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Some U.S. “parallel left” alternative media groups have funded their news operations by accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in “charitable" grants from tax-exempt foundations of same U.S. power elite whose undemocratic abuses of power, crimes and immoral policies they claim to be exposing and holding accountable in their “independent journalism” work and reporting.
If you check out many of the left alternative media radio/tv shows, publications, websites, podcasts or blogs that receive "charitable" grants from the U.S. power elite’s liberal foundations, you'll notice that they rarely provide their listeners, viewers or readers with much critical news reporting or unflattering historical information about their foundation funders; and they generally also block U.S. left-wing grassroots anti-war activist viewpoints, that are not within the parameters approved by the establishment liberal board members and program managers of their foundation funders, from being heard on their shows, printed in their publications or featured on their websites or blogs very often.
Yet as long ago as 1915, a Colorado miners’ representative, John R. Lawson, in a statement before the U.S. Commission on Industrial Relations, noted that a “skillful attempt” was “being made to substitute Philanthropy for Justice” and there was “not one of these foundations, now spreading their millions over the world in showy generosity, that does not draw these millions from some form of industrial injustice,” since their millions represented “the withheld wages of the…working-class.” And as the now-deceased former CounterPunch co-editor Alexander Cockburn wrote on February 5, 2010:
“There are two important reminders about political phenomena...which help explain the decline of the left: first is the financial clout of the `nonprofit’ foundations, tax-exempt bodies formed by rich people to dispense their wealth according to political tastes. Much of the `progressive sector’…now owes its financial survival—salaries, office accommodation, etc.—to the annual disbursements of these foundations which cease abruptly at the first manifestation of radical heterodoxy. In other words, most of the progressive sector is an extrusion of the dominant corporate world, just as are the academics, similarly dependent on corporate endowments. A second important reminder concerns the…collapse of the organized…left which used to provide a training ground for young people…”
But according to the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists, U.S. journalists are supposed to:
"Avoid conflicts of interests, real or perceived.
"Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
"Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel, and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office, and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
"Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
"Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable. [Note: Including those who hold power within the U.S. multi-billion dollar foundation world.]
"Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
"Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money."
But during the last 30 years, some U.S. “parallel left” journalists and “parallel left” alternative media organizations have been funding their news operations by accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in “charitable grants” from the tax-exempt foundations of the same U.S. power elite whose undemocratic abuses of power, crimes and immoral policies they claim to be—unlike the corporate-sponsored mainstream media—exposing and holding accountable in their “independent journalism” work and reporting. Take, for example, the foundation-sponsored "Democracy Now!" Productions radio-tv show which is broadcast on over 1,440 radio and television stations daily around the globe, according to the "Democracy Now!" Productions website.
In the early 1950s--when the CIA was using the Ford Foundation to help fund a non-communist "parallel left" as a liberal Establishment alternative to an independent, anti-imperialist revolutionary left--the Pacifica Foundation was given a $150,000 [equivalent to over $1.8 million in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant in 1951 by the Ford Foundation's Fund for Education, whose “first chief was Alexander Fraser, the president of the Shell Oil Company,” according to James Ledbetter's `Made Possible By…' book.
Besides subsidizing the Pacifica Foundation in the early 1950s, the Ford Foundation also spent a lot of money subsidizing many other noncommercial radio or television stations in the United States. According to Ledbetter's` Made Possible By...' book, between 1951 and 1976, the Ford Foundation "spent nearly $300 million on noncommercial radio and television."
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pacifica relied primarily on listener-sponsor contributions to fund the operations of its radio stations. And in the early 1970s, Pacifica also began to accept funds from the U.S. Establishment's government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB], according to "Rogue State" author William Blum--who worked as a KPFA staff person in the early 1970s. By the early 1990s, according to the January/February issue of "Extra!" magazine, Pacifica was accepting nearly $1 million [equivalent to over $2.1 million in 2025 U.S. dollars] in "Community Service Grant" program money annually from the CPB to finance about 17 percent of "listener-sponsored" radio stations network's annual operating budget.
In the early 1990s, some Pacifica administrators also then decided to again seek grants from the Ford Foundation and other U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations. As former Pacifica Development Director Dick Bunce wrote in the appendix to the "A Strategy for National Programming" document which was prepared for the Pacifica National Board in September 1992, entitled "Appendix Foundation Grantseeking National Programming Assumptions for Foundation Fundraising":
“The national foundation grantseeking arena has changed enough in recent years to make activity in this arena potentially worthwhile--for organizations prepared to be players and partners in the same field as NPR…Foundation fundraising at this level has extraordinary payoffs... It also requires `venture capital visits' to the foundations to open doors and conversations that lead to partnerships.
“In initiating three top level contacts in April, May and June, and attempting to capitalize on the opportunities apparent to us, we have already been stretched beyond our capacity to really interface effectively with these funders...
“Short-Run Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grantseeking Program
“Seek Development Committee leadership in planning for Foundation grantseeking.
“Pursue 3 `anchor' grants to acquire funding beginning in FY'93 from the Big 3 foundations we've already begun to work with.
“Long-Range Strategies for Developing a Foundation Grantseeking Program
“Initiate an informal `feasibility inquiry' of foundation support for Pacifica's objectives by requesting visits with the dozen top prospects to shape proposals and establish relationships.
