The Fanonite

Today’s guest editorial from Michael Barker on Press Freedom in the Service of Polyarchy.

Especially since the advent of centralised systems of mass communication, mainstream media outlets -– dominated by their corporate backers -– have served a vital role for ruling elites by enabling them to manufacture mass consent for decidedly antidemocratic policies. Even more so than at any other point in recent history, the systems of democratic governance in the West are intimately entwined with those of increasingly powerful media conglomerates. In such an antidemocratic media climate, media watchdog groups –- like the US-based Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), and the British-based Medialens –- fulfil a vital democratic role by drawing public attention to the escalating democratic deficits of our current media institutions.

To date few academic studies have sought to cast a critical eye over the work of media watchdog groups. Instead, scholars have predominantly focused their attention on how ‘watchdogs’ openly aligned with pro-business interests have served to restrict democratic debate by engaging in flak production to deliberately discourage dissent – a subject that received notable attention in Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s (1988) seminal book Manufacturing Consent. Herman and Chomsky outlined what they referred to as a Propaganda Model to describe how “money and power are able to filter out the news fit to print, marginalize dissent, and allow the government and dominant private interests to get their messages across to the public”. Flak production -– which they defined as “negative responses to a media statement or program” –- fulfilled a vital role in their Propaganda Model, and sat alongside the Model’s four other filters which included (1) the size, ownership and profit orientation of the media, (2) advertising, (3) sourcing, and (4) anti-communist ideology, which can be interpreted as keeping the discourse within the boundaries of elite interests.

Herman and Chomsky noted that flak comes in many shapes and sizes and may “take the form of letters, telegrams, phone calls, petitions, lawsuits, speeches and bills before Congress, and other modes of complaint, threat, and punitive action”; moreover, it “may be organized centrally or locally, or it may consist of the entirely independent actions of individuals.” Ironically, arguably the most influential flak producers described in their book were ostensibly set up as media watchdog groups, and four particularly important groups that have (and still are) heavily supported by the corporate community are the Media Institute, the Center for Media and Public Affairs, Accuracy in Media, and Freedom House. Yet given the system supportive and neoliberal tendencies of many mainstream media outlets – which includes public broadcasters like the British Broadcasting Corporation, and the American Public Broadcasting System – it is consistent that although such conservative “flak machines steadily attack the mass media, the media treat[s] them well”. The contrast is stark when compared to the media’s treatment of genuinely progressive media watchdogs – like the aforementioned FAIR and Medialens – whose work, which regularly challenges the servility of the mainstream media to elitist corporate and political interests, is all but excluded from discussion in the mainstream media. (For more on the BBC’s treatment of progressive media watchdogs, see here.)

In contrast to most other media researchers who have critiqued obvious pro-business flak producers like Accuracy in Media (whose work is funded by the oil industry, and conservative philanthropic foundations), this paper will provide a critical overview of three media watchdogs whose links to both pro-corporate and imperial interests has for the most part been overlooked by media scholars, but whose work nonetheless arguably serves to decrease media freedom rather than increase it. The first group to be examined will be Freedom House, and although this group was heavily criticised by Edward S. Herman and Frank Brodhead (1984) in their classic book Demonstration Elections, and then by Herman and Chomsky (1988), to date, their work is still being uncritically utilised by media researchers all over the world, which is why this paper will be revisiting and updating criticisms of their activities. The two other watchdogs that will be examined in this paper –- which in most academic circles are considered to be beyond criticism –- are Reporters Without Borders, and the lesser known South American-based Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad. Owing to the global orientation of the first two group’s activities, this article will outline some of the key people and funders involved in these groups work, but will only provide a more detailed examination of their reporting in one country, that is, Venezuela. This country was chosen owing to the key geostrategic importance Venezuela has to the world’s dominant (media) hegemon (the US), and because in the past few years there has been a large amount of media attention paid (albeit mostly in alternative media) to the antidemocratic activities of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in Venezuela. This is particularly significant because the NED has provided funding to all three of the media watchdog groups that will be critiqued in the paper. However, before launching into the analysis of the media watchdogs themselves, this article will briefly contextualise the study by providing a little background on the significance of US foreign policy and the aforementioned NED.

