The Fanonite

Todays guest feature is an important article on ‘Independent’ Journalism Organizations and the National Endowment for Democracy from Michael Barker.

Most people agree that a democratic public sphere is an essential part of any nominally democratic society, however, what many disagree over are the exact ingredients of such a democratic public sphere. In large part these disagreements are caused by different conceptions of what democracy actually means. So while optimistic scholars believe that democracy is thriving globally, researchers, of a more critical bent – like this author – are more inclined to believe, that while global democratic governance is on the rise, these gains are being overshadowed by the increasing dominance of corporate and political elites over all aspects of life. This gloomy diagnosis does not mean to belittle the significance of progressive victories in minority countries and majority ones, but collectively considered these hard won concessions have been unable to repeal the coordinated neoliberal onslaught waged upon the global citizenry over the last few decades. Subsequently, the political, economic and cultural ascendency of corporate-backed elites has severely limited discussions of what should constitute a democratic public sphere. Thus not surprisingly the corporate voices driving such media discourses provide ‘democratic’ options far removed from radical proposals for a New World Information and Communication Order.

Despite the democratic rhetoric flowing from the world’s most powerful political leaders – which is duly amplified by their corporate media mouthpieces – their actual actions tell an alternative, antidemocratic story, a story that is defined by its dedication to oppression and destruction, and opposition to all but the most minimal interpretations of democracy. That many of our planets ruling politicians are also world misleaders is well documented, yet even these so-called politicians still acknowledge that their voters (that is their secondary constituents after corporate ‘persons’) hold great power to effect dramatic social change. Consequently in a perverse tribute to progressive activism, politicians cloak their antidemocratic actions (particularly their military ventures) under the veil of democracy – stretching their cooptive vocal repertoire almost beyond belief to encompass terms like empowerment and participatory democracy – to describe work which undermines commonly understood conceptions of democracy by promoting polyarchy in its place.

Polyarchy was first coined by political theorist Robert Dahl to describe the limited form of elite-driven democracy advanced in and by the West. Polyarchy is synonymous with low-intensity democracy, and stands in stark opposition to the participatory forms of democratic engagement typically advanced by progressive activists. Elitist politicians advancing polyarchal governance understandably worry about the vast gap between their democratic rhetoric and their actions, which in turn, encourages their reliance on ever more advanced methods to manufacture public consent. These tools and strategies to manufacture public consent for polyarchy are numerous and highly developed – as they must be in any democracy – and operate invisibly behind the humanitarian façade erected by our leaders. Indeed, the regularity with which elites can successfully manipulate the public is a testament to the vast ‘propaganda gap’ that lies between the public and the public relations industry: in short, humans have simply not evolved suitably sophisticated defence mechanisms to withstand the daily propaganda/disinformation war waged by the PR industry upon our minds. A case in point is provided by the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which over a million people were slaughtered by Rwandan citizens propelled to kill the ‘other’ by incessant government sanctioned propaganda and hate-radio: while simultaneously, the international media manufactured international ignorance, and consent for inaction, and thus enabled a preventable genocide to progress unhindered.

A ‘Democratic’ Foreign Policy

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, they 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 by promoting the ‘democratic’ interests of transnational capital. William I. Robinson provided the earliest comprehensive critique of the NED’s activities in his 1996 book, Promoting Polyarchy, 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’ lobbies attempts to oust Venezuela’s democratically elected President, have meant that popular knowledge of the NED’s antidemocratic work is becoming more commonplace.

Although it is counterintuitive to question the democratic credentials of an organization which has the word democracy in it’s name, only a little digging is necessary to expose the NED’s deeply anti-democratic modus operandi. Indeed paradoxically, parting the NED’s ‘democratic’ veil is relatively easy due to the overt nature of their work, as their website hosts an online database which lists all their grantees from 1990 onwards: likewise, the database also provides similar information for two of the NED’s sister organizations, the Westminster Foundation (UK) and Rights and Democracy (Canada). However, despite the relatively easy access researchers now have to lists of ‘democratic’ grantees; studies examining the influence of democracy manipulating organizations on the development of foreign media systems have not been forthcoming. [1]

This article seeks to fill this scholarly research void, and provides the first critical investigation of the links between national and international journalism organizations and three key democracy manipulating bodies, the NED, the Westminster Foundation, and Rights and Democracy. As these groups support media projects and organizations all over the world, this article limits itself to undertaking a thorough examination of their ‘infiltration’ of a single international media network, the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) network. However, before launching into an analysis of the ‘democratic’ links of various journalism organizations, the following section will contextualize the study by providing a brief overview of the history of the ‘promotion of democracy’.

