Big bourgeoisie funding of "alternate media" on the Internet

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Some of you might have noticed an expose of truthout.org on Counterpunch
this week. It was written by Jacob Levitch, who is described as an online
editor. Truthout.org wrote what amounts to a defense of the IDF in line
with Jared Israel's latest garbage about how the terror stopped when Jenin
was under siege. My only contact with Truthout.org was their daily spamming
of Hunter Gray's email list with material that should be self-evident to
any radical.

Jacob wrote:

"Truthout's editor, Marc Ash, claims the publication has no organizational
affiliations and is entirely reader-supported -- though five staffers, and
the server power necessary to support a quarter-million users, don't come
cheap. Given its incessant showcasing of Beltway Democrats -- even career
hacks like Daschle and Gephardt get flattering headlines whenever they say
anything remotely progressive -- I've sometimes wondered whether it's
actually a James Carville-style undercover operation, aimed at cajoling
Naderites back into the Democratic fold.

"(Suggestively, of all the questions I asked Ash about Truthout's history,
purpose, and funding, the only one he was willing to answer was whether the
publication is connected in some way with the Democratic Party. It is not,
he said, and I'll take him at his word -- though I suspect a list of
contributors might make interesting reading.)"

 http://www.counterpunch.org/levitch0514.html

In a subsequent exchange with Jacob, I learned the following:

--Soros' Open Society Institute gave $10,000 to the Independent Media
Center in 2000

--It also dispensed $95,000 to Independent Media Institute in 2000
(www.soros.org/osi grants database), the outfit that publishes AlterNet.

Meanwhile, I stumbled across a new "alternative" website today that is
based in Great Britain. It is called www.opendemocracy.net and has the same
look and feel as many of these other left-leaning websites. You can find
links to articles by Robert McChesney on "Making Media Democratic" and lots
of other legitimate items. McChesney is a Monthly Review editor and a
long-standing advocate of grass-roots democracy, especially in media. You
can also find an idiotic piece on Russian railroads that would lead the
innocent reader to believe that the country is finally working its way out
of the disaster wrought by world capitalism and its local stooges:

"Now, with the economy growing fast again, the trains are full once more,
the impromptu feasts have reappeared and the Russians are once more
indulging their genius for making themselves at home wherever they find
themselves, carving private spaces out of public ones."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=4&DocID=1349

When you go to the "Who funds OpenDemocracy" page, you'll discover that
Monty Python alumnus John Cleese (who subsequently became the millionaire
founder of a corporate motivational consulting firm) is a backer. So are
the following:

>>
The Andrew Wainwright Reform Trust
The Atlantic Philanthropies
Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation
The Charles E Chadwyck-Healey Charitable Trust
The Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
The Ford Foundation
The Marmot Trust
The New World Foundation
The Open Trust
The David & Elaine Potter Charitable Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation
The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust
The Tedworth Charitable Trust
<<

The Rockefellers, Fords and Bank of Sweden I'm sure you've heard of. The
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation owns 1/3 of the shares in Municipal and General
(M&G), generally regarded as the grandfather of the unit trust industry in
Great Britain. In 1998 it managed more than 318 billion pounds in assets in
32 unit trusts and four investment trusts.

When you go to the page that identifies the people in charge, you'll come
across some names that can be described as anything but "alternative". My
comments are interspersed in parentheses:

Board of Directors include:

Tim Stevenson ? Vice-Chairman
Former Chief Executive of Burmah Castrol plc. Non-executive director of
Department for Education and Employment.

(Big oil product conglomerate.)

John Jackson - Non-executive Director
Chairman of Celltech plc, the Hilton Group plc, Wyndeham Press plc and
Mishcon de Reya. Chairs the Countryside Alliance.

(Hilton Group is the hotel chain. The Countryside Alliance is a Tory-backed
formation that is trying to keep fox-hunting alive in Great Britain.)


Editors include:

Todd Gitlin ? North Americas
Professor of Culture, Journalism and Sociology at New York University.
Author of Inside Prime Time, and The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America
is Wracked by Culture Wars.

(social democratic warhawk)

Roger Scruton ? consultant editor
A philosopher, he is author of over twenty books including On Hunting,
England: an Elegy, and The Aesthetics of Architecture. Co-founder of
Horsell?s Farm Enterprises, a consultancy providing innovative solutions to
the problems of the rural economy.

The New York Times, March 23, 2002, Saturday, Late Edition - Final

Advocating Tobacco, On the Payroll Of Tobacco

By Alexander Stille

"Roger Scruton, High Priest Philosopher of the Libertarian Right, Defrocked
and Exposed as 'Grimy Hack' for Tobacco Industry."

This headline on a news release from a British anti-smoking group gives a
flavor of the glee with which the British left and parts of the British
press greeted recent revelations that the conservative philosopher and
commentator Roger Scruton had been on the payroll of a tobacco conglomerate
and had offered to publish articles in prominent publications attacking
efforts to restrict smoking.

These are the basic facts. Two months ago, The Guardian published a leaked
e-mail memorandum that Mr. Scruton and his wife, Sophie, sent to Quentin
Browell, an executive at Japan Tobacco International, which sells numerous
brands of cigarettes, including Camel, Winston and Salem. In the memo Mr.
Scruton offered to orchestrate a major pro-smoking publicity campaign and
urged that his monthly retainer be increased to 5,500 pounds (about $7,800)
from 4,500 pounds (about $6,400). "We would aim to place an article every
two months," the memo stated, mentioning as possible publications The Wall
Street Journal, The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator,
The Financial Times, The Economist, The Independent and The New Statesman.
"While one or more of these articles might be written by R. S.," the memo
continued, referring to Mr. Scruton, "we would do our best to get other
journalists to join in."

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org