Manufacturing Polyarchy in the Name of Democracy

The US government, like many of its democratic counterparts, has always been susceptible to secrecy: but, in the 1970s after the public revelations of some of their worst atrocities –- most notably during the 1975 Church Committee investigation -– the government recognized that a more effective propaganda strategy might be to carry out such activities overtly rather than covertly. This stroke of public relations genius was formally institutionalized in 1984, when with bipartisan support the US government launched a quasi-nongovernmental organization called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Since then, the NED has been coordinating the global promotion of polyarchy, and an integral part of their work involves the manipulation of ‘independent’ media in geostrategically important countries. [1]

The term polyarchy was first coined by political theorist Robert Dahl (1971) to describe the limited form of elite-driven democracy advanced in and by the West: here it is critical to note that polyarchy or low-intensity democracy stands in stark opposition to the participatory forms of democratic engagement typically advanced by progressive activists. Moreover, while covert actions and propaganda have played an important role in securing the advance of polyarchy both domestically and globally, a more democratic accompanying tactic that has been honed to perfection by the NED, relies upon the cooption of progressive activists and their groups. This ‘democratic’ cooptive strategy has a long history, and is modelled in large part on the pioneering work of well-endowed liberal philanthropists in the US – like the Ford, Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations’.

Although many parallels exist between the activities of liberal foundations and the NED, even before the latter organisation was created in the early 1980s the US government had already gained considerable experience of manipulating democracy through two key agencies, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and their Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). However, it was only in the late 1970s, that the political will to prioritize overt ‘democracy promotion’ activities was significantly advanced within American foreign policy elites – a process that ultimately culminated in the establishment of the NED. Crucially, both USAID’s and the NED’s overt democracy manipulation was, and still is, highly influenced by the CIA, whose work has always been heavily entwined with that of the NED’s predecessors, which includes both USAID and liberal foundations. So given these links it is not surprising that the NED’s first president admitted that: “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA”. [2]

William I. Robinson in his book Promoting Polyarchy (1996) has provided the most influential and comprehensive critique of the NED’s international activities by illustrating their role in promoting polyarchy in Chile, Haiti, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. However, more recently ongoing revelations, in the alternative media at least, of the democracy manipulating lobbies attempts to oust Venezuela’s democratically elected President Hugo Chavez, have meant that popular knowledge of the NED’s antidemocratic work is becoming more commonplace. For example, a lot of attention was paid to the 2002 coup in Venezuela, which although ultimately unsuccessful – due to genuine popular resistance – obtained vital support from the NED. This US-led assault on Venezuelan democracy continues unabated, and in 2006 with no hint of irony the US government referred to President Chavez as “a demagogue awash in oil money [who] is undermining democracy and seeking to destabilize the region”.

So given the intimate relationship that exists between the US media and the American government, the latters evident hostility towards Chavez’s emancipatory (not polyarchal) politics, it is consistent that their incessant propaganda is duly amplified by their corporate mouthpieces, the US media. Similarly, in the UK, Medialens have amply documented how supposedly progressive media outlets (e.g. the BBC) have contributed to the global disinformation campaign being waged against Chavez. It is all too obvious that in the eyes of the world’s ruling elites that Chavez is promoting the ‘wrong kind’ of democracy, that is, popular democracy instead of polyarchy. Having briefly noted the importance of Venezuela to American imperial interests, and having also introduced the work of the NED, the next section of this paper will illuminate how the three NED-funded media watchdogs under investigation are playing a crucial role in the global promotion of polyarchy.

Freedom House

Freedom House describes itself as a “non-profit, nonpartisan organization” that provides “a clear voice for democracy and freedom around the world.” However, contrary to this deceptive description, Freedom House’s work has always been closely entwined with that of the NED, and they acknowledge on their website that they are a “strong voice for a U.S. foreign policy that places the promotion of democracy at the forefront.”

A clear example of Freedom House’s democracy manipulating activities is provided by an examination of their long-term involvement in destabilizing the Nicaraguan government throughout the 1980s. Indeed, they undertook vital work for democracy manipulators in Nicaragua, receiving around US$1 million from the NED to create an anti-Sandinista publishing house (Libro Libre), think-tank (CINCO), and quarterly journal (Pensamiento Centroamericano) in San Jose, Costa Rica. Furthermore, Freedom House’s ‘democratic’ propagandizing was not limited to Central America, as between 1984 and 1989 the NED provided them with around US$3 million to disseminate anti-Sandinista viewpoints within the US media. [3]

Diana Barahona recently reviewed Freedom House’s antidemocratic activities and described their board of trustees as a “Who’s Who of neoconservatives from government, business, academia, labor, and the press.” She went on to note that:

“Today, Freedom House continues to serve as both a think tank and a ‘civil society’ funder as part of the State Department’s modern ‘democracy promotion’ complex. Frequently cited in the press and academic works, the reports and studies produced by Freedom House and its affiliates promote the neoconservative ideology of its trustees and government sponsors.”

