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Media Transparency tracks the impact of conservative philanthropy on the media, both through a database of grant information and through original research.
To search by purpose of a grant, click on Grants. Recipients yields the funding sources for a long list of recipients. Funders details grants given by listed funders. People contains information, stories, reports and links to funding sources for people in the conservative movement.
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Issues lists the topics that conservative philanthropy considers important. Issue pages provide links to original Media Transparency reports, database research, and other stories from the web.
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A discussion of the history and influence of conservative philanthropy on the shaping of public attitudes on a variety of subject areas; includes links to reports related to conservative philanthropy, and links to other significant commentary on the subject.
ORIGINAL RESEARCH
Original reports by Media Transparency staff or by experts in the field. Links to funding sources and other reports and stories expand the depth of coverage.
MT authors include:
Andrew J. Weaver &
Nicole Seibert
Andrew J. Weaver, et. al.
Bill Berkowitz
Bryan G. Pfeifer
Dave Johnson
David Domke
David Neiwert
David Rubenstein
Dennis Redovich
Eric Alterman
Jerry Landay
Mark & Louise Zwick
Max Blumenthal
Michael Winship
Phil Wilayto
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D.
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. and Lawrence H. McGaughey, Esq.
Rob Levine
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH
May 5, 2008
Floyd Brown and David Bossie: Back in the Swift Boat captain's chairs
Two longtime practitioners of negative campaigning are mainstreaming attacks on Clinton and Obama
Floyd Brown and David Bossie have spent a good part of their political careers making life miserable for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Unlike Richard Mellon Scaife, the billionaire financier who was unremitting in his efforts to take the Clintons down during the latter part of the twentieth century and whose newspaper endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton prior to the Pennsylvania primary, neither Brown nor Bossie have had a pro-Hillary conversion.
These days, however, Brown's new organization, The National Campaign Fund -- which launched a new website "ExposeObama.com" -- and Bossie's Citizens United have added Sen. Barack Obama to the mix.
Brown recently told Time magazine that "he had established several other front groups to fund a long-range effort to erode Obama's support, including a second PAC, called The Legacy Committee, a 527 organization called Citizens for a Safe and Prosperous America and a so-called "social welfare" 501(c)4 nonprofit called the Policy Issues Institute."
Bossie told Newsweek that he was "assembling material for TV spots about Obama's ties with [Bill] Ayers, a Chicago professor and unrepentant former member of the Weather Underground, a group that bombed several government buildings to protest the Vietnam War."
April 28, 2008
Nipping at AIPAC's heels
'J Street,' a new liberal Jewish organization, hopes to challenge AIPAC's influence over U.S.-Israeli affairs
In its entry on the "The Little Engine That Could," Wikipedia notes that "the moralistic children's story ... is used to teach children the value of optimism." Like the little engine that could, "J Street," a new organization made up of prominent U.S. and Israeli Jews that hopes to shift the debate over the Middle East and U.S.-Israeli policy away from the conservative positions espoused by the mighty American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and towards a pro-peace position, must recognize that it has a huge hill to climb.
And one part of climbing that hill will be to redefine what it means to be "pro-Israel," a term that conservative Jewish and evangelical Christian organizations have claimed for their own.
"For too long, the loudest American voices on Israel have come from the far right," noted Jeremy Ben-Ami, a founder and director of both J Street, chartered as a 501(c)(4) organization, and its political-action affiliate, JStreetPac, a political action committee focusing on campaign funding.
"Those voices have claimed that the only way to be pro-Israel is to support military responses to political problems, to refuse to engage one's adversaries in dialogue and to put off the day of reckoning when hard compromises will be required to achieve a peaceful and secure future for Israel and the entire Middle East," he told reporters via teleconference in mid-April.
"These are not the kind of smart, tough views that serve the long-term interests of the state of Israel, of the United States -- or frankly, the American Jewish community," Ben-Ami, until recently, senior vice president in the Washington office of Fenton Communications, added.
April 16, 2008
Ron Wexler's Ten Commandments Commission ready to roll
House resolution congratulates the TCC and its supporters for their key role in promoting and ensuring recognition of the Ten Commandments as the "cornerstone of Western law"
Did you know that for the past two years, Congress has designated the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend (TCW)?" Most of us pay little attention to congressional resolutions. All sorts of resolutions are proposed; some pass, others are tabled, and still others are withdrawn.
