Media for Rent Or New Business Model? Big Grants to Major News Outlets.

The Ford Foundation recently made its second large grant to shore up a major newspaper.  The Ford Foundation has provided the Washington Post with a $500,000 grant for to "expand" its government accountability coverage.  The Post indicated that the grant will help fund "four new newsroom positions to work on special projects related to money, politics and government."  The initial grant provides one year of funding, with the possibility of two additional years.
The Ford Foundation had earlier announced a $1 million grant to the Los Angeles Times, to expand its coverage of ethnic immigrant communities, border issues, the California Penal system, and Brazil.

“These are vital coverage areas that have been affected by our need to make tough choices in the past decade,” Times Editor Davan Maharaj said.

He also argued that this grant would avoid any potential conflict of interest because the money was coming from a different fund than other Ford Foundation grants.  Frankly, that doesn't seem to make sense, logically - particularly for a paper whose editorials have argued that all money is fungible and thus are "blatant" attempts to manipulate news, when the grants come from more conservative foundations.  Pretty much everyone in the news-editorial side knows that the Ford Foundation provided an economically failing newspaper a million dollars, and is likely to give another million next year if it likes the results. 
  At least the Times has at least considered the possibility of a conflict of interests.  The initial coverage of the Post's grant doesn't seem to have considered that - despite the type of coverage funded - "government-accountability" would seem to be rife with potential for conflicts of interest and bias.

  While these would seem to be the first big grants to major newspapers to support coverage, the Ford Foundation has a long history of funding specific targeted research and reporting efforts.  In addition, George Soros's Open Society Foundation provided a $1.8 million grant to NPR to fund an "Impact of Government" initiative to cover local and state government success stories by local NPR affiliates.  David Brauer, of the nonprofit online news site MinnPost, commented:

(A)t the very least, Soros's involvement raises conflict-of-interest questions...  donor entanglements — like advertiser entanglements — are fair game, especially in a profession that writes about political conflicts of interest all the time.

According to a post on the NPR Ombudsman blog, editorial staff were initially concerned about the grant's source -

(A) deep current of concern has run through the newsroom about taking money from someone with a well-known, documented political agenda supporting Democrats and Democratic causes. Soros has been increasingly partisan since he announced his determination to defeat then-President George W. Bush in 2004.
"I do have problems with it precisely because he is so left wing and were he on the other side I would still have problems with it," said a long-time NPR producer. "I don't have a problem with people supporting particular causes but I do have a problem when obvious partisanship spills over into your support of those causes."

CPB's CEO at the time said she wasn't concerned about "perceptions" (on the same day she fired Juan Williams for expressing his personal opinion while a guest on a Fox News Channel program).

NPR executives say they gave a lot of consideration to taking Soros' money, determining that it would be wrong to turn down money because of someone's political beliefs and based on how it looked.

Various Soros groups have given a number of grants to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR, and affiliated stations over the years (reported totaling around $4 million since 2001).  Soros affiliated and funded foundations and groups have provided a reported $48 million to various news and journalism groups, including the Organization of News Ombudsmen.

  A variety of academics and journalism organizations have considered recommending grants and private donor funding as possible sources for news organizations in an era of declining revenues.  However, such funding sources are likely to be temporary - better used as stopgaps during the transition from print and analog media to digital operations, or as supplements as online revenues grow.  And for an industry that trumpets its independence, there is going to be at least the appearance of potential conflicts of interest and bias.  And the more partisan the funding source, the greater risk there is.  That's something for news organizations to think about - and ignoring it or denying the potential is not likely to help the fading credibility of news and news organizations.


Sources - Ford Foundation gives Washington Post $500,000 grant for government-accountability reporting,  Poynter.org
Ford Foundation gives Lost Angeles Times $1 million grant,  Poynter.org
NPR offering Soros money for political coverage; will MPR take it?,  MinnPost
Worthy Cause, Controversial Funding Source,  NPR Ombudsman
Report: Liberal Soros's Cash Funds 'Nonpartisan' Media Watchdogs, US News & World Report