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Revolutionary socialist alliance developed and funded by a
network of overtly anti-capitalist individuals, groups and
foundations to silence conservative media, leaving only left-wing
viewpoints.
Free
Press
(501(c)(3)
2008 Revenue: $4,351,393
2008 Assets: $3,914,786
40 Main St. Suite 301
Florence, MA 01062
www.freepress.net
Telephone: 413-585-1533 Facsimile: 413-585-8904
Contact Information: Ms. Kimberly Longey,
Managing Director
EIN: 41-2106721
Registered in the District of Columbia: August
14, 2003
(Filing 232932)
Registered foreign corporation in Massachusetts: December 15, 2003
(ID 413106721)
Exempt since:
2004
Self Description:
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit
organization working to reform the media. Through education,
organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media
ownership, strong public media, quality journalism, and universal
access to communications.
Actual:
Revolutionary
socialist alliance developed and funded by a network of overtly
anti-capitalist individuals, groups and foundations. Acts to dispossess corporate media of broadcast
license ownership, and to eliminate corporate capitalism generally.
Near-term goal is to shut down conservative talk shows and fight
viewpoints from the right regardless of the source. Acts as a command center
for attacks against specific opponents, mobilizing many left wing
groups in a large alliance. Preaches "reforming democracy"
in the sense of imposing "Democratic Republic of America" socialist-style central control over
society to insure
that only leftist views prevail.
Founded
with initial 2003 grants of $478,000 from Bill Moyers'
Schumann Center for Media and Democracy; $294,667 from the
Media
Education Foundation of Northampton, Massachusetts; $30,000 from the
Albert A. List Foundation (one of the last grants before the foundation's
planned 2004 spend-out of its assets and termination); and $25,000 from
the Overbrook Foundation for a conference.
|
Free
Press
financial condition 2008
|
Revenue |
|
Expenses |
|
Contributions |
$2,274,286 |
|
Government Grants |
$0 |
|
Program Services |
$250,865 |
|
Investments |
$177,152 |
|
Special Events |
$0 |
|
Sales |
$0 |
|
Other |
$0 |
|
|
|
Program Services |
$2,699.961 |
|
Administration |
$126,837 |
|
Other |
$477,343 |
|
Total Expenditures |
$3.304.141 |
|
|
Total Revenue |
$2,702,303 |
|
NET
GAIN/LOSS |
($601,838) |
|
|
Three Co-Founders:
Robert W. McChesney
Founding Treasurer of Free Press and
Action Fund
Theoretician
and Prophet:
Professor,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Department of Communication. Hosts
“Media
Matters” weekly radio commentary on
the university's NPR affiliate, WILL-AM radio.
McChesney, long-time editor of the overtly
socialist
Monthly Review, is
now a contributor
and is a member of the board of directors of the Monthly
Review Foundation (founded 1980 in New
York City;
2008 revenue:
$1,013,002)
that operates the magazine and
book publisher. He has written or
edited 12 award-winning books against corporate media. He is
a director of the Urbana Champaign Independent Media
Center and a trustee of the Milton S. Eisenhower Foundation.
His overall views are summarized in a quote from the August
2009 issue of The Bullet, published by the
Toronto-based Socialist Project:
|
Instead of waiting for the revolution to happen,
we learned that unless you make significant
changes in the media, it will be vastly more
difficult to have a revolution. While the media
is not the single most important issue in the
world, it is one of the core issues that any
successful Left project needs to integrate into
its strategic program. |
John Nichols
Founding Secretary of the Action Fund in
2004
Not a founding officer of Free Press in 2003
 Practitioner:
Political correspondent for
The Nation and associate editor of
Madison, Wisconsin's
Capital Times..He is a
regular contributor to
In These Times and
The Progressive. An early blogger
(1999), he writes "The Beat" blog for The Nation. He
was instrumental in arranging Free Press's November, 2003
kickoff gathering in Madison,
the
National Conference on Media Reform,
with a $25,000 grant from the Overbrook Foundation of New
York. Nichols co-authored a slim 128-page book with
McChesney in 2002 titled, Our Media, Not Theirs: The
Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media. Forewords
were provided by left-wing stars Noam Chomsky, Barbara
Ehrenreich, and Ralph Nader. It became a manual for radicals
when Free Press was organized shortly after its release. In
2010, Nichols and McChesney joined again to co-author
The
Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution
that Will Begin the World Again,
a
dystopian/utopian take on socialist control of the news
media that floats somewhere between apocalyptic and giddy.