..
“Foundation Grants Summary: Late this spring we began our first efforts in national foundation grantseeking on behalf of national programming. We have a good chance of securing six figure grants in the coming fiscal year from any or all of the 3 foundations we're working with…, The second tier of foundation prospects is more challenging, and will require increased staff resources, a modest feasibility inquiry and active planning with the Board Development Committee.”
By 1995, billionaire speculator George Soros' Open Society Institute foundation had given the Pacifica Foundation’s KPFA radio station in Berkeley, California a $40,000 [equivalent to over $85,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant. And in 1996, the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation gave Pacifica a $25,000 [equivalent to over $51,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant to launch a daily radio news show, "Democracy Now!", hosted and produced by then-long-time WBAI Evening News producer Amy Goodman, that was initially broadcast from Pacifica’s New York City area WBAI radio station in Manhattan on February 19, 1996.
Sitting then on the board of trustees of the Carnegie Corp. of NY (whose assets had increased to $3.3 billion by 2017) in 1996, when it provided "Democracy Now!" with its initial foundation funding, were U.S. power elite-connected Establishment folks like then-Chevron board member and future Bush II administration National Security Advisor and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the then-managing editor of the Time Warner mainstream media conglomerate’s "Time" magazine, Henry Muller, and the multi-millionaire wife of then-U.S. Senator and future 2004 Democratic presidential candidate and Obama administration Secretary of State John Kerry, Teresa Heinz.
And in 2017, the Carnegie Corp. of NY board of trustees then included former New Jersey Governor and 9/11 Commission Report Chair Thomas Kean, former New York Times Company CEO and president (and Carnegie Corp. of NY Board of Trustees Chair in 2025) Janet Robinson, then-PBS NewsHour Co-Anchor/Managing Editor and Duke Endowment Chairperson Judy Woodruff and the former Commander of U.S. Central Command [CENTCOM) from 2013 to 2016, (Ret.) General Lloyd Austin III, who “was responsible for military strategy and joint operations throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia” during the Obama administration, according to the Carnegie Corporation website. The same website also noted that Carnegie Corp. of NY trustee Austin helped “to spearhead the 2003 invasion of Iraq as the assistant division commander for the 3rd Infantry Division” and in 2008 “returned to Iraq as the commanding general of the Multi-National Corps-Iraq during the period when the surge forces were drawing down under Operation Iraqi Freedom.”
But the "Democracy Now!" Productions show, not surprisingly, has apparently never been very eager to provide its viewers, listeners or website readers with much news reporting that examines how the Carnegie Corp. of NY, which initially funded it, has, historically and currently, been controlled by members of the U.S. power elite, undemocratically concentrates institutional economic power and accumulates wealth from an economic system that exploits workers and middle-class consumers, and works to perpetuate a militaristic, plutocratic, politically undemocratic society in the United States during the current decade of the 21st-century. (end of part 1)
In 1991, the militaristic U.S. power elite's MacArthur Foundation, that began subsidizing Isay’s Sound Portraits Productions in 1997, also gave the Pacifica Foundation, whose WBAI News Department in NYC was then headed by Amy Goodman, a $5,000 [equivalent to over $11,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant “to support a radio documentary on East Timor.”
Within 1960s and 1970 New Left Movement antiwar organizing circles in New York City prior to the 1980s, it was then considered morally and politically contradictory and hypocritical for individuals on the U.S. left, who claimed to be working to build a grassroots-based U.S. left antiwar Movement in political opposition to the U.S. power elite, to rely on grant money from foundations--like the Carnegie Corp. of NY and the Ford Foundation—of this same U.S. power elite, to fund their “Movement” work projects.
In addition, individuals on the U.S. left who were into upper middle-class professional “Movement careerism,” left celebrity/”Movement media super-star” status-seeking, individual monopolization of radio-tv media and left-wing microphone access, censorship and exclusion of dissident grassroots antiwar New Left political viewpoints, individual “Movement empire-building” entrepreneurial work projects or “Movement profiteering”, were generally then seen as acting in an undemocratic and politically contradictory way.
As the radical feminist journal "Women In Revolution" reported in its Summer 1970 issue, the Class Workshop was formed “as a reaction to the oppression working class women experienced in the Movement” and proposed a radical feminist media strategy “in the interests of most women, not in the interests of the privileged few who want to make it on our backs.” Among the media strategy proposals made by the Class Workshop in 1970, for example were the following:
“Anyone who appears in the media is to be drawn by lot from her group. No one is to participate in the media alone…No member of a group can appear as an independent feminist…No individual or group can earn a living by writing or speaking about women’s liberation…Anyone who wants to write should write for the Movement.”
Yet for nearly 30 years, the "Democracy Now!" media group accepted foundation money from U.S. power elite foundations and was mainly hosted and produced by just two professional upper middle-class journalists: Amy Goodman and a then-columnist of the "New York Daily News" mainstream newspaper (and former "Philadelphia Daily News" mainstream newspaper columnist), Juan Gonzalez.