Manufacturing Polyarchy

While murderous actions and outright lies have played an important role in securing the advance of polyarchy domestically and globally, a more democratic accompanying tactic relies upon the cooption of progressive activists and their groups. This ‘democratic’ strategy has a long and inglorious history, and was pioneered by well-endowed liberal philanthropists, like the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations. [2] Unfortunately, although the strategic colonization of progressive groups should be a primary concern to the progressive community, such groups seldom acknowledge the serious problems posed by these tactics. Instead, such cooptive practises are more commonly investigated by right-wing groups like the Capital Research Center: these groups however, erroneously conflate the financial support of Leftist groups as intent on the part of liberal philanthropists to promote communism. This is in spite of ample evidence supporting the argument that liberal philanthropy plays a crucial role in maintaining the status quo and in countering socialism (not promoting it). For example, previous studies have illustrated how liberal foundations have had a decisive deradicalizing influence on the development of the civil rights movement, the environmental movement, the women’s movement, and the nuclear freeze movement. [3]

Incidentally, many parallels exist between the activities of liberal foundations and the NED, and before the NED was created in the 1980s the US government had already gained considerable experience of manipulating democracy through 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 manipulation activities were 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 ‘promotion of democracy’ was and still is highly influenced by the CIA, whose work has always been heavily entwined with that of the NED’s predecessors, that is, both USAID and liberal foundations. So 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”.

Contrary to its much better funded USAID and CIA cadres – which have annual budgets of about $2 billion and $1 trillion respectively – the NED operates on a relatively meagre $80 million. Furthermore, as NED grants are widely distributed, the individual grants are comparatively speaking quite small, however, this is not particularly significant, as once a group receives NED aid they are in a strong position to leverage grants from other better endowed financiers. Primarily these 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. The next section of this artcile will now illuminate how the NED has become integrally involved in funding a large number of media organizations affiliated with the International Freedom of Expression eXchange network to advance a polyarchal public sphere.

Funding Media Freedom
The International Freedom of Expression eXchange (IFEX) media network was founded in 1992 in Montreal (Canada) and is comprised of 72 organizations from all over the world – with their “nerve-centre” managed by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The initial meeting which led to the formation of IFEX was funded by the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Mertz-Gilmore Foundation of New York, and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. As this study will now demonstrate, 17 of IFEX’s 72 members have received funding from either, the NED, the Westminster Foundation or Rights and Democracy. This situation has occurred despite the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression having already published an article (in 1995) on the NED’s anti-democratic practices in Haiti, which described the NED as a “fund set up… ostensibly to promote democracy around the world”. Thus this study will now introduce each of 17 ‘democratically’ linked IFEX members and briefly examine the extent of their connections to the wider democracy manipulating network.

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: they even 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 ‘democratic’ activities is provided by their long-term involvement in destabizing the Nicaraguan government throughout the 1980s. Indeed, they undertook vital work for the democracy manipulators in Nicaragua, receiving around US$1 million 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.

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.” 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 democratic 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 (Director of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs), Max M. Kampelman (former vice chair of the United States Institute of Peace – USIP), [4] John N. Moore (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 polyarchy promoting community. Finally, the close links between IFEX and the democracy manipulators make more sense when it is understood that the convenor of IFEX’s council is Karin D. Karlekar, a senior researcher at Freedom House.

In 2002, Freedom House created a Bette Bao Lord Prize for Writing in the Cause of Freedom, whose first recipient was the Egyptian “prodemocracy” activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. While Ibrahim’s links to the darker side of the democracy manipulating lobby have not played out in the international media, one part of his life that has been well covered in the media was his arrest in June 2000, and his subsequent imprisonment for illegally receiving foreign funding (European Union grants) for his democracy work at the Ibn Khaldun Center (which he founded in 1988) in Egypt. Interestingly, the Ibn Khaldun Center only received its first NED grant in 2005 to “establish and maintain” a new Egyptian Democracy Support Network. Ibrahim’s 2000 arrest pricked the world’s attention, and the Bush administration went as far as withholding a “supplemental aid package for Egypt” until he was released from prison in August 2000. However, Ibrahim’s ties to the democracy manipulators are longstanding, as in 1983 he founded the Arab Organization for Human Rights, of which the IFEX member and NED recipient the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) is a member. [5] This makes it less surprising that the secretary-general of EOHR, Hafez Abu Saada, was arrested on similar charges to Ibrahim in December 1998, and was likewise released from prison as a result of international pressure. Ibrahim’s ties to Freedom House and the NED hint at his neoconservative credentials, which are confirmed by his listing on the books of Benador Associates, a well-known neoconservative public relations agency.

International Federation of Journalists

According to their website, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) “is the world’s largest organization of journalists… represent[ing] around 500,000 members in more than 100 countries”, so it is very important that they have received two NED grants for their work. In 1996, they obtained a grant to “provide crucial material assistance to five independent media outlets in Serbia/Montenegro”; and in 2005, they were awarded a second grant to “build a coalition of interests to assert values of journalism and free expression” in Somalia and to work with the Somali Journalists Network (SOJON) to organize a journalism conference. SOJON changed their name to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ) in 2005, and at the end of that year they were awarded the Reporters sans frontiers Fondation de France International Press Freedom Defender Award (for a critique of this award, click here). Incidentally, SOJON also received NED aid in 2005, to help them train journalists and “nominate journalists as National Press Freedom Protectors to monitor free press abuses”. Likewise, in 2003, one of the eight media outlets listed on SOJON’s 2005 Directory of Journalists, Banadir Radio, had also been the receipient of the NED’s largesse.