One of Freedom House’s most ‘democratically’ connected trustees is their chairman Peter Ackerman, who along with his wife Joanne, is intimately involved with the work of the following key democracy manipulating organizations, the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the Albert Einstein Institution, the International Crisis Group, and the International Center for Journalists. Other Freedom House trustees with exceptionally strong ‘democratic’ credentials include Bernard Aronson (who is a director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs – a key NED grantee), Max M. Kampelman (who is the former vice chair of the US Institute of Peace (USIP) a group that has been described as the NED’s sister organisation), John N. Moore (who is a former director of the USIP), and former NED directors John T. Joyce, Michael McFaul, and Mark Palmer. It is also worth drawing attention to recently deceased (December 2006) trustee and “mid-wife to the neocons”, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who played a pivotal role in creating the NED and establishing the American ‘democracy promoting’ community. Finally, the close links between Freedom House and the democracy manipulators make more sense when it is understood that the convenor of the council of the NED-linked International Freedom of Expression eXchange (see later) is Karin D. Karlekar, a senior researcher at Freedom House.

In 2007, following the publication of Freedom House’s annual global survey measuring press freedom around the world, Karlekar noted that the “records of Venezuela and Russia are appalling”, and then as if to say that these countries were not democratic he went on to say that Freedom House was “disturbed by the level of press freedom decline in what we had assumed were established democracies”. The year before Freedom House had also observed:

“As the head of an oil rich country, President Hugo Chavez-whose own political ascendancy reflected popular disenchantment with Venezuela’s exclusionary traditional political parties-has presided over the deterioration of the country’s democratic institutions… Chavez still cites combating corruption and social injustice as the leitmotif for his brand of authoritarian politics. Yet under his rule, corruption in Venezuela appears to be getting worse, coming in 130th out of 158 countries surveyed in [another key global democracy manipulating organization (Barker, 2007c)] Transparency International’s 2005 Corruption Perceptions Index.”

The 2007 Freedom House report also highlighted what they described as a “relentless assault on independent news media” in Venezuela, pointing out that one of the primary threats to this ‘freedom’ is the Chavez governments “growing drive to neutralize or eliminate all potential sources of political opposition”. Moreover, Freedom House determined that as part of the “broader assault on press freedom… Since 2002, Venezuela has registered a decline of 30 points on a 100-point scale, the greatest decline for a single country.” These unwarranted attacks on Venezuelan democracy were not new, and according to Steve Ellner, Freedom Houses’s 1999 annual report “concluded that Venezuela under Chavez had established itself as a ‘role model for future demagogues.’” Furthermore, in another later press freedom report, perhaps with reference to the citizen led protests against the media outlets who supported the 2002 attempted coup in Venezuela, Freedom House noted that: “In Venezuela, a protracted political crisis led to serious harassment of the media by supporters of President Hugo Chavez, resulting in the country’s shift into the Not Free category.” So while US press freedom was ranked in second place in 2007 (as ‘Free’) within the Americas, Venezuela remained ‘Not Free’ along with just one other country, Cuba (for an alternative viewpoint, see here) – a country which of course like Venezuela is also on the US’s democratic hit list.

As a prominent example of one of many academic who uncritically uses Freedom House data, Charles Tilly – in his influential book, Democracy (2007) – notes that: “From 1976 to 1986, an optimistic Freedom House awarded Venezuela the top score of 1 on political rights and a very high 2 on civil liberties. That put Venezuela in the company of such democratic stalwarts as France and Ireland.” He then goes on to add, however, that: “Then the irregular landslide began, reaching a low point of 4.4 in 1999, before a slight recovery and then another rapid decline back to 4.4 in 2006.” Like Tilly, most scholars rarely pause to critique Freedom House data, or even consider that a group whose former chair was James Woolsey, Jr. – an infamous neoconservative who has also served as the head of the CIA – might be anything less than democratic itself.