A daughter of Multimillionaire New York City real estate developer Bruce Ratner (whose personal worth was estimated to be $400 million in 2017), Lizzy Ratner, worked at "Democracy Now!" from September 2001 to July 2002: and, after subsequently being hired to be a senior editor at "The Nation" magazine, noted in a May 2005 article in "The Nation", titled “Amy Goodman’s `Empire’,” that “Goodman grew up in the cozy middle-class suburb of Bay Shore” on Long Island, “her father was an ophthalmologist” and “her mother was a social worker and teacher of women’s literature and history.”
Like her brother, journalist David Goodman, "Democracy Now!" Productions president Goodman is a Harvard University graduate, who received a Harvard-Radcliffe B.A. in anthropology in 1984. Not long afterwards, according to the “Amy Goodman’s `Empire’” article, “Goodman landed an apprenticeship” at WBAI-FM and “started out making documentaries, then moved to covering local news stories, and two years later she was running the WBAI newsroom.”
According to WBAI’s Australian-born and raised program director between 1989 and 1994, a former Australian Broadcasting Corporation mainstream journalist named Andrew Phillips, after migrating to New York City in late 1975, he “introduced Amy to WBAI in 1985” when he “was teaching radio documentary production at Hunter College.”
While “running the WBAI newsroom” in 1987, “Goodman encouraged” David Isay “to produce his first radio piece,” according to the “Amy Goodman’s `Empire’” article. The same May 2005 "Nation" article also quoted Isay as saying that "for the first couple of years, Amy was the person I learned everything from.”
Subsequently, Isay produced a radio piece for corporate and foundation-sponsored National Public Radio [NPR] in 1989, was given a “Livingston Award for Young Journalists” money grant by the Molly Parnis Livingston Foundation (whose grant money was obtained from the profits of a fashion designer’s New York City garment industry firm) in 1990, and set up his own “non-profit” media firm Sound Portraits Production in 1994—the same year he was also given Guggenheim Fellowship money (from the foundation whose tax-exempt wealth originally came from money the Guggenheim family obtained, historically, in the late 1800s and early 1900s by owning Kennecott Copper, Anaconda and Asarco mines and smelters, utilizing cheap labor and making windfall profits from the lifting, refining and marketing of metals during World War I).
In addition, a July 1, 2003 "Transom" article that Sydney Lewis edited, titled “David Isay and Sound Portraits,” quotes Goodman’s former colleague as recalling in 2003:
“I’ve been doing radio since a year out of college – fell into it through a series of strange, wonderful, serendipitous events that happened over a 24-hour period, and never turned back. I was fortunate to get a [U.S. government-funded] CPB [Corporation for Public Broadcasting] grant early on, so had the time to make stories that I could use to snag more CPB grants. I…eventually formed a non-profit so I could get foundation money (only CPB gives to individuals, everyone else gives to non-profits). The Company started to grow and it’s the best thing that ever happened….”
After forming his “non-profit” Sound Portraits media firm “so” he “could get foundation money” in 1994, Isay’s then-Brooklyn-based radio segment production firm was given a $50,000 [equivalent to over $100,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant by the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation to fund his “StoryCorps” oral history project--one year after the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation gave Pacifica its $25,000 grant to launch Goodman’s "Democracy Now!" radio show. Three years later, Goodman’s former colleague at WBAI was given a $500,000 [equivalent to over $940,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] individual MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2000--payable in $100,000 [equivalent to around $165,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] chunks a year, in each of the following five years.
As David Plotz noted in a July 7, 2000 "Slate" website article, the then-$4 billion MacArthur Foundation “ is the estate of John D. MacArthur, a skinflint who became the second-richest American” and “his son Rod grabbed control of the trust after John's 1978 death and pushed the genius project.” Plotz also described the secretive and undemocratic way recipients of the MacArthur Foundation’s big money individual “genius grants” were then chosen:
“…Several hundred talent scouts, whose identities are secret, suggest nominees to the selection committee. The committee, whose members are also secret, covertly gathers dossiers on the nominees and selects two-dozen-odd winners….”
In 2003, the same year the Sound Portraits Productions was renamed “StoryCorps,” the MacArthur Foundation gave the StoryCorps media firm of the 2000 MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Isay a $75,000 [equivalent to around $132,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant “in support of StoryCorps.” The following year, “to help create a cash flow reserve fund,” another grant of $50,000 [equivalent to over $85,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] was given to Isay’s “StoryCorps” by the MacArthur Foundation; and in 2006, yet another $200,000 [equivalent to over $321,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] in MacArthur Foundation grant money was shifted to Goodman’s former WBAI colleague “in support of general operations” of his StoryCorps media business.
In addition, five more MacArthur Foundation grants, totaling $2.6 million, were collected between 2009 and 2016 by StoryCorps; prior to Isay’s media firm being given a $1 million grant by the Rockefeller Foundation in October 2017.
In the Rockefeller Foundation’s October 26, 2017 press release announcing this $1 million [equivalent to over $1.3 million in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant to StoryCorps, Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah claimed that ”Our partnership with Story Corps’ is `one small step’ toward rebuilding trust among the American people through transparency, respect and candor” and “We can think of no more appropriate a partner to fund in this effort than Story Corps.”