In 2005, IFJ along with 14 other groups organized the Global Forum for Media Development’s (GFMD) inaugural meeting, with funding provided by an assortment of democracy manipulators that counted amongst their ranks, the NED, the Ford Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. Interestingly, not counting the IFJ, seven of the other forum organizers have also received NED or Westminster Foundation funding in the past; these groups are the Mexican organisation Colectivo de Investigación, Desarrollo y Educación entre Mujeres (Collective for Investigation, Development and Education among Women), the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the International Center for Journalists, Internews, Media Rights Agenda, Panos, and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance. Furthermore, two of the non-’democracy’ linked forum organizers are linked indirectly to the NED’s work. The first group, the Media Development Loan Fund, receives financial backing from one of the main US democracy manipulators, the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. And the second group, Zambezi FoX, is indirectly linked to the NED through Jeanette Minnie (who sat on the GMFD steering committee for Zambezi FoX), as in 2005 Jeanette coordinated a workshop for the NED-linked Media Institute of Southern Africa (see later) – a group that since then has also published her book Outside the Ballot Box: Preconditions for Elections in Southern Africa 2005/6.

Finally, although there are likely to be more links between the NED and the IFJ, one obvious one comes in the form of the IFJ’s Yemen coordinator, Hafez Al-Bukari, who served as a 2006–2007 Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow at the NED. Hafez Al-Bukari has also written for the Yemen Times, and is a member of the informal advisory board of the Arab Reform Program for the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute.

Article 19 (UK)

Article 19 was founded in 1987 and describes itself as “an international human rights organization which defends and promotes freedom of expression and freedom of information all over the world.” Between 1996 and 1997 they received three grants from the Westminster Foundation, and in 1997 they obtained a grant from Rights and Democracy. In 2004 and 2005, Article 19 received further grants from the Westminster Foundation, although strangely these donations were not recorded on the NED’s project database. Article 19 has also been the recepient of a number of grants from organizations which work closely with the NED, USAID in 2003, and from the Panos Institute in 2004 (see later).

In 2005, the six largest funders of Article 19 (in order of magnitude) were the Open Society Institute (OSI), the Sigrid Rausing Trust, the Ford Foundation, the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, UNESCO, and the Swedish International Development Agency (Article 19, 2006: 21). Their main benefactor, OSI, is a key global democracy manipulating organization which was set up by international financier George Soros, and has in the past, distributed up to $450 million a year to polyarchal causes. Article 19’s second largest supporter, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, diverts most of its grants to progressive causes (like Friends of the Earth), but they also fund a number of groups associated with the NED. Some of these NED-linked groups include the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation, and the International Crisis Group. The International Crisis Group has particularly strong ties to the democracy manipulating community, as their US directors include, NED director Morton I. Abramowitz, former NED director Wesley Kanne Clark, and Freedom House trustees Kenneth L. Adelman and Zbigniew Brzezinski, as well as the former President of the Philippines, Fidel Ramos, whose rise to power was made possible by the NED.

Finally, two members of Article 19’s staff have worked for other NED-related groups. The first is their Africa Programme Director, John Barker, who had previously “managed and developed the broadcasting policy and legislation work” for the Media Institute of Southern Africa (see later). The second, Dini Widiastuti, had worked for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs before becoming Article 19’s Asia Programme Officer.

Association of Independent Electronic Media (Serbia and Montenegro)

The Association for Independent Electronic Media (ANEM) was formed in 1993 and is a network of radio stations operating within Serbia and Montenegro: they have received NED grants in 1998, 2000 and 2001. NED support of ANEM fulfilled a vital polyarchal role in Serbia much to the delight of the international democracy manipulating establishment, as it was integral to the ouster of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. USAID media researcher, Krishna Kumar, also acknowledges the importance of the NED-supported media, as he notes that the independent media in Serbia “facilitated the regime change and paved the way for democracy”. [6] Thus international assistance for the creation and support of ANEM enabled many ‘democratically’ funded Serbian media groups to continue broadcasting within Serbia despite severe state repression.

During the early 1990s the international community provided between US$7-10 million to ‘independent’ media organizations within the former Yugoslavia, while after 1995 the US gave a further US$23 million, and the European Union augmented this with another 17 million Euros. It is not surprising then that the names of ‘independent’ media broadcasters, particularly, Radio B 92 – which received NED support in 1997 and aid from the Westminster Foundation in 1998 – were “[c]hanted as slogans during the numerous street protests” and became “symbols of resistance” for democracy.