These days, two resolutions relating to the Ten Commandments are being considered by Congress; one will again designate the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend," while the other aims to celebrate the Ten Commandments Commission (TCC), an organization led by a former veteran of the Israeli Armed Forces, and made up of a host longtime conservative evangelical Christian leaders.
For months, Chris Rodda, a Senior Research Director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), has been following developments surrounding the two Ten Commandments resolutions -- Senate Resolution 483 and House Resolution 598.
The Senate Resolution, introduced by Kansas Republican Senator Sam Brownback -- with Connecticut Independent Joseph Lieberman as its co-sponsor -- aims to once again recognize the first weekend in May as "Ten Commandments Weekend."
According to Rodda, the author of "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History -- Volume I," Brownback's resolution comes packed with 10 Whereas' starting of with: "Whereas the Ten Commandments are precepts foundational to the faith of millions of Americans," "Whereas the Ten Commandments are a declaration of fundamental principles for a fair and just society," and "Whereas, from the founding of the United States, the Ten Commandments have been part of America's basic cultural fabric," followed by quotes from Presidents George Washington, John Quincy Adams, and Harry Truman.
April 3, 2008
Freedom's Watch: Right-wing juggernaut, or another 'rootless organization'
Funded by wealthy Republican Party donors and former White House officials, the group may be accomplishing less than it claims
The hiring of Carl Forti, the former political director for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney's failed presidential run and hardball flinging spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), appeared to signal that Freedom's Watch is getting ready to gear up for Election 2008. However, will recent defections from the group, and reported questions about the actual existence of the $250 million war chest that Freedom's Watch's leaders have boasted about, slow its operation down?
On top of these questions, two well-connected conservative insiders, commenting on the condition of anonymity, raised their own questions about whether Freedom's Watch's rhetoric might be outpacing its actual accomplishments.
In late March, Freedom's Watch, the group founded by former White House staffers and funded by a host of very wealthy longtime Republican donors, announced that Forti, one of the GOP's premier hatchet men, will serve as its Executive Vice President and head up "the group's issue advocacy campaign in the fall."
Earlier in the month, Bradley Blakeman, a co-founder of Freedom's Watch and a former deputy assistant to Bush, stepped down as president of the organization. Blakeman's departure came soon after he sent out an email fundraising appeal which in part claimed that Freedom's Watch was "the only group capable of going toe-to-toe with George Soros and this Left-Wing juggernaut."
Blakeman boasted of Freedom's Watch's victory over MoveOn.org, allegedly beating them "at their own game (taking down The New York Times in the process!). In fact, we've been so successful that former Bill Clinton adviser James Carville proclaimed Freedom's Watch a grave danger to the Left's radical agenda. We'll take that as a compliment."
March 27, 2008
For the Religious Right, "The Times They Are A-Changin'"
The old guard is wondering if 'the younger generation will heed the call' while the young Turks have other things on their minds besides abortion and same-sex marriage
During a recent appearance at the National Religious Broadcasters conference, Dr. James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, expressed deep concern about the future of the conservative Christian movement he helped build. "The question is," Dobson said, "will the younger generation heed the call? Who will defend the unborn child in the years to come? Who will plead for the Terri Schiavos of the world? Who's going to fight for the institution of marriage, which is on the ropes today?"
Dobson pointed out that the deaths of such revered evangelical leaders including the Rev. Jerry Falwell, Dr. D. James Kennedy and Ruth Graham Bell "represent the end of an era." The radio talk show host "noted that others like Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, Pat Robertson and Chuck Swindoll will also soon pass from the scene, and questioned the impact on the conservative Christian church," the Associated Press reported.
"Who in the next generation will be willing to take the heat, when it's so much safer and more comfortable to avoid controversial subjects?" Dobson said. "What will be the impact on the conservative Christian church when the patriarchs have passed?"
In New York City on a recent mid-March weekend, The Nation magazine's "Left Forum 2008," featured a panel moderated by Esther Kaplan titled "Is the Christian Right Dead?" Promotional materials read: "The coalition between economic and social conservatives seems kind of rocky coming out of the Bush Presidency that brought them together. Is the Christian Right dead?"
March 14, 2008
Future unclear for Bush's Faith-Based Initiative
After seven years both Democratic presidential candidates express support for and reservations about Republican religious patronage system
The seventh anniversary of President George W. Bush's Faith Based Initiative passed quietly. Unlike the much ballyhooed launching of his faith-based initiative in January 2001, when a string of religious officials witnessed Bush sign executive orders bringing the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI) into existence, this year the president was apparently occupied by more pressing matters; convincing the public that a recession wasn't looming, trumpeting so-called successes of the surge in Iraq, and no doubt wondering what else he's going to be doing until its time to scurry back to Texas next January.