As the 2005 “Amy Goodman’s `Empire’” article recalled, “in 1990 Goodman headed over with fellow journalist Allan Nairn” to East Timor for the first time and, during her second trip to the Indonesian military-occupied island country in November 1991, “she and Nairn were nearly killed in a massacre of at least 271 Timorese” by Indonesian soldiers that became known as the Santa Cruz Massacre.
But, also in 1991, the militaristic U.S. power elite's MacArthur Foundation, that began subsidizing Isay’s Sound Portraits Productions in 1997, also gave the Pacifica Foundation, whose WBAI News Department in NYC was then headed by Amy Goodman, a $5,000 [equivalent to over $11,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] grant “to support a radio documentary on East Timor.” (end of part 2)
A program funded by duPont Awards Foundation gave Pacifica Foundation’s WBAI station a “silver baton” Alfred I. duPont-Columbia U. Award in Broadcast Journalism” that "Democracy Now!" show anchor-newscaster personally accepted, at a Jan. 27, 1994 ceremony in Columbia’s Low Library.
In its 1991 edition, "Louis Rukeyser’s Business Almanac" then estimated, historically, that “the duPonts" were then "the wealthiest and most powerful dynasty in the United States.” As Gerard Colby also observed, historically, in the 1984 edition of his "DuPont Dynasty: Behind The Nylon Curtain" book:
“No family in America has been richer longer than duPonts…The family has developed many ruses for avoiding any public control over its wealth. Besides their 11 personal trusts, the duPonts have established 37 tax-free foundations…Most of the duPonts, plus the first line of their in-laws and a few of the second line, make up the 250 `big’ duPonts…These are the duPonts who comprise the richest family in the world…These are the duPonts who own more estates, more thoroughbred horses, more yachts, more servants than the Queen of England and the royal family…It has been precisely by `hard bargaining,’ by exploitation of labor at home and abroad, by fat government contracts, that the duPonts amassed their $10 billion [equivalent to over $31 billion in 2025 U.S. dollars] fortune.”
Yet since 1996, "Democracy Now!" has not seemed eager to produce many radio or tv news show segments that critically examine how the super-rich duPont dynasty members specifically obtained their wealth, historically, and have, specifically, retained their individual wealth since 1996.
One reason might be because a Columbia University School of Journalism-administered program funded by the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation gave the Pacifica Foundation’s WBAI station a “silver baton” Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award in Broadcast Journalism, for the MacArthur foundation grant-subsidized 1991 “radio documentary on East Timor” that Democracy Now! Productions president Amy Goodman produced; which the long-time Democracy Now! show anchor-newscaster personally accepted, at a Jan. 27, 1994 ceremony in Columbia’s Low Library, from the [now-deceased] corporate media journalist Mike Wallace of CBS News, who was the Columbia University JSchool event’s MC.
DuPont Awards Foundation “silver baton” awards were also then distributed, historically, to the news departments and professional journalists of mainstream corporate media organizations like ABC, NBC, CNN and PBS-affiliated television stations at this same ceremony, which was, historically, then broadcast nationally by PBS-affiliated stations.
And according to the Jan. 28, 1994 issue of "Columbia Daily Spectator", “hundreds of radio and television news professionals” from the U.S. mainstream corporate media world “gathered in the rotunda of Low Library” for this annual self-promotional event to celebrate the “reporting” of mainly U.S. Establishment media journalists.
Created in the early 1940s by Jessie Ball duPont in memory of her deceased husband, Alfred I. DuPont, the Alfred I. duPont – Columbia University Awards in Broadcast Journalism program, which Columbia University’s School of Journalism has administered since 1968, is funded by the Alfred I. DuPont Awards Foundation that, in turn, receives grants from the Jessie Ball duPont Fund.
For example, between July 1, 2013 and June 30, 2016, the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation gave Columbia University’s School of Journalism 3 grants, totaling $1,220,000, to fund the duPont awards program; and the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, whose assets exceeded $291 million in 2013, in turn, gave 3 grants, totaling $807,000, to the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation. And one year before Goodman was presented with her “silver baton” duPont-Columbia award, Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, itself, was directly given a $1.25 million gift in January 1993 by the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, to continue the Alfred I. duPont Columbia University Awards and other duPont awards program-related activities at Columbia.
As the Jessie Ball duPont Fund website notes, Jessie Ball duPont “re-established an earlier friendship with Alfred I. duPont, a member of one of America’s most distinguished families and a man of great wealth” in 1920; and “they were married in 1921 and by 1927 had built their estate, Epping Forest, in Jacksonville, Florida.” In a 2004-published book, titled "Dream State", University of Alabama Professor of English Diane Roberts indicated why Alfred I. duPont apparently moved from Delaware, the state in which economic and political life has been dominated by duPont dynasty members for over a century, to Florida, after Florida amended its state constitution in 1924:
“…In 1924 the state amended its constitution to outlaw income tax. Even better, the constitution also prohibited inheritance taxes. If you had it, Florida would let you keep it. So Alfred du Pont, of the more money than Croesus duPonts, cast an eye on Florida and saw potential….Delaware was run by a cabal of his megabucks with whom Alfred did not get along…Alfred packed up his young wife Jessie Ball duPont, her business savvy little brother, Edward Ball and a few bank accounts, and moved south…”
In a 1989-published book, "Some Kind Of Paradise: A Chronicle of Man and Land in Florida", Mark Derr described what happened after Alfred I. duPont--for whom the “silver baton” award that "Democracy Now!" producer Goodman accepted in Columbia University’s Low Library in 1994 is named—moved to Florida with his wife and brother-in-law Ed Ball, who later became one of the first trustees of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund that funds the Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation:
“From the start of the Depression, Alfred I. duPont, traveling with his brother-in-law Ed Ball, bought played-out north Florida farmland, cut-over pine forests, and failing banks. He wanted to establish across the land-and water-rich, transportation-poor Panhandle and north peninsula, from Pensacola to Jacksonville, a quasi-feudal state…After duPont’s death…Ball became sole trustee of the duPont estate and the most powerful man in Florida, a racist, union-busting anti-communist vilified by his opponents, fawned over by the people he supported until his death…During his 30-year reign in the state, Ball became so powerful that it was, in the words of his biographer, `difficult to go 50 miles in any part of Florida without coming in contact with a portion of the empire [he] built.’
