Advocates decentralizing ownership of broadcast media
Stages National Conferences on Media Reform
Free Press is a tax-exempt "media reform" organization co-founded in December 2002 by radical Professor Robert McChesney of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, The Nation magazine's Washington correspondent John Nichols, and campaign-finance-reform advocate Josh Silver. Free Press shares offices, telephones and directors with the non-tax-exempt "social welfare organization" Free Press Action Fund, which openly engages in political lobbying.
One of Free Press's projects is the staging of conferences. In November 2003, its first National Conference on Media Reform was held at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This media reform conference was keynoted by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) host Bill Moyers and its star was Amy Goodman, host of the national radio program Democracy Now! This conference, as reported by Z Magazine, also prominently featured "El Salvador and Palestine solidarity activists" who "gave updates on their work."
Free Press's Second National Conference for Media Reform (held May 13-15, 2005) in St. Louis, Missouri featured the following speakers: Medea Benjamin of Global Exchange and Code Pink; David Brock, head of Media Matters for America; Laura Flanders, author and radio host; Bill Fletcher of TransAfrica Forum; Al Franken of Air America Radio; Amy Goodman; Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News; Robert Greenwald, Director of the anti-Rupert Murdoch documentary Outfoxed; author and commentator Jim Hightower; Janine Jackson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting; author and columnist Naomi Klein; George Lakoff, University of California Berkeley professor and Democratic Party advisor; Robert McChesney; John Nichols; and California Congresswoman Diane Watson, a member of the Progressive Caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives.
On January 12-14, 2007 in Memphis, Tennessee, Free Press sponsored another National Conference for Media Reform. Exhibitors at the event included the Revolutionary Communist Party; Mother Jones magazine; Pacifica Radio; Amy Goodman; and representatives of the so-called "9/11 truth movement," which contends that the September 11 attacks were carried out by U.S. government officials who then blamed their deed on innocent Muslims. Prominently featured for sale at the Conference were books authored by Barack Obama, Al Gore, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Mikhail Gorbachev, former White House reporter Helen Thomas, and Webster Tarpley, a former associate of Lyndon LaRouche. The film Reel Bad Arabs, which argues that Arabs and Muslims unfairly receive negative coverage from the American media and Hollywood, was screened for those in attendance; the film is narrated by Jack Shaheen, who has appeared on Al-Jazeera English TV making charges of anti-Arab media bias.
Featured speakers and panelists at the 2007 Conference included the socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (who called for the implementation of a "fairness doctrine" in the media); Rep. Maurice Hinchey (who said that "neo-fascist" and "neo-con" talk show hosts had helped create the national climate that led to the "illegal" war in Iraq); Bill Moyers; Jesse Jackson (who insisted that the major media habitually turn a blind eye the widespread suffering that is allegedly the hallmark of George W. Bush's America); Danny Glover; Geena Davis; Jane Fonda; Jeff Cohen; David Brock (who characterized the Bush administration's foreign policy as "criminally insane"); and Norman Solomon (who suggested that U.S. foreign policy was immoral and aggressive). At a panel discussion moderated by Paul Waldman of Media Matters for America, participants argued that the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections had been "stolen" on behalf of Bush.
Another project of Free Press is Media Minutes, a Friday "weekly headline-style radio news program focused on issues of media policy and reform." It is carried by one Australian and 18 U.S. radio stations, among them the Pacifica-owned stations WBAI in New York City and KPFK in Los Angeles. It is also "broadcast" as Internet audio from six websites, including those of the Independent Media Center (Indymedia) in Boston, "Enemy Combatant Radio" in San Francisco, and "Radical Radio" in Seattle.
The hosts and producers of Media Minutes are John Anderson, co-founder in 2001 of the labor-oriented "Workers Independent News Service," and Kimberlie Kranich, a media activist. The broadcast originates from the facilities of WILL-AM-FM-TV in Urbana, the campus station of the taxpayer-supported University of Illinois where McChesney teaches.
Board members of Free Press include McChesney, Nichols, and Janine Jackson of FAIR.
Board members of the Free Press Action Fund include McChesney; Nichols; Linda Foley, President of the Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO; and Norman Solomon, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA), on whose board McChesney sits. Another Free Press Action Fund board member is Cindy Asner, wife of actor Ed Asner. The Asners are activists in Progressive Democrats of America.
Free Press founders McChesney and Nichols have co-authored three books: It's the Media, Stupid!, Our Media, Not Theirs: The Democratic Struggle Against Corporate Media, and Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. The authors and their organization are endorsed by leftist professor Howard Zinn: "Free Press is doing the important work of stimulating a national discussion on the role of a free media in this country. It deserves widespread support."