Interestingly enough, as Sarah Pulliam recently reported for Christianity Today, while none of the three major presidential candidates have "unveiled a specific plan for the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives," Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, and Democratic Party hopefuls Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "have each voiced support for federal funding of faith-based social services."
Obama told Christianity Today that he wants to take a look at the program before deciding how to deal with it: "One of the things that I think churches have to be mindful of is that if the federal government starts paying the piper, then they get to call the tune," Obama said. "I want to see how monies have been allocated through that office before I make a firm commitment [to] sustaining practices that may not have worked as well as they should have."
Burns Strider, Clinton's director of faith-based outreach, "said that if she were elected, Clinton would continue funding faith-based organizations, but would seek to maintain an appropriate boundary between church and state," Christianity Today reported. "Clinton emphasizes a 'fair and level playing field' for faith-based and secular providers of social services, Strider said."
March 5, 2008
Global warming 'skeptics' conference enabled by conservative philanthropy
Heartland Institute and dozens of other sponsors of conference funded by Coors, Bradley, Walton, Scaife and DeVos foundations
"Ignored, and often even censored and demonized" is how the promotional materials for the Heartland Institute's recent conference "The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change," described the way "distinguished scholars from the U.S. and around the world," that have had the courage to question global warming, have been treated by environmentalists and the mainstream media. In a "Background" piece, conference organizers claimed that "They [the scholars] have been labeled 'skeptics' and even 'global warming deniers,' a mean-spirited attempt to lump them together with Holocaust deniers.
Always on the lookout to defend the oppressed, both Glenn Beck, the right wing host of a CNN Headline News show, and the Fox News Channel rode in to rescue the "demonized" and beleaguered. On Monday morning, March 3, "Fox and Friends" homed in on the problem that the "skeptics" are facing. Fox's point: Goreistas, or advocates of devoting major resources to dealing with global warming, receive a disproportionate share of network and cable television face time, while those raising questions about global warming are shut out of the debate.
However, according to Think Progress, the conference was not ignored by the mainstream, media. "....The New York Times has published two separate articles on the conference, and the Times' John Tierney has written about it on his blog. Other mainstream press outlets that have covered the conference: the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Daily News, the New York Sun, and Reuters."
March 3, 2008
The Heritage Foundation at 35
Washington, D.C.-based tax-exempt "non-partisan" Republican think tank celebrating three-plus decades of saying no to government and yes to privatization, deregulation, wars, intervention and 'traditional family values'
President Bush opened a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation about the "War on Terror" by acknowledging that while he had only 14 months left in his presidency he was going to be "sprinting to the finish line." Bush complained about the Senate being slow to confirm Michael Mukasey for attorney general, urged Congress to make the Protect America Act permanent, and blasted "MoveOn.org bloggers" and "Code Pink protesters." He wrapped up his speech by saying he believed a president of the United States will come to the Heritage Foundation 50 years from now and say "Thank God that generation that wrote the first chapter in the 21st century understood the power of freedom to bring the peace we want."
Thirty-five years ago, when the Heritage Foundation first opened its doors, the War in Vietnam was finally winding its way toward a conclusion, Vice President Spiro Agnew had resigned in disgrace and President Richard Nixon, enmeshed in the Watergate scandal, would soon follow, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, was still not convinced that evangelicals should be deeply involved in the political process, the civil rights and the women's movements had won a number of transformative battles, having a social safety net was still a shared social value, privatization was a relatively little used term, and the "culture wars" had not yet punctured the national consciousness.
Historian Lee Edwards, in his book "The Power of Ideas," pointed out that "Conservative leaders and conservative ideas were out of public favor... In foreign [affairs], dètente was riding high ... [as Nixon] traveled to Communist China to kowtow to Mao Zedong."
Out of this conservative morass came -- among other things -- the Heritage Foundation, which helped lead the transformation from decades of liberalism to the past several decades of conservative hegemony. While Heritage wasn't the first conservative think tank -- the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute had been slogging along for years -- it was the first to be consciously embraced by a host of wealthy right-wing benefactors including beer magnate Joseph Coors and heir to the Mellon fortune, Richard Mellon Scaife, who had more on their minds than just churning out policy papers that few would read or heed. One of the ideological guides to the foundation's creation and early work was Paul Weyrich, now considered the "Godfather" of the New Right.