More recently, in 2003, Medienhilfe received an NED grant to “cover six months of basic operating costs for eight of the most important independent electronic media in the Association of Independent Electronic Media network in Serbia (021Radio Boom 93, Radio Devic, Radio Ozon, Radio Patak, OK Radio, RTV Bajna Basta, STV Negotin).”

Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights

The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies was founded in 1994 and in that same year they received two NED grants to publish their quarterly human rights journal, Arab Human Rights Review. Then in 1996, 1997 and 1998 they received further NED grants to continue to publish their journal which was renamed, Ruwaq Arabi. In July 2004, the Cairo Institute organized a conference with the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, and the quarterly journal Al Siyassa Al Dawlia (International Politics), which “was attended by 100 participants from 15 Arab states”. Like the Cairo Institute, since 1994, the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights has been a regular recipient of NED aid. Other than a single grant channelled to them via the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) in 2000 – which was targeted for purely electoral work – all the rest of their NED grants (in 1996, 2002 and 2003) have a media and publishing component. Finally, although the last organizer of the July 2004 conference has not received NED aid, the editor-in-chief of Al Siyassa Al Dawlia, Osama El-Ghazali Harb, is openly supportive of President George Bush, which says a lot in itself.

Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (Russia)

The Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES) received its first NED grant in 2002 to “support a program of organization, research, and information-distribution regarding violations of journalists’ rights throughout Russia and various ‘hot points’ of the former USSR.” Since then they have received further NED grants in 2004 and 2005, indirectly, via their founding organization, the Union of Journalists of Russia. CJES’s website also adds that further additional funding details, noting that between 2000 and 2004, they have been supported by the Open Society Institute (OSI) and from “USAID through Internews” and a number of foreign governments embassies. Receipt of aid from these groups is significant because OSI is a key global player in the promotion of polyarchy, while Internews is one of the world’s largest ‘independent’ media agencies, which receives around 80 percent of its annual US$20 million budget from the US government.

Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (Philippines),

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR) was created in 1989 and is a non-profit organization whose programs according to its website “uphold press freedom, promote responsible journalism and encourage journalistic excellence.” The Executive Director of CMFR, Melinda Quintos de Jesus, is not only a IFEX council member, but she is also a founding member and trustee of the NED-funded Southeast Asian Press Alliance (see later), and she serves on the steering committee of the NED-initiated World Movement for Democracy. CMFR’s benign democratic sounding name is deceptive, as in 2005 the neoliberal Atlas Economic Research Foundation honoured them with their annual Templeton Freedom Award. Their advocacy of the free market has also been supported by the NED, as in 1999, CMFR received a grant – channeled via the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) – “to organize consultations and a workshop that will initiate a discussion among Indonesian media, business, and government executives on how to provide for the free flow of economic information to the public and among private-sector and governmental institutions.” Additionally, CMFR are a member of the CIPE Reform Network, sitting alongside groups like the Philippines’ Institute of Corporate Directors, the Free Market Foundation, and the NED-linked Institute for Democracy in South Africa.

Globe International (Mongolia)
Globe International was founded in 1999, and is a nonprofit media organization that focuses on legal issues: their first published report – carried out in conjunction with Article 19 – was titled Mongolia in Transition: Mongolian Legislation Affecting Freedom of Expression. In 2002, with funding provided by the US Embassy, the Australian Agency for International Development, and the Soros Foundation (which is part of the George Soros’ wider ‘democracy’- network), Globe International started their Right to Know: Freedom of Information project. A few years later, in 2004, Globe International received aid from the Asia Foundation to organize an international media conference. This is particularly interesting as the Asia Foundation was created by the CIA in 1956 to act a front for distributing funds for the promotion of polyarchy. Globe International has also worked with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), as in 2005 NDI received a NED grant to help Globe International “enhance the capacity of Mongolian civil society organizations to conduct independent, impartial observations of Mongolian media behavior during the presidential election in May.” Finally, Globe International’s 2005 Annual Report shows that this ostensibly independent media group has received funding from the Canadian government (via the Canada Foundation), the World Bank, UNESCO and the World Association of Newspapers .
Independent Journalism Centre (Nigeria)

The Independent Journalism Centre’s website notes that they “collaborat[e] with many international organizations” including the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (which is a key German democracy manipulating foundation) and the Panos Institute. In 1997, the Panos Institute received a NED grant “on behalf of the Independent Journalism Center” to “provide computer equipment to five leading pro-democracy media organizations in Nigeria… and to organize a workshop by leading journalist and human rights activist Dapo Olorunyomi to train editors in computer-assisted reporting.” The exiled leader of this NED-supported workshop, Dapo Olorunyomi, had fled Nigeria in 1995, when military intelligence agents were pursuing him over articles he had published on “the alleged coup plot of March that year.” However, his wife Ladi Olorunyomi still resides in Nigeria, and was assistant director at the Independent Journalism Centre in the year that the Panos Insitute received the NED grant. [7] Working in exile, Dapo works with an assortment of well established democracy manipulating organizations. He has consulted with the ‘democratic’ Albert Einstein Institution, worked as media program officer for the Open Society Institute (OSI), served as the Africa program director for the Panos Institute (Washington, D.C.), worked as an analyst for Freedom of the Press, and is presently Freedom House’s project director for Nigeria. It is also worth noting that in 2001, the Independent Journalism Centre also worked on a World Bank funded project with the Panos Institute, Media Diversity Institute, and the Center for War, Peace and the News Media. This was significant as the Media Diversity Institute, like the Panos Institute also receives funding from various international democracy manipulators which include the OSI, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, Freedom Forum, and the Westminster Foundation.