“DuPont started the St. Joe Paper Company in Port St. Joe, and his estate eventually came to own one million acres of pineland in the Florida Panhandle and south Georgia, along with 23 box plants in the United States and Europe, 31 banks in Florida, the Florida East Coast Railway, and its assorted properties. Ball bought the railroad’s bonds at 16 cents on the dollar when it was in receivership in the 1930s and gained control of it…Ball broke the railroad unions in Florida during the 1960s by provoking a strike noteworthy for its duration, violence, and lack of substantive negotiations.
“For three decades the duPont estate, as a `testamentary trust’ was exempt from provisions of the federal Bank Holding Act prohibiting banks from owning other major businesses, a bit of largesse that allowed Ball to purchase the railroad…’
According to Diane Roberts’s "Dream State" book, former Jessie Ball duPont Fund trustee Ed Ball “admired J. Edgar Hoover and may have been an FBI informant;” and among the failed banks that Ball acquired for Alfred I. duPont in the late 1920s, were banks in Miami, St. Petersburg, Daytona and Orlando.
The same book also noted that, as late as 2004, the 1 million acres of Florida Panhandle and south Georgie pineland, equal to the land area of Delaware, that Ball had purchased for duPont was still nearly all owned by a company controlled by the Alfred I. duPont estate; and “Ball and others of his ilk had terrorized the Florida legislature when, in 1935, lawmakers had flirted with repealing the state’s prohibition on an income tax.”
In 2013, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund was still then earning over $3.8 million in dividends and interest from the over $101.5 million in corporate stock, over $56.1 million in corporate bonds and over $123.5 million in mutual funds shares that it then owned, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2013.
The same 2013 financial filing indicated, for example, that it then owned over $140,000 worth of Comcast stock, over $220,000 worth of Google stock, over $91,000 worth of Facebook stock, over $90,000 worth of Occidental Petroleum stock, over $134,000 worth of Halliburton stock, over $165,000 worth of Amazon stock, over $321,000 worth of Apple stock and over $180,000 worth of Starbuck’s stock in 2013.
The Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation, which also funded the duPont-Columbia awards program that gave its “silver baton” award to Goodman in 1994, still then owned over $700,000 in corporate bonds and over $2.1 million in corporate stock in 2016, including over $5,000 worth of Chevron stock, over $5,000 worth of ExxonMobil stock, over $6,000 worth of Comcast stock, and over $6,000 worth of Northrop Grumman stock, according to its 2015 Form 990 financial filing for the period between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016.
And nine years after the CIA-backed 1965 military coup (that established a right-wing military dictatorship under Suharto and quickly led to the massacre of between 500,000 and 1 million Indonesian leftists by right-wing death squads) and one year before the Indonesian military invaded the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in 1975 (and then killed over 25 percent of East Timor’s inhabitants by the time Goodman accepted her 1994 duPont journalism award), the Delaware-based duPont dynasty’s E.I. DuPont company also, historically, had then established a subsidiary in Indonesia, PT.DuPont/PT DuPont Indonesia, which then invested more than $100 million in Indonesia during the next four decades of the 20th-century. (end of part 3)
Between 1984 and the year before the future "Democracy Now!" show co-host accepted, historically, a duPont-Columbia “silver baton” award at the 1994 Low Library ceremony on Columbia University’s campus, the former president of the CBS News corporate media organization, Bill Leonard, was then, historically, the director of the Alfred I duPont—Columbia University Awards in Broadcasting Journalism program.
Between 1984 and the year before the future "Democracy Now!" show co-host, Amy Goodman, accepted, historically, a duPont-Columbia “silver baton” award at the 1994 Low Library ceremony on Columbia University’s campus, the former president of the CBS News corporate media organization, Bill Leonard, was then, historically, the director of the Alfred I duPont—Columbia University Awards in Broadcasting Journalism program.
A CBS News radio and television show producer during the 1950’s McCarthy era, Leonard apparently had participated in the blacklisting and exclusion from the radio airwaves and tv screens of antiwar leftist U.S. citizens in the 1950s by the CBS mass media conglomerate, on whose board of directors had then sat former Columbia University trustees William Paley and William A.M. Burden.