February 21, 2008
Oral Roberts University under new management
Enmeshed in scandal, the university founded by, and named for televangelist Oral Roberts, is bailed out by Hobby Lobby's Mart Green
Before there was a Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Benny Hinn or Joel Osteen, Oral Roberts was televangelism. He, along with a few other pioneers brought the tent revival into the age of mass communications; Roberts was broadcast on numerous television stations across the country. He stalked the stage, raised his voice, and had the audience in the palm of his hands. He appeared to indicate that he had special powers; he could heal the sick, mend the wounded, comfort the afflicted.
Oral Roberts had wealth, power, prestige and an all-American family. He amassed a fortune and later established a university in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which he named Oral Roberts University (ORU).
Now, ORU needs some financial and spiritual healing.
That's where Mart Green, a young multi-millionaire, comes in.
Green, 46, recently gave ORU more than $60 million "of his family's fortune to rescue" the university, "the evangelical Christian school engulfed in a spending scandal [involving Oral Roberts' son Richard and his wife Lindsay] and burdened with tens of millions of dollars in debt," the Associated Press reported on February 5.
February 6, 2008
Freedom's Watch may spend up to $250 million in 2008 election
Group founded to support Bush's surge in Iraq and encourage military action against Iran gearing up for November
In early December, Freedom's Watch, the well-funded conservative lobbying group founded by former White House staffers and extremely wealthy longtime Republican donors, fired its first shot in Election 2008. Founded last year, and making its public debut with a $15 million dollar advertising campaign in support of Bush's "surge" in mid-August, the group recently funded a series of ads in a northern Ohio special congressional election.
The advertisements, called "aggressively negative" by the Washington Post, branded the Democratic Party candidate as being soft on illegal immigration. According to the Post, "Behind a blood-red foreground, the group's ad showed Latinos hurrying under fences and being frisked by police as a narrator accused Democratic candidate Robin Weirauch and 'liberals in Congress' of supporting free health care for illegal immigrants."
Republican Robert Latta won the House seat representing the district around Bowling Green, Ohio.
"While initial reports suggested a budget of $200 million [for Freedom's Watch for the 2008 election cycle], people who have talked to the group in recent weeks say the figure is closer to $250 million, more than double the amount spent by the largest independent liberal groups in the 2004 election cycle," the Post reported.
January 29, 2008
Defending Israel to the 'End Times'
Christian Zionists organize to stymie any Israeli/Palestinian peace agreement that would divide Jerusalem while Netanyahu waits for Olmert's government to collapse
These are busy days for Christian Zionists. While President Bush recently returned from his trip to the Middle East "optimistic" that a peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians could be reached by the end of the year, Pastor John Hagee's Christian United for Israel (CUFI) is setting forth plans to put the kibosh -- if not on the entire peace process -- on any agreement that would sanction the division of Jerusalem. And Dr. Mike Evans has launched a "Save Jerusalem Campaign” while Joel C. Rosenberg's Joshua Fund is planning a major celebration in Jerusalem in honor of Israel's 60th anniversary.
CUFI, the pro-Israel lobbying group launched in February 2006 to provide support for Israel, believes that "'Jerusalem must remain undivided as the eternal capital of the Jewish people' (meaning no portion of it should be turned over to the Palestinians)," Sarah Posner, writes in her new book "God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters" (PoliPointPress, 2008).
Hagee, who heads up an 18,000-member Pentecostal congregation in San Antonio, Texas, "inject[s] ... the charged rhetoric of biblical prophesy into contemporary foreign policy," Posner writes, "[which] has catapulted him to the forefront of an American Christian Zionist movement that has become the darling of conservative Israel hawks in Washington and neoconservatives yearning for regional war in the Middle East."
More Original Research
AROUND THE WEB
April 2, 2008
Glenn Greenwald
John Yoo's war crimes
Yet again, the ACLU has performed the function which Congress and the media are intended to perform but do not. As the result of a FOIA lawsuit the ACLU filed and then prosecuted for several years, numerous documents relating to the Bush administration's torture regime that have long been baselessly kept secret were released yesterday, including an 81-page memorandum (.pdf) issued in 2003 by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo (currently a Berkeley Law Professor) which asserted that the President's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture...