Media Rights Agenda (Nigeria)

Media Rights Agenda is a nonprofit organization that was created in 1993 and it received its first NED grant in 1998 to produce their publication, Media Rights Monitor. Two years later they received another NED grant to “develop a research and legislative advocacy program that will identify restrictive press laws, create momentum for legal reform, and draft and promote legislation to reform media laws.” Media Rights Agenda list three working partners on their website, the neoconservative Freedom House, Article 19 and the International Press Centre. All three are intimately linked to the NED, but as this article has not examined the latter group it is worth briefly examining their polyarchal ties.

The International Press Centre (IPC) was created in October 1999 by the International Federation of Journalists and the West African Journalists Association – both of which are IFEX members which have received NED funds – in partnership with Media Rights Agenda, the International Journalism Centre, and Journalists for Democratic Rights. The latter group is indirectly linked to the NED, as their former chairman, Akintola Olaniyan, was a NED Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow between 2004 and 2005. (Journalists for Democratic Rights have also worked with the IPC and Media Rights Agenda, as part of a coalition of Nigerian NGOs called the Media for Democracy Group in Nigeria – which formed in 2003.)

Ellen Hume (2004) described Babafemi Ojudu as a “key player” at the IPC, and interestingly before his involvement with the IPC (in November 1997) he was arrested “as he returned from Nairobi after participating in a seminar organized by the U.S.-based [and NED-linked] Freedom Forum”. Furthermore, according to a letter he wrote during his stay in prison, he had just been in the US on an International Visitor Programme organized by the US propaganda agency, the US Information Agency (he was released from prison on July 20, 1998).

In 2003, the IPC published “the first in the series of a Nigerian Media Reform Manifesto, the main objective of which is to encourage greater emphasis on ethical and professional issues within the journalism profession” (Arogundade, 2003: i). The acknowledgements section of this report are also interesting as they thank the NED-funded Institute for Democracy in South Africa for helping organize and fund the two round tables that facilitated the reports production.

Media Institute of Southern Africa (Namibia)

The Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) was launched in 1992 and is a non-governmental organization with members in 11 of the Southern Africa Development Community countries. Ellen Hume (2004) describes MISA as the “top monitoring organization in Africa” and she noted received $800,000 from the US government – although she provides no further information regarding this funding. However, according to their 2005 Annual Report, MISA received most of their funding from European governments, the three largest donors, in order of magnitude being the Royal Danish Embassy DANIDA (US$882,737), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (US$571,123), and the Royal Norwegian Embassy NORAD (US$464,022).

In 1999, along with Article 19 and the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, MISA helped launch Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe, with funding provided by USAID amongst others. The Media Monitoring Project works “with the Civic Alliance for Social and Economic Progress (CASEP) on social and economic issues, and the Zimbabwe Election Support Network (ZESN) on electoral issues and the media.” Head of MISA- Zimbabwe, Rashweat Mukundu, sits on the board of ZESN and is the vice chairperson of the board of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, a coalition that was formed in 2001 as a “conglomeration of more than 350 civil society organizations”. ZESN, received NED funding in 2005, and two of its four founding members, the Foundation for Democracy in Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (Zimrights), have received NED aid (in 1998 and 2004 respectively), while both also received money from the Westminster Foundation in both 1997 and 1998. Prior to 1999, Reginald Matchaba Hove was Zimrights chairman, however, now he is now the chairman of ZESN and the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. The democracy manipulating credentials of the Media Monitoring Project Zimbabwe were strengthened in 2006 when Reginald received the NED’s International Democracy Award.

MISA launched a Zambian branch in 1996 called the Zambia Independent Media Association (ZIMA) which received a grant from the Westminster Foundation the following year. In 2004, ZIMA joined forces with Francis Kasoma’s Press Association of Zambia to launch the Media Council of Zambia (MECOZ). MECOZ is chaired by retired high court judge Kabazo Chanda, and has eight board members, Chieftainess Chiawa, Fr. Ignatius Mwebe, Dr. Fackson Banda, Edem Djokotoe, Sarah Longwe, Sharon Mwalongo, Elias Chipimo, Jr. and Sr. Rose Nyondo.

