Media Groups

From a report by the National Committe on Responsive Philanthropy

The foundations provided $16.3 million (1992-1994) in grants to help political conservatives shape public and elite opinion. This money has supported three interlocking purposes: the development of right-wing media outlets, the development of conservative public affairs programming on public television and radio and the development of right-wing media critics to exert pressure on the media mainstream into covering the right's political,and policy agenda.

Multiple grants totaling $1.7 million were awarded to the American Spectator Educational Foundation, with over $600,000 provided to expand editorial staff and reporting at The American Spectator, $515,000 in flexible general operating support, and $485,000 in special project funding. Large grants were also awarded to National Affairs, the funding vehicle for The Public Interest and The National Interest ($1.9 million), and the Foundation for Cultural Review for The New Criterion ($1.6 million). An additional $1 million was awarded to support Commentary magazine. Most of this grant money was awarded on an unrestricted basis, allowing these groups considerable flexibility to bolster their circulation, launch special projects or develop their analytical and reporting capacities.

The American Spectator, for example, had a circulation of 38,000 in 1992. Today, the magazine reports a subscription base of 335,000. While increased circulation has been partly attributed to talk show boosting by Rush Limbaugh, the strong financial support of the conservative foundation community has assisted the American Spectator in its reportorial sensationalism and on-going efforts to keep alive a variety of scandals and attacks aimed at its political opponents in the center and on the left.

Other funds were directed to groups like the American Studies Center, whose central mission is "to improve the public's understanding of public policy issues." ASC's "Radio America" affiliate produces programming which can be heard on approximately 2000 radio stations across the country. ASC also produced "Reagan Reconsidered: A 12 part Documentary" and plans to launch a 24-hour-a-day radio network to broadcast "news, debate and analysis." The foundations provided $410,000 in grants [in he three year period] to support the general operations of Radio America as well as specific broadcast projects, "What's the Story," a weekly program on the media itself, and a documentary series on Black conservatives. Money was also provided to support two conservative daily radio shows - the "Alan Keyes Show" and "Dateline Washington."

Another$3.2 million was awarded for on-going support of such public television public affairs programs as William F. Buckley's Firing Line, Ben Wattenberg's Think Tank, Peggy Noonan's On Values, and other conservative news analysis shows.

Consistent with their efforts to expand opportunities for the airing of conservative viewpoints while narrowing them for progressive ones, conservative foundations have also provided significant support to right-wing critics of public broadcasting and the mainstream media. A total of $5.2 million was awarded to support the work of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Accuracy in Media, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the Center for Science, Technology and Media, the Media Research Center, the Media Institute, and others. Each of these organizations has worked "to perpetuate the myth of a liberal bias in mainstream media reportage," with particular criticism leveled against the Public Broadcasting Service.

The Center for the Study of Popular Culture has been a leader in the assault on PBS. With seed money provided by the Sarah Scaife Foundation, CSPC launched the Media Integrity Project in 1987 to attack PBS for "left-wing bias." The Center for Media and Public Affairs has also added its voice to the effort, timing the release of a major report alleging PBS bias to coincide with Republican efforts to reduce funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Other critics include Laurence Jarvik, a former Bradley Research Scholar at the Heritage Foundation and a current fellow at the Capital Research Center (see below), who has called for the privatization of PBS. Jarvik recently published a new attack, PBS: Behind the Scenes (1997), which Milton Friedman has described as a "splendid, hard-hitting yet fair-minded statement of the case for subjecting public broadcasting to market discipline." Accuracy in Media criticized PBS for "blatantly pro-Communist propaganda" and the Media Research Center argued that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting no longer serves any reasonable public purpose.

All of these efforts have contributed to a climate that makes right-wing issues and views increasingly respectable. They have also placed sustained pressure on major media to adjust or accommodate to right-wing attacks. Through scandal mongering and issue emphasis, conservative media outlets help to shape the news agenda for more established media while organized attacks on public television have led PBS to respond to its critics by augmenting already substantial conservative public affairs programming. The result is an even further narrowing of view-point. As the former dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, Ben Bagdikian, has observed in the context of growing concentration of media ownership, "what gets reported enters the public agenda. What is not reported may not be lost forever, but it may be lost at a time when it is most needed."