As the former Alfred I. duPont—Columbia University Awards in Broadcasting Journalism director recalled in his 1987 autobiography, titled "In The Storm of the Eye: A Lifetime At CBS":
“…We were all asked to sign what amounted to—hell, what was—a loyalty oath. CBS was the only network to require such an oath…The paper did not say one would be fired for not signing. But…I signed…There was not only the loyalty oath but a system whereby every guest on my several programs had to be cleared in advance through an appointed CBS executive to make sure he or she was not on a blacklist…”
In the same book, Leonard also noted that “in January 1965 I found myself a vice-president of CBS News” and was a CBS “vice-president of programming” who “was involved with everything at CBS News” between 1965 and 1975, when he then began representing the CBS media conglomerate’s special economic interests in Washington, D.C. as CBS’s vice president for government relations between 1975 and 1977.
In his autobiography, former duPont-Columbia awards Director Leonard noted that his job as CBS’s vice president for government relations made him “CBS’s chief lobbyist with Congress, the Federal Communications Commission [FCC], the White House—its major interests in Washington” and that he “learned more about how government really works in my…years as a Washington lobbyist.”
A year after then-Columbia University President (and former member of the Texaco oil company board of directors) William McGill gave the then-Shah of Iran’s wife, Empress Farah Pahlavi, a Columbia University presidential citation in July 1977, former duPont-Columbia awards Director Leonard returned to New York City in July 1978, as CBS News’ executive vice president and chief operating office. And while visiting Iran during the same year--when the dictatorial Shah of Iran unsuccessfully tried to retain political power in Iran by ordering his troops to shoot down unarmed Iranian civilian demonstrators and killing over 60,000 Iranian civilian demonstrators—Leonard was honored at a reception held in the Tehran home of the Shah of Iran regime’s ambassador to the United States. As the former duPont-Columbia awards Director wrote in his 1987 autobiography:
“The situation was already quite tense in Iran in December [1978]…but I decided to stop there. I was pretty well connected in Iran, albeit primarily with the Shah’s regime, through his Washington ambassador, Ardeshir Zahedi. I had known our own ambassador, Bill Sullivan, over the years, and I now arranged a couple of talks with him in Tehran…Through my connections with Zahedi, I managed to arrange an interview with the Shah’s wife, Empress Farah Dibah…Later that evening, I set up a circuit to New York and reported on my interview with the Empress over the CBS Radio Network. The next day a reception was given in our honor by Ambassador Zahedi in his magnificent home, not far from the palace…”
The U.S. ambassador who, “over the years,” Leonard “had known” and “arranged a couple of talks with” in Tehran in December 1978, William Sullivan, was described in the following way in an obituary of him that appeared in the "London Telegraph" newspaper’s Nov. 4, 2013 issue:
“William Sullivan, who has died aged 90, was the American diplomat who directed the `secret war’ in Laos, and later, as the US ambassador to Iran during the Islamic Revolution, recommended that Jimmy Carter reach out to Ayatollah Khomeini… From 1964 to 1973 US bombers dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos, making the country the most heavily bombed country per capita in history…. As American Ambassador to Laos from 1964 to 1973, Sullivan served as field commander of the operation and, although his precise role remains undocumented, one former colleague was quoted as saying that `there wasn’t a bag of rice dropped in Laos that he didn’t know about.’
“As late as October 1978, a couple of months before the Shah fled into exile, Sullivan sent a cable backing the vacillating monarch. Two weeks later…he changed his mind. The Shah, he now argued, was finished, and America should reach out to Khomeini to maintain its influence in Iran….”
While presiding over the Establishment’s CBS News mainstream media organization between 1979 and 1982, Leonard also had hired a former Johnson White House press secretary and chief of staff between late 1963 and 1967--when LBJ sent U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic and escalated U.S. military intervention in Vietnam in 1965--named Bill Moyers, to again work, historically for the CBS commercial media conglomerate’s news department between 1981 and 1986.
But after leaving CBS in 1986, the now-deceased Moyers was mostly then seen on U.S. television hosting the programs that his U.S. power elite foundation-funded Public Affairs TV Inc. media firm, historically, produced for foundation, corporate and U.S. government-funded PBS-affiliated television stations to broadcast.
In addition, at the same time he was the executive director of his own foundation-funded media firm, the now-deceased Moyers also was, historically, the president of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy/Schumann Foundation and a trustee of billionaire speculator George Soros’ Open Society Institute foundations, that each dished out millions of dollars in grants to various “parallel left” alternative media groups between 1990 and 2018.
So, not surprisingly, the duPont-Columbia awards program jury, on which then- duPont-Columbia awards program director and former CBS News president Leonard sat next to former CBS News correspondent Marlene Sanders (along with folks like then-Columbia Journalism School Dean Joan Konner and then-Hearst media conglomerate president for new projects Philip Balboni), gave the former CBS News journalist that Leonard had hired to work for him in 1981, Bill Moyers, a duPont-Columbia “gold baton” award in 1992, “for the body of his work over 20 years in broadcasting,” according to a Feb. 7, 1992 "Columbia Record" website article.
And, also not surprisingly, the duPont-Columbia awards jury that, historically, awarded then-Public Affairs TV In. Executive Director Moyers a “golden baton” in 1992 was chaired by a former business partner of Bill Moyers: then-Columbia University Journalism School Dean Joan Konner, who was the Public Affairs TV Inc. president between 1986 and 1988, before being hired as the Columbia’s journalism school dean in 1988; and, subsequently, later becoming board chair of Bill Moyers’s Schumann Foundation.
