Facts Were Misstated in Column on Foundations, Journalism

To the Editor:

Although I was a subject of his reporting, Rick Edmonds did not talk to me in preparing “Foundations and Journalism: an Awkward Fit” (My View, May 3l). If he had, you would have been spared the embarrassment of some serious mistakes on his part.

Let’s begin with the Florence and John Schumann Foundation’s $2-million grant to the Columbia Journalism Review. I was (and remain) the president of the foundation. Joan Konner, now retired, was dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Mr. Edmonds says that at the time of the grant she sat on the Schumann Foundation board. He’s wrong. He is also wrong when he suggests the grant had something to do with the foundation’s interest in campaign-finance reform and the magazine’s coverage of that issue.

The foundation makes grants in three primary fields: campaign-finance reform, the environment, and support for independent journalism. Our grant to the Columbia Journalism Review was in that third category. Dean Konner was not — I repeat, not — on our board when we made the grant. Rather, I was on the board of editorial advisers to the Columbia Journalism Review; that’s how I found out the magazine was sliding toward a financial abyss and threatened with extinction. Although there were several wealthy media magnates on the board, none was prepared to come up with the infusion of funds needed to save the magazine. I proposed to my Schumann trustees that we consider a grant large enough to help the magazine hold on until Dean Konner and the CJR board could develop a long-range strategy for survival. During the process of discussing the Columbia Journalism Review’s perilous financial situation and the magazine’s importance to journalism, several of my colleagues got to know and respect Dean Konner, with whom I had once been a colleague; it was as a result of this process that, after the grant had been made, we asked her to join the board precisely because she believes so strongly in independent journalism and brings to our grant making for journalism an unusual depth of professional experience and personal integrity.

Contrary to what Mr. Edmonds says, the grant had nothing to do with the magazine’s coverage of campaign-finance reform and in no way influenced that coverage. It never occurred to Joan Konner or me that it should, or would. We are both grown-ups. Although we have been in journalism for a combination of more than 60 years, we are not exactly stupid; we would not put at risk CJR, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, or our reputations. Furthermore, she would have kicked me out the door if I had even mildly interfered. By the way, she didn’t even inform me in advance of her choice of a new editor, whose views on campaign-finance reform I never learned. So much for donor influence.

Truth to tell, the Columbia Journalism Review takes grants from several foundations. It wouldn’t be around if it didn’t (or if it had to wait for the rich megamedia companies to support it). When I was on the board of advisers, I never saw the slightest evidence that such grants influenced the magazine’s editorial integrity. I would not have expected the Schumann grant to influence it, either. The grant was made to save the magazine, not subvert it.

Mr. Edmonds goes on, rather breathlessly, to disclose that “In 1999, The Washington Post and other newspapers reported that Mr. Moyers was serving as president of the Schumann Foundation, drawing a six-figure salary.” If any of those papers expected a Pulitzer for this astounding discovery, it was not to be. Perhaps that’s because old news doesn’t win awards. I became president of the foundation in 1991. My appointment was publicly announced and reported. I list it on my résumé. Our grants are a matter of public record. I write and sign our reports. And I have made countless speeches as the foundation’s president, including one that very year in broad daylight to a thousand people at the Family Foundations Conference, where I shamelessly inflicted upon the gathered philanthropists my passion for strong and independent journalism and a political process less beholden to money.

Mr. Edmonds then reports that “without disclosure,” my documentaries (note the plural) on the campaign system “made heavy use of Schumann grantees as sources.” Wrong, again. (On original reporting, he’s batting .000.)

Since 1986 I have created over 300 hours of public-television programming. Only eight of those have dealt with money and politics, and none of the eight involved Schumann funding. (It would be a conflict to run a foundation that funded my own programs.)

One — just one — included people who have received grants from the Schumann Foundation. But they were neither suggested nor selected for that reason. As experts in the field their names turned up naturally in the preproduction research done by my producers, who did not know of the Schumann connection. I didn’t know one of them or recollect that his organization had ever received a Schumann grant.

The other two I did recognize as grantees, but it did not cross my mind that they should be disqualified for that reason (several foundations are among their funders), and it didn’t occur to me to identify them as such. That was a lapse, but an inadvertent one. And contrary to what Mr. Edmonds says, it involved one documentary, and one alone.

It is true that I have a strong point of view on many subjects I treat on television. One of the reasons I left corporate journalism to set up my own production company is the freedom I could have as an independent journalist to take positions when I believe they are called for. It is true that as president of the Schumann Foundation and a journalist I champion cleaning up a system of campaign financing that favors the powerful and the rich. But I do so openly, so that when I do stumble, it’s in broad daylight. Much of the foundation’s grant making has nothing to do with campaign-finance reform, however. We consider independent journalism just as important to the health of democracy, and we have been substantial funders to National Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, the P.O.V. documentary series, the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, Frontline, Charles Lewis’s Center for Public Integrity, the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Investigative Reporters and Editors, as well as many independent journalists and writers. All the grants we make to public television and radio are publicly acknowledged according to the rules and regulations of PBS and NPR, and the foundation has no influence over the content of those programs funded with our grants.