The type of media promoted by MECOZ is likely to be in some way influenced by their board of directors, so it is particularly interesting that Fackson Banda is also the Regional Director for Panos Institute Southern Africa (incidentally he also acts as one of a handful of African advisors for the progressive US-based MediaChannel). In addition, Elias Chipimo, Jr. is head of Corpus Globe, a law firm that “has worked extensively in the areas of capital markets and securities, privatization, research, energy, and corporate advisory”, and he is the national coordinator for the Zambia Enterprise Network. Chipimo cofounded the Zambia Civic Education Associationin 1993 with the following partner organizations, Afronet, Transparency International, Panos-Pan African Network of Southern Africa, and the Foundation for Democratic Process, all of which are linked to democracy manipulating community. As all these groups are also involved in African media development work, this article will introduce these three new groups.

Afronet (or the Inter-African Network for Human Rights and Development) is a “network of human rights organizations in African countries” which was created in 1993 and produces the Monitor newspaper. Their direct links to the democracy manipulators were established in 2001, when the Westminster Foundation paid for a British consultant to work at the Monitor (in Zambia) “to assist with the paper’s transition to an independent newspaper.” One member of their advisory council, Muna Ndulo – who has resided their since 1997 – also has stong ‘democratic’ links, as in August 2003 he was a consultant for the International Foundation for Election Systems in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, the executive director of Afronet, Ngande Mwanajiti, has been a prodemocracy activist for some time, and he had previously been the Chairperson of the Clean Campaign Committee (CCC) – “a coalition of 18 NGOs which campaigned to level the electoral playing field and avoid violence in the [Zambian] elections” with support from USAID. Ngande Mwanajiti (2003) also proved his pro-‘democracy’ credentials when he noted in a speech (in Germany) that Afronet supported the New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad). This is interesting, as activists with a more critical bent have described Nepad as having a subimperialist agenda, thus:

Instead of promoting debt cancellation, as do virtually all serious reformers, the Nepad strategy is to “support existing poverty reduction initiatives at the multilateral level, such as the Comprehensive Development Framework of the World Bank and the Poverty Reduction Strategy approach linked to the Highly Indebted Poor Country debt relief initiative”

The next partner of the Zambia Civic Education Association, Transparency International, describes itself as a “global civil society organization” whose “mission is to create change towards a world free of corruption.” Their board of directors and advisory council reads like a who’s who’s of democracy manipulators, the two most notable examples being Nancy Zucker Boswell, who is a member of USAID’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, and John Brademas, who is a former chairman of the NED.

The final group working with the Zambia Civic Education Association which has yet to be introduced is the Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP). In 1998, FODEP was picked out as a “notable example” of an organization successfully promoting democracy in Africa in an article written by Gyimah-Boadi in the NED’s Journal of Democracy. Although FODEP has received no NED funding, all the other “notable” organizations (bar MISA) that Gyimah-Boadi mentions in his article have received NED aid, these include the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (in 1990 and 1993), GERDDES-Afrique (in all years from 1991 to 1995), and the Institute of Economic Affairs in Ghana (in 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997).

Freedom of Expression Institute (South Africa)

In 1998 the Freedom of Expression Institute received a grant from the Westminster Foundation to help them “publish ten issues of its monthly newsletter ‘Update’”. The Institute is a member of the NED-linked Media Institute of Southern Africa, and originally formed in 1994 through the merger of three existing groups, the Campaign for Open Media, the Anti-Censorship Action Group, and the Media Defence Trust. In contrast, to many of the other groups in this article which exhibit close ideological links to the democracy manipulating lobby, the Freedom of Expression Institute appears to be genuinely progressive. For example, in May 2005 their Executive Director, Jane Duncan, gave a talk titled Neo-Liberalism: The Media and Ideology at a workshop organized by the Southern Africa Centre for Economic Justice, called Developing Economic Alternatives to Neo-Liberalism. Furthermore, other staff like Virginia Setshedi – who describes herself as an “anti-privatization activist” – and heads the Institute’s media and ICT’s programme, has recently coauthored an article with Patrick Bond (one of the harshest critics of Nepad): ironically, the article in question examined how “Trojan Horse NGOs Sabotage the Struggle Against Neoliberalism”. Yet the progressive credentials of the Institute demand that the group renounce its ties to the democracy manipulators as soon as possible, as what better way for the NED to legitimize it’s work than by obtaining the passive support of a left-wing group’s like the Freedom of Expression Institute. Unfortunately, to date the Institute has not responded to emails sent by this author regarding their polyarchal links.

Pakistan Press Foundation (Pakistan)

In 2004, the Pakistan Press Foundation – headed by the President of Pakistan Press International, Owais Aslam Ali – received a NED grant to “develop a network of rural civil society organizations and journalists working to strengthen democracy and human rights.” Their website notes that they collaborate with various international organizations, which include the Freedom Forum, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the Commonwealth Press Union, and UNESCO amongst others. Owais Aslam Ali was a Nieman Foundation fellow (2001-02) and he is presently a member of the council for IFEX. Finally, Owais also sits on the Management Committee of the Institute for Media, Peace and Security (at the University of Peace, Costa Rica), positioned alongside key establishment figures like Maurice Strong, and John Owen, the former European Director of the Freedom Forum.

