US Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers during the Clinton Administration…She left Washington in 2001 to become a correspondent at the New York Times…Stephanie was educated at St Pauls Girls School, Balliol College, Oxford and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University…” --from the BCC international speakers’ bureau website

(Note: The following historical article about the hidden financial history of the U.S. alternative media and its historical left gatekeepers was written in 2002. So in 2012, some of the left gatekeepers mentioned in this 2002 historical article may have moved on to other positions within the U.S. alternative media/left subculture or mainstream U.S. media or academic world during the last 10 years.)

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, [former] MSNBC/DONAHUE SHOW PRODUCER Jeff Cohen and [former] 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, [former] 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 [former 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 late 2001 and 2002, 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-profit 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 group 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 [then-] 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 [former] 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 [former] 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, [former] 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 [former] 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."

(end of part 2 of 2002-written historical article)