It is also important to point out that while Woolsey chaired Freedom House in 2004, their annual Freedom of the Press report (2004) acknowledged the support that Freedom House had received from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the F. M. Kirby Foundation, two groups which also provide financial support to the conservative media watchdog the Media Research Center. Furthermore, the same report acknowledges the support that Freedom House obtained from another two ‘democratic’ media groups. The first was the World Press Freedom Committee – a group that was originally created to oppose what they referred to as “proposals for a restrictive new world information and communication order”. Two members of this Committee’s current board of directors are particularly noteworthy for their ‘democratic’ ties as Barbara Cochran has in the recent past been a defender of the undisclosed use of radio and TV fake news and news releases, while Geoffrey Nyarota founded Zimbabwe’s only independent daily newspaper, The Daily News in 1999, which in 2003 went on to win the Reporters Without Borders Fondation de France Prize (see later).

The other ‘democratic’ media group that supported the work of Freedom House in 2004 was the Freedom Forum. One particularly ‘democratic’ Freedom Forum trustee is Bette Bao Lord, who is a former chair of Freedom House, and is currently a director of the NED-funded International Campaign for Tibet. Furthermore, Freedom Forum’s vice president of technology and programs, Adam Clayton Powell III, serves on the advisory council of the NED’s Center on International Media Assistance, and Freedom Forum’s president, Charles L. Overby, is also a director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. ‘Democratic’ directors of the Committee to Protect Journalists include Gene Roberts (who was a former director of the World Press Freedom Committee), David Laventhol (who was a former chair of the International Press Institute), Anne Garrels (who is married to former CIA agent J. Vinton Lawrence), Kati Marton (who is a member of the board of overseerers of the International Rescue Committee and is married to Richard C. Holbrooke), and Norman Pearlstine (who is an advisor to the Carlyle Group, a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation, and a director of the NED-funded International Center for Journalists). Thus given all this information it should be entirely expected that Herman and Chomsky had this to say about Freedom House:

“Freedom House, which dates back to the early 1940s, has had interlocks with AIM [Accuracy in Media], the World Anticommunist League, Resistance International, and U.S. government bodies such as Radio Free Europe and the CIA, and has long served as a virtual propaganda arm of the government and international right wing. It sent election monitors to the Rhodesian elections staged by Ian Smith in 1979 and found them ‘fair,’ whereas the 1980 elections won by Mugabe under British supervision it found dubious. Its election monitors also found the Salvadoran elections of 1982 admirable. It has expended substantial resources in criticizing the media for insufficient sympathy with U.S. foreign-policy ventures and excessively harsh criticism of U.S. client states. Its most notable publication of this genre was Peter Braestrup’s Big Story, which contended that the media’s negative portrayal of the Tet offensive helped lose the war. The work is a travesty of scholarship, but more interesting is its premise: that the mass media not only should support any national venture abroad, but should do so with enthusiasm, such enterprises being by definition noble. In 1982, when the Reagan administration was having trouble containing media reporting of the systematic killing of civilians by the Salvadoran army, Freedom House came through with a denunciation of the ‘imbalance’ in media reporting from El Salvador.” [4]

Reporters Without Borders

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) was set up in 1985 by Robert Ménard – who is still their secretary general – and since it’s founding it has seemingly worked tirelessly to support journalists all over the world in their efforts to promote press freedom. So who could fault an organisation with such a progressive mission? Well it seems that quite a few journalists in the independent media already have. Writing in 2001, Serge Halimi provided the earliest online critique (albeit a minor one) when he observed in reference to RSF’s work that “glorifying ‘freedom of the press’ often serves to mask the silent tyranny that the media and their proprietors would like to impose on political and cultural life.” Shortly thereafter, however, critiques of RSF started picking up momentum.

Writing about the 2002 coup in Venezuela, Ignacio Ramonet highlighted the problematic role that international organizations like RSF fulfil through their denigration of a democratic government’s attempt to try to limit the influence of pro-coup forces within their country. Indeed during the 2002 coup, Ramonet reported that RSF “clos[ed their] eyes to the one of the most odious media campaigns ever launched against a democratic government”. A few months later, again writing about RSF’s antidemocratic role in Venezuela, Thierry Deronne compared RSF’s current work with that the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) – an infamous ‘press freedom’ group which in earlier times had formed an alliance with the corporate media to help “topple the Allende government in Chile in 1973.” (For more critical information on the role of the IAPA in Venezuela, see here.) It is fitting then, that like RSF the IAPA describes itself as a “non-profit organization dedicated to defending freedom of expression and of the press throughout the Americas.” The use of such benign self-descriptors is comparable to those adopted by the neoconservative Freedom House: clearly something is amiss as far as honesty is concerned.