After retiring as CBS News’s president in 1982 and beginning to direct the duPont-Columbia awards program in 1984, that a decade later gave a “silver baton” award to future "Democracy Now!" Productions president Goodman (a year after Leonard stopped directing the duPont-Columbia awards program) in 1994, Leonard was a consultant to both CBS and the National Association of Broadcasters [NAB] lobbying organization of U.S. commercial broadcasting corporations after 1982.
In addition, during the 1980s he was also a board member of the corporate and foundation-funded NPR and a member of the World Press Freedom Committee’s board (during a decade in which this organization opposed UNESCO’s 1980’s call, historically, for a New World Information Order and democratization of the global mass media and newsgathering system; apparently because it felt UNESCO’s call threatened the, historically, then-dominant position of global news agencies such as Reuters, Associated Press and AFP and the commercial interests of privately-owned corporate media conglomerates, like CBS).
In 1993, a year after Leonard’s duPont-Columbia awards program gave Bill Moyers its “golden baton” award in 1992, Moyers, not surprisingly, then hosted the annual duPont-Columbia awards ceremony in Low Library in which Moyers’s former Public Affairs TV Inc. business partner, Joan Konner, presented Leonard, himself, a “silver baton” duPont-Columbia award, prior to the former CBS News president’s 1993 retirement as director of the duPont awards program at Columbia University.
According to a Feb. 5, 1993 "Columbia Record" article Leonard was purportedly given his award “for his service to the awards and to broadcast journalism in a career spanning five decades” in the corporate media world.
Yet three years before the Low Library ceremony at which future long-time "Democracy Now!" Productions Inc. president Goodman was, historically, given a duPont-Columbia award (for producing the MacArthur Foundation-subsidized Pacifica/WBAI radio documentary about the U.S. government-armed Indonesian military’s 1991 massacre in East Timor), 200 grassroots antiwar movement demonstrators had picketed the 1991 duPont-Columbia awards ceremony. As Danny Franklin noted in an article, titled “Anti-media protest held outside Low,” that appeared in the "Columbia Daily Spectator"’s Jan. 30, 1991 issue:
“About 200 people gathered outside the duPont Awards for Broadcast Journalism held in Low Library last night to protest the media's coverage of both the war in the Persian Gulf and the antiwar movement. After marching around Low Library, the crowd gathered at the top of the steps where Columbia Security guards blocked the entrance to the building….A few shoves were exchanged between a security guard and one protester as she approached the building. Tova Wang, CC '91, a spokesperson for the Barnard-Columbia Anti-War Coalition, said that a security guard pushed her with the long end of his nightstick… Protesters chanted `Two, four, six, eight. Separate the press and state’ and `TV news, you can't hide. We know you don't show both sides.’…” (end of part 4)
During most of 21st-century the "New York Daily News" owner who employed `Democracy Now!'s then-co-host was honorary president of American-Israel Friendship League [AFIL]; an organization whose “sole purpose is to make friends for the State of Israel through activities intended to improve the general perception of Israel,” according to the AFIL’s website.
By the early 1990s, the then-producer at Pacifica Foundation’s WBAI radio station in Manhattan who had produced that station’s late 1980s daily evening news show, Amy Goodman, was, instead, now the producer of WBAI’s daily morning news show in New York City; because, according to the former Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio journalist who was program director at WBAI between 1989-1994, Andrew Phillips, he, historically, had “instituted substantial program changes” at WBAI during this period, “including moving Amy Goodman to morning drive.”
Then, two years after accepting a “silver baton” duPont-Columbia award of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund-subsidized Alfred I. duPont Awards Foundation at the ceremony in Columbia University’s Low Library, Goodman joined with Juan Gonzalez—a then-columnist of the "New York Daily News" non-alternative, mainstream daily newspaper which a pro-Zionist and neo-con real estate developer, Mort Zuckerman, then owned—to produce and co-host the "Democracy Now!" daily radio news show that the Pacifica network launched in early February 1996; utilizing the $25,000 [equal to over $50,000 in 2025 U.S. dollars] in grant money the Pacifica Foundation had obtained from the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation in 1996.
Prior to being appointed Secretary of State by Columbia University SIPA Professor Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, in the early 1990s, a former Carnegie Corp. of NY trustee, Warren Christopher, was the chairman of the “Clinton Transition Team,” that helped determine, before the Democratic president’s Jan. 20, 1993 inauguration, which people should be appointed to U.S. federal government posts during the first term of the Clinton administration. And another early 1990s Carnegie Corp. of NY trustee, then-Goldman Sachs co-chair Robert Rubin, was appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary by Clinton in 1995, a year before the Carnegie Corp. of NY grant to launch "Democracy Now!" was given to the Pacifica Foundation.