Also see:
March 31, 2008
Bruce Wilson
Far Right Political Funder Scaife Enthusiastic About Clinton
As the New York Times and other major papers are reporting today, an op-ed written by Richard Mellon-Scaife in the Sunday edition of Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune-Review is raising eyebrows because the considerable enthusiasm Scaife evinced for Democratic Party presidential nomination contender Hillary Clinton.
Also see:
March 24, 2008
Frederick Clarkson
IRD Blows Smoke in Response to Expose Film
The oxymoronically named Institute on Religion and Democracy for a generation has sought to disrupt and divide the major denominations of mainline Protestantism, as well as the wider ecumenical communions, the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. Even more remarkably perhaps, while presenting itself an agency dedicated to reform and "renewal" of the churches, IRD's leadership and staff have been substantially populated by men and women who are not even members of any of the churches they say they seek to "renew."
Also see:
Institute on Religion and Democracy
March 6, 2008
Terry Krepel
The dishonesty card
The Media Research Center and FrontPageMag bash a report on the Bush administration's false statements about war with Iraq by ignoring the evidence and attacking the messenger.
Also see:
David Horowitz Freedom Center (publisher of FrontPageMag)
March 3, 2008
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Fox & Friends promotes global warming deniers' conference
Fox News believes the "other side" of the global warming debate hasn't received enough attention and is determined to repair the omission.
...The Business and Media Institute is a project of the Media Research Center (MRC), headed by well-known movement conservative L. Brent Bozell. MRC has received substantial funding from ExxonMobil, as has the Heartland Institute, sponsor of the conference.
Also see:
March 2, 2008
The Washington Post: Bitches ain't shit
Who knew that all it takes to get published in The Washington Post is penning a piece on how stupid women are?
Charlotte Allen - a professional woman-hating hack from the Independent Women's Forum who has also oh-so-bravely attacked transgender rights, said that the answer to women's potential financial woes is marriage, and suggested that Hurricane Katrina might have been "the best thing" to happen to New Orleans which is full of "whiners...chisel[ing] us taxpayers" out of money - has outdone herself in an article that is all about what dumb fucks women are.
Also see:
Ezra Klein: WHY ARE OP-EDS SO DUMB?
No more Mr nice blog: THAT "WOMEN ARE STUPID" OP-ED: BROUGHT TO YOU IN PART BY WINGNUT WELFARE
February 26, 2008
Spencer Ackerman
Scaife-funded 'Bipartisan' Think Tank Attacks Democrats
Democratic Board Members Quit After 15 TV Ads Run in Blue Districts
A neo-conservative but ostensibly bipartisan counterterrorism think tank has lost all its Democratic board members by running an attack ad in Democratic congressional districts through an affiliated enterprise.
The think tank, called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, is a 501(c )3—meaning it was incorporated as a non-profit and non-partisan organization, barred from political activity. Last week, it established Defense of Democracies, a 501(c )4 "non-profit, non-partisan advocacy organization," that ran an advertisement urging the House of Representatives to pass the Senate’s version of a bill providing retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies that collaborated with the Bush administration’s constellation of warrantless surveillance programs. The arrangement is probably legal, experts say, but the parent think tank receives several grants from the State Department—at least one is worth $487,000—for democracy-promotion programs, making its political activities questionable.
Also see:
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies
February 21, 2008
Charles Kaiser
Was it Vin Weber who unloaded on John McCain?
The New York Times And The John McCain Sex Scandal Story
...Sources told Radar that one of these associates was John Vincent (Vin) Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota who was an advisor to McCain's presidential campaign in 2000. In 2007, Weber became Policy Chairman for the Romney for President Exploratory Committee.
Weber did not immediately respond to a message left with the receptionist at Clark & Weinstock in Washington this morning, where Weber is a partner. The message said Radar would report that Weber was one of the sources of the story in the New York Times. The receptionist said Weber was in a meeting and could not come to the telephone.
UPDATE: At 12:51 PM, , after this story was posted, Weber called Radar with this statement: "Absolutely, positively completely not true in any form."
Also see:
National Endowment for Democracy (Weber is head)
February 21, 2008
Lance Williams,Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Staff Writers
Grover Norquist's Republican lobbyist had no work permit
A former California Republican Party official who resigned last year in a controversy over his immigration status had no valid visa or work permit during his high-profile career as a Washington lobbyist for conservative icon Grover Norquist, newly filed court records show.
Also see:
Americans for Tax Reform Foundation
More Around The Web