It was only in 2005 that critics of RSF determined that their work was being funded by the NED. So bringing all this information together, it comes as no surprise to find critics have charged that RSF is backing the US government’s official foreign policy line not only in Venezuela, but also in Palestine, Haiti, and Cuba – all countries in which international democracy manipulating organisations are highly active. Understanding these apparent links between US foreign policy and RSF’s overseas activities may also help explain why RSF has recently been demonising the Venezuelan government for failing to renew the licence of Radio Caracas Television (RCTV): a CIA-linked media outlet that led the charge in attempting to oust Chavez from office, having already played a key role in organising the coup in 2002.

According to the NED’s online Democracy Projects Database, RSF obtained a single grant (worth $39,900) from the NED in 2005 to “strengthen free press and decrease press abuse in Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Somalia, and Côte d’Ivoire.” RSF openly displays this NED link on their website, where they also highlight the support they obtain from George Soros’s ‘democratic’ Open Society Institute and from the NED-funded Center for a Free Cuba. (For a thorough examination of the Center for a Free Cuba’s ties to democracy manipulators, see here.) Something that other researchers have failed to mention is a grant that RSF-Canada received from Rights and Democracy in 2004. According to the NED, this grant (for an unspecified amount) was used to support RSF-Canada’s:

“…work preparing the defence for the Zahra Kazemi case, the Canadian photo journalist who was beaten to death [in July 2003] by Iranian officials. The project’s aim was to promote public interest in this case in order to encourage the Canadian government to put pressure on the Iranian government so that justice can be served. Rights & Democracy contributed primarily to organizing discussions between Foreign Affairs and relevant organizations preparing a public awareness event and sending a human rights observer mission to attend the Zahra Kazemi trial in Iran.”

This is important because Rights and Democracy is the Canadian version of the NED. Although Rights and Democracy has only provided one single grant to RSF, it is not the only time that Rights and Democracy have been interested in Iran’s media affairs. In fact, in August 2007 Rights and Democracy gave their 2007 John Humphrey Freedom Award to Akbar Ganji, the “Iranian journalist and dissident who spent six years in prison for exposing rights abuses committed by the Iranian government.” Interestingly both Iranian journalists that have been supported by Rights and Democracy (Ganji and Kazemi) have also been recipients of the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) International Press Freedom Award, Ganji receiving it in 2000, and Kazemi in 2003. This ‘democratic’ link does not appear to be coincidental as “[o]ne of the principal activities of CJFE is the management of the world’s only freedom of expression clearinghouse, the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX).” This in turn is significant because Barker (Forthcoming) demonstrates that 17 of IFEX’s 72 member organizations have received funding from either the NED, Rights and Democracy, or the Westminster Foundation (the British version of the NED). Finally it is also noteworthy that Ganji was detained by the Iranian government for just over a year in April 2000 following his participation in a conference held at the Heinrich Böll Institute – a German ‘democracy promoting’ organization that has been credited as providing the inspiration for the creation of the NED.

Given the evident funding links between RSF and the NED it is interesting to also note that a number of RSF staff (or former staff) have maintained close ties to various democracy manipulating organisations. For example, Tala Dowlatshahi, the US representative of RSF, is a successful journalist who has amongst other jobs previously worked with the International Rescue Committee (IRC). This is significant because RightWeb produced a detailed profile examining the elite and ‘democratic’ linkages of the IRC – particularly interesting members of IRC’s board of overseers are Henry Kissinger and Colin L. Powell – and it is also important to note that IRC received a massive $1 million grant from the NED in 1987 (which was used to support Solidarity’s work in Poland), and a further $1 million from the NED in 1990 for the same work.

A good example of a former RSF reporter with close ties to the democracy manipulators and the NED is George Tarkhan-Mouravi, a reporter who acted as RSF’s correspondent in Georgia between 1996 and 1999. During this time, Tarkhan-Mouravi worked closely with George Soros’ local ‘democracy promoting’ organizations and in 1994 he cofounded the Open Society – Georgia Foundation, and headed the preparatory team for their social science support program between 1998 and 1999. Tarkhan-Mouravi maintained his relations with Soros after leaving RSF’s service in 1999 because from 2001 to 2003 he was an Open Society Institute fellow. In addition to his Soros connection, over the years Tarkhan-Mouravi has also obtained strong support from the US government. For example, in July 1996 he was a US Information Agency (USIA) international visitor to the USA, in January 1999 he was a USIA exchange visitor to the USA, and between 2000 and 2002 he was a NATO Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council research fellow.