In addition, according to the Carnegie Corp. of NY’s 1995 Annual Report, a $200,000 [equal to over $425,000 in 2025] grant was given between 1994 and 1995 to the WNYC Foundation, on whose board sat then-Carnegie Corp. of NY trustee Wilma Tisch (a grandmother of current New York Police Department [NYPD] Commissioner Jessica Tisch) ; and 5 grants, totaling $2.7 million [equal to over $5.7 million in 2025], were given during the same period to Stanford University, whose then-provost was Carnegie Corp. of NY trustee Condoleezza Rice and whose university board of trustees included then-Carnegie Corp. of NY trustee Henry Muller.
Yet since 1996, "Democracy Now!" listeners and viewers have not been provided with much specific information about the role the Carnegie Corp. of NY and its trustees have, historically, played in U.S. political and economic life; or how the foundation’s board of trustees has, historically or currently, obtained and distributed its "charitable" grant money.
While continuing to write columns for the corporate media world’s "New York Daily News" mainstream newspaper and continuing to collect a regular paycheck from Zuckerman’s newspaper during the next two decades, Gonzalez also remained the part-time co-host on over 1,000 radio broadcasts of the “parallel left” "Democracy Now!" radio show during the same two decades; including the years after 2001 when it became a “parallel left” cable television show as well.
And, not surprisingly, during the past thirty years, few radio or tv segments that were specifically critical or unflattering about either Mort Zuckerman, Mort Zuckerman’s specific historic real estate business operations or the specific news content of Mort Zuckerman’s stable of non-alternative media reporters were aired on "Democracy Now!".
Yet between 2001 and 2003, for example, the Canadian-born Zuckerman was the Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations anti-Palestinian self-determination rights lobbying group; and during most of the 21st-century the "New York Daily News" owner who employed Gonzalez was the honorary president of the American-Israel Friendship League [AFIL]; an organization whose “sole purpose is to make friends for the State of Israel through activities intended to improve the general perception of Israel,” according to the AFIL’s website. The same website also posted an article indicating how Zuckerman became involved in this pro-Israeli government group:
“The teamwork forged between Zuckerman, [American-Israel Friendship League Chairman Kenneth] Bialkin, and the rest of the AIFL team coalesced almost two decades ago, when a high-level request came in. ``Sometime in the late ‘90s each of us was contacted by the [Israeli] consul general of New York to ask if we would come in to help with the promotion of the AIFL,’ Bialkin remembers.
"Zuckerman views the work of the AIFL, in fostering better understanding between Israel and America, as a vital element in keeping the world safer. `I’ll put it this way: I think it is very important that there is more than one audience we should focus on. Number one: senior government officials. Number two: public opinion. Some would say the latter is the foundation of what affects the former. We need to continually develop that relationship.’”
An article by Christopher Walsh, titled “Pro-Israel Pundits Speak Out on Middle East,” that appeared in the September 4, 2014 issue of the" East Hampton Star", described how the "New York Daily News" owner, whose newspaper Gonzalez continued to work for while co-hosting "Democracy Now!" for two decades after 1996, supported the Israeli war machine’s 50-day war against people in Gaza in the summer of 2014 (that killed 1,462 Palestinian civilians, including 551 Palestinian children, according to a June 2015 UN Human Rights Council report):
“…At the Jewish Center of the Hamptons… pro-Israel panelists from the worlds of media and academia discussed the seven-week war in Gaza…Mortimer Zuckerman, an East Hampton resident who is the publisher of the `New York Daily News' and editor in chief of `U.S. News and World', expressed the panelists’ united defense of the Israeli military’s conduct in the war….He also sought to provide context to reports that more than 2,000 Palestinian civilians had been killed in the war by noting that 378,000 German civilians and 580,000 Japanese civilians were killed in World War II. `This is not a moral strike against Israel,’ he said….”
While still owning the "New York Daily News" and also employing a "Democracy Now!" co-host as one of his newspaper’s columnists/reporters in 2012, Zuckerman also made and pledged to make big tax-exempt monetary “donations” to Columbia University, prior to Columbia U. establishing its institutional partnership with Tel Aviv University (which performs weapons research for the IDF) in early 2023.
But after antiwar students on Columbia University’s campus began holding campus protests, following the start of the U.S. government-armed IDF’s post-Oct. 7, 2023 military attacks on civilians in Gaza, which demanded that Columbia divest itself of its stock in companies doing business in Israel and end its institutional affiliation with Israeli institutions like Tel Aviv U., former "New York Daily News" Owner Zuckerman expressed his support for the IDF’s war on people in Gaza.
As Gila Isaacson noted in an article, titled “Billionaire Mort Zuckerman Pulls $200 Million donation from Columbia University”, that was posted on the "JFeed" website on July 18, 2024:
“…Billionaire Mortimer Zuckerman has suspended millions in donations to Columbia University…Zuckerman, the…former owner of the `New York Daily News', had pledged…$200 million in 2012 to establish Columbia’s Mind Brain Behavior Institute…The billionaire’s decision follows months of dialogue with Columbia’s leadership…Zuckerman’s move aligns with…high-profile donors. Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, and Leon Cooperman, a…hedge fund manager, have also withdrawn…financial support from Columbia…”
Yet during the over two decades that Zuckerman owned the "New York Daily News", antiwar and Palestinian solidarity movement activists in the United States were rarely invited to appear on "Democracy Now!" to specifically highlight and criticize the role that Zuckerman may have personally and specifically played, historically, in supporting Israeli militarism and war crimes in the Middle East. (end of part 5)
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