May 24, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Should a foundation support MTV?
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced on Wednesday
that it awarded MTV $700,000 as part of its new effort to promote digital news projects.
The music television network will use the money to create teams of young amateur journalists to cover the 2008 presidential election and other news stories. Their reports will be distributed on cellphones and some will be broadcast on MTV.
Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, in Washington, writes the Miami foundation should not be supporting MTV or its parent corporation, Viacom.
“The idea that one of the most financially successful media corporations, with billions in annual revenue, requires a grant for public service boggles the mind,” he writes on his blog, Digital Digest.
The Knight Foundation “should not be funding the fabulously wealthy to do what they long ago should have done with television–and should be now be doing with new media: financially supporting public-interest programming,” he writes.
Mr. Chester also asks whether MTV will use the personal data it gathers from the young reporters for marketing purposes.
What do you think? Should Knight have not given money to MTV? Or is this an example of “risk taking” philanthropy, as Knight says?