Given Tarkhan-Mouravi’s numerous ‘democratic’ links it is not incongruous that in 1992 he cofounded the Caucasian Institute for Peace, Democracy and Development (CIPDD), a group that received support from the NED between 1993 and 2001. Tarkhan-Mouravi was vice-chair of CIPDD’s board of directors from its founding until 1996, a time during which CIPDD obtained four NED grants used to “help promote democratic and free-market values and consider solutions to the problems of the democratic transition in Georgia and the Caucasus.” The present chair of CIPDD, Ghia Nodia, currently serves on the steering committee of the NED-created World Movement for Democracy.

In addition to funding and staff links to the NED, since 1992 RSF has distributed the Reporters Sans Frontières-Fondation de France Prize every year to journalists or groups that have “demonstrated their devotion to press freedom”: not surprisingly many of the recipients of this award can be linked to the NED. To demonstrate the relationship between RSF and the NED the following sections will only provide a full examination of backgrounds of the first two winners of the RSF award (for the full details of all the ties that exist between all the other recipients of their award, see here).

The first ever RSF-Fondation de France Prize was awarded during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992 to Zlatko Dizdarevic, a Sarajevo journalist and writer, who was the editor of the daily Bosnian newspaper Oslobodjenje. Dizdarevic’s receipt of this award fitted in well with the interests of Western elites, who throughout the 1990s, were persistent in their efforts to thoroughly demonize Slobodan Milosevic via their support of ‘independent’ (Western friendly) media outlets. For further details on the critical role the Western media played in this lengthy smear campaign, see Edward S. Herman and David Peterson’s (2007). It should almost be expected then that Dizdarevic’s newspaper, Oslobodjenje, received a grant from the NED in 1994 to “purchase desperately-needed newsprint” and to “support the continued publication of the most important daily independent newspaper in the war torn city of Sarajevo”. Two years later the NED pointed out that “Oslobodjenje cannot survive without outside assistance”, an excuse they used to provide them with another grant to “purchase newsprint and to help pay its staff”. Furthermore, the following year Oslobodjenje received additional aid from the Westminster Foundation to “fund further equipment purchases”.

The second winner of RSF’s annual prize was Wang Juntao of Economic Weekly. Juntao has many ‘democratic’ ties, and during the 1980s, with the aid of democracy activist Chen Ziming, he published the samizdat magazine Beijing Spring (a magazine that has received annual NED aid since 2001). In 1987, Juntao and Chen then bought Economic Weekly, and Chen became the publisher and Wang the acting deputy chief editor. Juntao and Chen were subsequently rewarded for their democratic activism when in 1991 they both received the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Award. Nowadays Juntao maintains close ties to the NED as he is chair of the board of Press Freedom Guardian – a Los Angeles-based Chinese-language bi-weekly newspaper which received annual NED aid between 1993 and 2005 (but not in 2000). In addition, Juntao also founded the US-based China Strategic Institute, an organization which received NED aid in 1996 and 1997, and “helps law firms in China bring human-rights suits under Chinese law.”

Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad

While it has been well reported in the progressive media that the NED-linked media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has been at the forefront of recent efforts to delegitimise Venezuela’s media policies, this same progressive media has for the most part overlooked the role of similarly ‘democratic’ human rights groups’ in facilitating such attacks. Noteworthy exceptions to this trend include work undertaken by Greg Grandin and Gregory Wilpert, the latter of whom notes that is “very disappointing to see international human rights groups, such as Human Rights Watch, the Washington Office on Latin America, the Carter Center, and the Committee to Protect Journalists condemn the [Venezuelan] government’s decision” to revoke RCTV’s license. The focus of this section of this paper, however, will not be on such ‘human rights’ groups, but instead will draw attention to the ‘democratic’ activities of a little mentioned South American media watchdog which goes by the name of the Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad.

The Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad (IPYS) – otherwise known as the Press and Society Institute – was founded in 1993 by Laura Puertas Meyer, and the Institute obtained their first NED grant in 1998 to help them “develop a national network to protect journalists” in Peru. Meyer’s involvement in founding IPYS is particularly noteworthy because he is presently the executive director of the Peruvian chapter of Transparency International, which perhaps not coincidentally is a key global democracy manipulating organization. IPYS’s links to Transparency International do not end there, as in 2002 Transparency International’s Americas programme coordinator, Marta Erquicia, joined forces with IPYS to launch an annual award for investigative journalism. Furthermore, it is significant to observe that the democracy manipulator extraordinaire George Soros’s Open Society Institute sponsors the award. So it is ironic that the two winners of this Soros-sponsored award in 2006, Tamoa Calzadilla and Laura Weffer, won because of their reporting on the “irregularities in the investigation of the [Danilo] Anderson murder case” – Anderson being the Venezuelan state prosecutor “in charge of identifying those responsible of [the] failed [2002] coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez”. Finally, it is interesting to note that in a recent US Agency for International Development (AID) country report on their Venezuelan activities USAID pointed out that one the trainees from one of their journalism training programs received the first prize for investigative journalism given by IYPS and Transparency International for a story on corruption in Venezuela.

The current executive director of IPYS Peru is Ricardo Uceda, a reporter who formerly “directed the newsweekly Si, and ran the El Comercio’s investigative unit”. It is significant to note that in 1993 – while working for Si – Uceda was awarded the Committee to Protect Journalists International Press Freedom Award. IPYS Peru can boast other ‘democratic’ links as they have worked alongside the NED-funded Association for Civil Rights, an Argentinean NGO that “was founded in 1995 in Argentina with the purpose of contributing to the establishment of a legal and institutional culture that would guarantee fundamental rights to the inhabitants of our country, based on respect for the Constitution”. The Association for Civil Rights also receives funding from other key ‘democratic’ groups like the British Council, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute: likewise it is interesting to observe that IPYS Peru is a partner organization of the Open Society Institute’s Open Society Justice Initiative.

IPYS Peru obtained renewed NED support to continue their work protecting press freedom in Peru in both 2000 and 2001. Of more relevance to this article though, was the creation, in 2002, of a Venezuelan branch of IPYS. Like their Peruvian chapter, IPYS Venezuela has obtained ongoing support from the NED, and in their founding year they received their first grant to organize a forum “for media owners, editors, journalists, and leaders of international media-advocacy groups to reflect on the state of freedom of expression and journalism in Venezuela.” The following year they obtained another NED grant, which was used to (1)“construct a network of alerts in Venezuela to report attacks and threats against journalists”, (2) “support correspondents in the provinces by monitoring press conditions and investigating cases of attacks or threats, and… offer a series of professional training sessions for journalists”, and (3) to “participate in regional press-advocacy meetings and work with international and regional organizations dedicated to freedom of expression.” The NED has continued to provide annual grants to IPYS Venezuela, and in 2006 they gave them their largest grant to date.

However, perhaps most significantly, on September 18, 2007 – IPYS Venezuela received the NED’s coveted Democracy Award. As their website notes, the NED’s Democracy Award is given annually “to recognize the courageous and creative work of individuals and organizations that has advanced the cause of human rights and democracy around the world.” This year however, instead of judging the work of an assortment of democracy activists, the Democracy Award aimed to spotlight the work of press freedom activists from around the world. Four awards were given in 2007, so in addition to IPYS obtaining the award, three other individuals were awarded the NED’s Democracy Award, two of which are linked to NED-funded groups. These NED-linked award winning journalists were Hisham Kassem (who has served as chairman of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights – a group that received six NED grants between 1994 and 2003), and Kavi Chongkittavorn (who is the assistant group editor of Nation Media Group, a member of the steering committee of the NED-created World Movement for Democracy, and chair of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance – a group that since 1999 has received annual NED support for its work in Malaysia).

IPYS Venezuela through it ongoing demonisation of Chavez’s media policies is currently fulfilling a vital role in the US-led war on Venezuelan democracy. This should be even more worrisome for citizens concerned with democracy, as the NED notes that IPYS “has become an authoritative voice on freedom of expression issues in Venezuela, and is a point of reference for journalists, academics and human rights defenders.” For example, in 2007 the BBC reported that: “A joint delegation of the Committee to Protect Journalists and Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) said today it is alarmed about the lack of transparency in President Hugo Chavez Frias’s decision not to renew the broadcast concession of the privately-owned television station RCTV.” [5] So while it is hardly likely that corporate media outlets will ever view the work of media ‘freedom’ groups like IPYS with skepticism, it is vital that all people concerned with freedom and democracy work to expose the insidious nature of their anti-democratic work.