Mr. Edmonds could have asked me about all this. He didn’t.

Bill Moyers
Executive Editor
Public Affairs Television
New York

President
Florence and John Schumann Foundation
Montclair, N.J.

Mr. Edmonds responds: Mr. Moyers is correct that I should have contacted him. However, his view that Schumann’s grant making had no influence on the Columbia Journalism Review’s coverage is clearly represented in the column by Ms. Konner, with whom I did speak. I also spoke with Mr. Moyers’s son, John, then executive director of the Schumann Foundation, who expressed the same view to me. I stand corrected that Ms. Konner joined the Schumann board soon after the foundation made its grant to the Review and that Bill Moyers’s use of Schumann grantees as sources was in a single documentary rather than several. In his letter, Mr. Moyers suggests that Schumann’s grant making to National Public Radio is unrelated to campaign finance; however, at least four of the foundation’s grants to NPR have been for reporting on that subject, according to the Foundation Center.

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To the Editor:

It is possible to imagine a situation where a news organization would let a nonprofit funding source shape its news product. But this type of interference is far more prevalent among advertisers and other, more closely entwined corporate interests. Not to pick on one news organization above all others, but the Los Angeles Times attempted one of the most controversial business alliances in the history of American journalism.

In 1998, the Times entered into an advertising profit-sharing deal with the Staples Center, a downtown arena in Los Angeles, in the publication of an edition of its Sunday magazine that was devoted entirely to the opening of the center.

Although extreme, the Staples Center episode represents the more common form of editorial interference. But nobody would be foolish enough to suggest that most newspapers should reject all advertising payments outright.

It is not to say that news editors and publishers should simply turn over their editorial decisions to foundation program officers. News organizations should always maintain editorial control of their efforts, whether they are financed by subscribers, advertisers, or foundations.

Like nonprofit organizations, newspapers and other journalistic enterprises need to balance the interests of multiple constituents — readers, advertisers, and yes, in rare cases, foundation supporters — and they have to do it in ways that protect their credibility. The most important element of credibility is editorial independence. And it has to be maintained in the face of potential interference from any funding source, whether it is an advertiser or a grant maker.

Unfortunately, if Mr. Edmonds is taken too seriously, one of the few growing sources of financial support for serious in-depth journalism will be forsaken.

Viewed another way, Mr. Edmonds disproves his thesis by giving voice to it. After all, the sponsor of his research, the Poynter Institute, is an endowed, not-for-profit corporation. And we can only assume that the institute did not interfere with his report.

Vince Stehle
Program Officer
Surdna Foundation
New York

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To the Editor:

How the pendulum has swung. Until the late 1960’s, foundations generally shunned the news media like the plague. Now, increased foundation-media ties are raising warnings about conflicts of interest and a range of other ethical minefields.

The alleged interlocking, even nepotistic, example between the Schumann Foundation and the Columbia Journalism Review does seem flagrant. But is it typical? And if, as in other cases Mr. Edmonds cites, foundations wish to subsidize messages about the environment and health policy, that does not seem to be inconsistent with their mission of public education.

Incidentally, terming the backer of a documentary on mining pollution “ideologically driven” seems the kind of stretch one customarily expects on the editorial pages of the The Wall Street Journal and the screeds of antiregulatory conservatives.

Of course, these connections are two-way streets, and if they are nefarious, the receiving media surely share responsibility. However, I find puzzling Mr. Edmonds’ skepticism about giving money for a project without strings attached and “full disclosure of influence on the shaping of a news report.” If transparency doesn’t meet ethical concerns, foundations might as well have nothing to do with the news media except as an object of coverage, and your columnist complains that “mainstream journalism has been blind to the vast nonprofit world.”

All manner of institutions, in government, business, and the intellectual community, try hard to influence the content of news coverage, sometimes with cash, sometimes without.

Moreover, an increasing portion of the media is conglomeratized, challenging news organizations to maintain their journalistic independence from their owners, so foundation attempts to have a voice in coverage may serve as a counterweight.

Still, Mr. Edmonds has done a service in raising the issue.

Although the volume of foundation-media relations has increased, they did not begin yesterday. In the 1950’s, in a modest predecessor to Pew’s civic-journalism effort, the Fund for the Republic famously tried to influence news organizations to improve their public service and was roundly attacked — by the media.

The Fund for the Advancement of Education for several years financed an education section in The Saturday Review, hardly raising an eyebrow. And on and on, down to the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s support of Harper’s Magazine.

Mr. Edmonds is right in suggesting that foundations spend money on National Public Radio, world press freedom, and professional training, etc. It’s all been done, which isn’t to say more shouldn’t be. And let us not forget the great historic role of foundations in preserving some of the broadcast spectrum for public radio and television.

Finally, a parochial note: The Chronicle of Higher Education, the sister publication of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, enjoyed foundation grants before it became for-profit, and the ethical sky did not come crashing down.

Richard Magat
Visiting Fellow
Yale Program on Non-Profit Organizations
New Haven, Conn.