Ron Arnold

Three Co-Founders:

Robert W. McChesney
Founding Treasurer of Free Press and Action Fund

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

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.

Don't get too exhilarated about their "new direction of American journalism" unless you really like intellectually herbivorous commentators, profound ethnomusicological discourse on gamelan gongs, and watching paint dry, with a gun at the back of your head - the Librarian.

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)

Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage

The Sandlers also fund:

Center for Biological Diversity
Turtle Island Restoration Network (de-developing America)
National Environmental Trust (green public relations firm)
Moveon.org
America Votes
ACORN
Center for American Progress
Human Rights Watch
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Foundation for National Progress (publisher of Mother Jones)
People for the American Way Foundation

Full story in Ron Arnold's Freezing in the Dark.

Slate journalist Jack Shafer raised questions about Pro Publica's ability to provide independent nonpartisan journalism given the nature of Sandler's other political donations which include "giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democratic Party campaigns." The concern was borne out in a vicious December 2008 attack on natural gas drilling that followed the Democrat no-American-energy agenda.

Name	Interlocking Directorates
ALBERTO IBARGUEN	President, CEO and Trustee, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Inc. President, The Miami Herald Charities, Inc. Trustee, Alliance For Ethical Government Inc
PAUL E. STEIGER	Director, Committee to Protect Journalists, Inc.
REBECCA RIMEL	President and CEO, Pew Charitable Trusts Board Member, Fund for the Capitol Visitor Center
HENRY LOUIS GATES, JR.	African-American literary critic, educator, scholar, writer, editor, and public intellectual. Gates is a Professor at Harvard University, where he is Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. Serves on 16 boards of directors.
HERBERT M. SANDLER	President, Director, Sandler Family Supporting Foundation Trustee, Neighborhood Housing Services of America
JAMES A. LEACH	U.S. Representative (Republican, Iowa, 1977-2007) Professor of Public and International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University Vice-Chairman, The Century Foundation, Inc. Trustee, Charles F. Kettering Foundation Director, Churches Center for Theology and Public Policy
RICHARD TOFEL	President and COO, The Friends Of The International Freedom Center Vice President, General Counsel, Rockefeller Foundation Former assistant publisher, Wall Street Journal Former vice president, assistant general counsel, Dow Jones and Company.

Ron Arnold's Green Tracking Library

Free Press Action Fund

Pro Publica, Inc. Officers and Directors 2008

WHO ARE THESE GUYS?