Southeast Asian Press Alliance (Thailand),
The Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA) formed in 1989 to campaign for press freedom in Southeast Asia with the assistance of the World Press Freedom Committee, Freedom Forum, and the Committee to Protect Journalist. The only one of these groups not mentioned so far is the Committee to Protect Journalists, which can be linked to the other ‘democratic’ groups through their board of directors. Thus the Committee to Protect Journalists’ Charles L. Overby is also the president of Freedom Forum, Gene Roberts was a former director of the World Press Freedom Committee, and also of interest is David Laventhol who was a former chair of the International Press Institute (see later). Since 1999, SEAPA have received annual grants from the NED to support their work in Malaysia, which focuses on the “development and protection of journalistic independence and professionalism”.

Five media organizations are members of SEAPA: they are the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (see earlier), the Indonesian-based Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information and the Alliance of Independent Journalists, the Thai Journalists Association, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism. Goenawan Mohamad was a co-founder of the Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information, which was formed in 1995, and he went on to help found the Alliance of Independent Journalists. The ‘democratic’ significance of Goenawan’s involvement in founding these groups is that he also sits on the international advisory board for Article 19, and in 1998 he was awarded the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

Kavi Chongittavorn, founded and heads both SEAPA and the Thai Journalists Association. According to Ellen Hume (2004):

For information on the state of media, training and journalism development throughout Southeast Asia, the most respected resource is Kavi Chongittavorn, a 2001- 2002 Nieman fellow at Harvard who edits The Nation English-language magazine in Bangkok. He founded and heads both the Thai Journalists Association and SEAPA, and he also represents IFEX and Transparency International in Bangkok.

Finally, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism appears to work closely with the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR – introduced earlier): for example, in 2005 one of the Center’s reporters, Yvonne T. Chua, won two top prizes in the CMFR’s Jaime V. Ongpin Awards for Excellence in Journalism.

West African Journalists Association (Senegal)

The West African Journalists Association (WAJA) “was established in 1986, in Dakar, Senegal as the umbrella association for journalists associations and unions in 16 countries that make up the Economic Community of West Africa States.” In 1997, WAJA received a grant from the Westminster Foundation to part-fund their monthly newsletter, which “monitor[s] press freedom violations in the region and to create links between journalists associations”. The chairman of their International Relations Committee, Suah S. Deddeh, is also the president of the Press Union of Liberia, which has been a regular recipient of NED aid since 1991. Lastly, as mentioned earlier, in 1999 WAJA helped form the International Press Centre.

Reporters sans frontiers

Reporters sans frontieres (RSF) is one of the world’s most famous organizations promoting freedom of the press, yet like the other organizations discussed in this study, it also receives aid from democracy manipulators. According to the NED’s project database, RSF received a grant from Rights and Democracy in 2004: however RSF’s website also boasts that they are supported by the NED, OSI and the Center for a Free Cuba (which has obtained annual grants from the NED since 1998). Although RSF’s NED grants are not listed on the NED’s project database, it has been reported that the NED has at least acknowledged that RSF has received grants from one of the NED’s core grantees, the International Republican Institute, “over at least three years.” Bringing all this information together, it then comes as no surprise to find that RSF is currently backing the US government’s official foreign policy line in Haiti, Cuba and Venezuela – all countries in which the NED is highly active.
Ironically, RSF’s secretary general, Robert Menard, has said that their receipt of NED aid “hasn’t posed any problem” to their organization. Yet as this article has demonstrated this argument is hard to substantiate. Furthermore, this position is certainly not shared by the UK’s National Union of Journalists, who responded to reports on the links between the NED and RSF by noting that: “It is very dangerous when press freedom organizations get themselves politically compromised by accepting payment from any government. It is really vital that all such organizations are truly independent.”

Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (Peru)

The Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad (IPYS) otherwise known as the Peruvian Press and Society Institute was founded in 1993, and they received their first NED grant in 1998 to help “develop a national network to protect journalists”: they then obtained renewed NED support in both 2000 and 2001. In addition, to NED financial support, in 2000 IPYS were awarded the International Press Institute’s (IPI) Free Media Pioneer Award. This is significant for IPYS’s ‘democratic’ credentials, because the IPI (which is an IFEX member) has media interests that historically have been closely aligned with American foreign policy elites, as in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the IPI actively opposed UNESCO’s proposed New World Information and Communication Order. The IPI’s Pioneer Award is cosponsored by Freedom Forum, which provides a further clue as to the political nature of the award, as emeritus chair of Freedom House, Bette Bao Lord, is also a trustee of the Freedom Forum. Furthermore, Allen H. Neuharth, the founder of Freedom Forum, is a member of the advisory board of the World Press Freedom Committee – a group that describes its original purpose as “oppos[ing] proposals for a restrictive new world information and communication order.” Moreover, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, nearly all the groups who have received the IPI’s annual Pioneer Award are connected to the activities of the NED and/or other international democracy manipulating organizations.