Booklist
reviewer Vanessa Bush summed up the Nichols/McChesney
agenda:
|
Their bottom line: without some kind of
government support, journalism as we know it
will not survive. Despite resistance to the idea
of government support of media, they point to
postal subsidies dating back to the 1700s. They
also offer the model of government and
philanthropic support of media in Britain (the
BBC and the Guardian), as well as the much
leaner history of government support for public
broadcasting in the U.S. Among their
suggestions: worker and community cooperative
ownership of local media and quasi nonprofit
news organizations. The authors argue
passionately for radical solutions but also
offer an exhilarating vision for the direction
of American journalism. |
Josh Silver
Founding President and Executive Director of
Free Press and the Action Fund
(2008 personal income - $105,132 salary, $14,892 benefits,
$18,599
other compensation)
 Activist:
While he was Fundraising Director
of the Smithsonian
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
in Washington, asking rich foundations for donations and
discovering they were congenial, knowledgeable, and
like-minded, Silver's long-term loathing of corporate media and
his admiration for McChesney's book,
Rich Media, Poor
Democracy, led him to contact the professor and ask for
advice on how to dismantle corporate dominance.
McChesney said anti-corporate-media groups "needed a
committed, formidable lobbying force." Silver's
Smithsonian contacts in the foundation world quickly
convened a formidable money force for him to create Free
Press, including an initial board member, Olga Davidson
Nagy, chair of Ilex Foundation (a Rockefeller corporate
foundation run by profoundly talented scholars) and
donations from Overbook Foundation, run by a board of
directors of cutting-edge artistry and deep scholarship,
along with good relations with Bill Moyers' Schumann
Center for Media and Democracy. Silver created the
lobbying group Free Press Action Fund and the 501(c)(3)
Free Press simultaneously in Washington, D.C. on August
14, 2003, but did not register Free Press in
Massachusetts for another month and the Action Fund not
until May 2004. |
Free Press
Officers and Directors
2009
| Name |
Title |
Compensation |
|
KIMBERLY LONGEY |
ASSISTANT SECRETARY &
ASSISTANT TREASURER |
$114,023 |
|
JOSHUA SILVER |
PRESIDENT/EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR |
$105,132 |
|
ROBERT W. MCCHESNEY |
DIRECTOR |
$0 |
|
JOHN NICHOLS |
DIRECTOR |
$0 |
|
TIM WU |
CHAIRMAN |
$0 |
|
Marcy Carsey |
DIRECTOR |
$0 |
|
KIM GANDY |
SECRETARY
/ DIRECTOR |
$0 |
| Olga Davidson |
DIRECTOR |
$0 |
| James Early |
DIRECTOR |
$0 |
| Lawrence Lessig |
DIRECTOR |
$0 |
WHO ARE THESE GUYS?
| Name |
INSIDER
NETWORK |
KIMBERLY LONGEY |
former
Deputy Director, Proteus Fund |
TIM WU |
Professor
of Law, Columbia University |
OLGA
DAVIDSON |
Chairman,
Ilex Foundation
Visiting Associate Professor,
Middle Eastern Program, Wellesley College
|
MARCY CARSEY |
Television producer, Carsey-Werner Company |
KIM
GANDY |
Former
President, National Organization for Women
Former President, NOW Foundation
Former Chair, NOW Political Action Committee |
JAMES
COUNTS EARLY |
Former
Heritage Director, Smithsonian
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Former associate
professor, Antioch College, Washington, D.C.
Director,
Children's Studio School
Director, National Black
Consortium |
LAWRENCE LESSIG |
Director,
Center for Ethics, Harvard
University
Professor of law,
Harvard Law School.
Founding board member,
Creative Commons
Board member,
Software Freedom Law Center
Former board member,
Electronic Frontier Foundation |
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