Conclusion

Regardless of the sincerity of the work carried out by the organizations identified in this study, their links to the ‘democracy’ establishment casts a disturbing shadow over their ability to promote free, democratic media systems. Unfortunately, the lack of discussion concerning receipt of support from antidemocratic organisations like the NED perhaps highlights the naivety of many international media organizations, whose actions suggest that they believe that receiving such aid is unproblematic so long as there are no visible strings attached to their funding. However, this misses the point, as for any organization to be a successful accomplice in any efforts to promote polyarchy it is vital that they act autonomously. This is because media groups that the NED and its cohorts find geo-strategically useful can potentially dominate civil society when provided with the right resources, even if prior to receiving aid they were not the most popular group. In this way, powerful external actors can manipulate (or fake) civil society by providing support in multiple ways to groups and individuals, whose interests are already aligned with their own. [6]

On a more positive note, ideally the results of this paper will help initiate further critical inquiries into the democracy manipulating communities’ cynical abuse of media watchdog organizations. Yet it is surely an indictment on media scholars and journalists that similar studies had not been conducted years ago. That said, perhaps this judgement is overly harsh, as ignorance concerning antidemocratic funding seems to be a problem of progressive groups’ more generally. Indeed, progressive activists’ seem to have become so fixated on critiquing their ideological opponents that they have neglected to watch the right-ward slide of their would-be-allies. This tactical lapse appears to have left democratic media organizations open to the insidious cooptive assaults waged by those intent on promoting a polyarchal public sphere.

First and foremost, to counter the negative influence of the democracy manipulating establishment on media watchdogs (and nongovernmental organizations more generally) it is crucial that progressive citizens committed to a participatory democracy work to develop alternate funding mechanisms for sustaining grassroots activism. Then, as James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer observe, progressive NGOs and activists will be able to “systematically criticize and critique the ties of their colleagues with imperialism and its local clients, their ideology of adaptation to neoliberalism, and their authoritarian and elitist structures.” [7] As they go on to note, it is vitally important that progressive NGOs encourage their less progressive counterparts “to get out of the foundation/government networks and go back to organizing and educating their own people in Europe and North America to form socio-political movements that can challenge the dominant regimes and parties that serve the banks and the [Transnational Corporations].” This is certainly no small order, but it is certainly one that will better enable concerned citizens all over the world to promote participatory democracy rather than polyarchy.

This article was presented as a peer-reviewed paper at the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre’s conference titled: “Convergence, Citizen Journalism & Social Change: Building Capacity” (Brisbane, Australia, March 26-28, 2008). The referenced paper with all references can be found here. Michael Barker’s other articles can be found here.

Notes

[1] Barker, M. J. (2008). Democracy or Polyarchy? US-Funded Media Developments in Afghanistan and Iraq Post 9/11?, Media Culture Society, 30 (1), pp. 109-130.

[2] Contrary to its much better funded USAID and CIA cadres, the NED operates on a relatively meagre annula budget of $80 million. However, although the NED’s individual grants are comparatively speaking quite small this is not particularly significant, this is because once a group receives NED aid they are in a strong position to lever grants from other better endowed financiers. Primarily these more generous funders’ include the NED’s four core grantees, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the Center for International Private Enterprise, and the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center; but other potential funders’ include philanthropic foundations (both liberal and conservative), corporations, governments, intelligence agencies, bilateral and multilateral organizations, and finally the NED’s foreign counterparts (e.g. the Australian Centre for Democratic Institutions).

[3] Robinson, W. I. (1992). A faustian bargain: U.S. intervention in the Nicaraguan elections and American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era. Boulder: Westview Press, pp.78-9.

[4] Herman, E. S. and Chomsky, N. (2002). Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media. New York: Pantheon Books, p.28.

[5] BBC (2007). ‘Venezuela: CPJ, IPYS criticize “lack of transparency” in RCTV case’, BBC Monitoring Americas, Issue January 15, 2007.

[6] INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence (2007). The revolution will not be funded: beyond the non-profit industrial complex. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press; Roelofs, J. (2003). Foundations and public policy: the mask of pluralism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

[7] Petras, J. F. and Veltmeyer, H. (2001). Globalization unmasked: imperialism in the 21st century. London: Zed Books, p.137.