Conclusions

Regardless of the sincerity of the work carried out by the journalism organizations identified in this study, their links to the ‘democracy’ establishment casts a disturbing shadow over their ability to promote free, democratic media systems. Some of the groups in this study may claim to be unaware of the NED’s nefarious activities. However, in this author’s opinion it seems a little far-fetched to believe that well respected media organizations (employing journalists well-known for their investigative work) would neglect to determine whether their financial supporters were interested in promoting democracy or polyarchy. Media groups’ with minor ties to the democracy manipulators may of course have only found out about the NED’s antidemocratic work after receipt of their aid, but even if this was the case, it would seem appropriate that they should warn others about their mistake to prevent it happening again – a commendable step that none of the aforementioned groups has yet taken.

On a more positive note, ideally the results of this artcile will help initiate further critical inquiries into the democracy manipulators colonization of journalism 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.

One way to counter the democracy manipulators cynical use of journalism against democracy is for progressive groups to thoroughly investigate the activities of each and every media group working to strengthen the public sphere. This would be a simple project if journalists and media scholars across the world critically examined the work of their local journalism organizations. As in this way, a global database might be built up which would enable progressive scholars, activists, and journalists, to lift the rhetorical veil that has so far shielded many media groups’ from criticism. Completion of such studies will then enable keen media reformers to support (and where necessary create new) truly participatory journalism organizations that can effectively challenge the corporate medias’ global hegemony.

Finally, although 17 ‘democratically’ funded groups were identified by this study, this article has not in any way undertaken a systematic investigation of how other influential media groups are linked to other democracy manipulators like for example, the Soros Foundations. A more detailed study addressing this deficit of the present study would certainly be welcome, but concerned media activists need not wait for such a studies completion before they take action. Indeed, as this study has shown the funding and potential cooption of journalism organizations matters a great deal, and at least for a start people can begin to rectify the democratic dilemma posed by the NED and its cronies by publicly denouncing their activities and refusing to work with them in the future. Then media organizations can begin considering adopting more participatory funding arrangements that will help to allow them to promote a genuinely democratic public sphere not a polyarchal one.

– Endnotes –

[1] For two exceptions, see Michael Barker (2008) Democracy or Polyarchy? US-Funded Media Developments in Afghanistan and Iraq Post 9/11?, Media Culture Society, 30 (1), pp. 109-130; Gerald Sussman (2006). The Myths of ‘democracy assistance’: U.S. political intervention in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. Monthly Review, December 2006.

[2] Arnove, R. F. (1980). Philanthropy and cultural imperialism: the foundations at home and abroad. Boston, Mass.: G.K. Hall.; Faber, D. and McCarthy, D. (2005). Foundations for social change: critical perspectives on philanthropy and popular movements. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Roelofs, J. (2003). Foundations and public policy: the mask of pluralism. Albany: State University of New York Press.

[3] Haines, H. (1984). Black Radicalization and the Funding of Civil Rights. Social Problems, 32, 31-43.; Barker, M. J. he Liberal Foundations of Environmentalism: Revisiting the Rockefeller-Ford Connection, Capitalism Nature Socialism, 19 (2), pp. 15-42.; Proietto, R. (1999). The Ford Foundation and women’s studies in American higher education: seeds of change? In E. C. Lagemann, (Ed.), Philanthropic foundations: new scholarship, new possibilities (pp. 271-284), Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press.; McCrea, F. B. and Markle, G. E. (1989). Minutes to midnight: nuclear weapons protest in America. Newbury Park, Calif.: SAGE.

[4] In 1984, the United States Institute for Peace was created, its main point of differentiation from the NED being that it cloaks its antidemocratic activities in the rhetoric of peace instead of democracy.

[5] “During his six-week detention, a smear campaign in the government press accused Ibrahim of financial corruption, accepting foreign funding for research “harmful to Egypt’s interests,” and even spying for the US.”

[6] Kumar, K. (2004). USAID’s media assistance: policy and programmatic lessons. Evaluation working paper 16, U.S. Agency for International Development, Bureau for Policy and Program Coordination, p.xiii.

[7] In 2004, Ladi Olorunyomi was involved in producing the OneWorld U.S. Edition. OneWorld is a non-profit global information network which was launched in 2000: they receive funding from various groups including the Ford Foundation (which gave them $0.5 million in 2005), the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, the UK Department for International Development, and the World Bank. Presently, Ladi is the Programme Officer (based in Washington, D.C.) for the Panos Institute Caribbean and she is also the Nigerian Senior Program Officer for Global Rights, an international human rights advocacy group that received NED funding in 2004 and 2005. (“Silver circle” supporters of Global Rights listed on their website include the Westminster Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation and USAID.)