In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media netowrk--Part 7

Gave $1 Million Grant To Democracy Now Co-Host's NAHJ In 2004

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 7

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

 While Democracy Now! co-host Gonzalez was the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ president, a grant of $1 million [equal to over $1.3 million in 2018] was also given to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 2004 by the Chicago-based Robert R. McCormick Foundation to expand a “parity project” Gonzalez created to improve coverage of Latinos nationwide by the institutionally racist U.S. corporate media industry, in which Gonzalez had worked as a columnist during the previous 24 years. The institutionally racist Gannett media conglomerate’s Gannett Foundation had previously helped launch the National Association of Hispanic Journalists group in the early 1980s with “$50,000 [equivalent to over $131,000 in 2018] in seed money” according to the NAHJ’s website. As the NAHJ recalled on its website:

“The beginnings of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) can be traced back to a 1982 convention in San Diego….After obtaining $50,000 in seed money from the Freedom Forum (then the Gannett foundation), an organizing committee was formed…After two years of arduous work, the articles of incorporation for NAHJ were finally signed in February of 1984…. In 1985, NAHJ established its headquarters in the National Press Building in Washington, D.C….Today, there are more than 2,000 members nationwide. More funds were also attracted, from $150, 000 in the first year, to an annual budget of over $800,000 by the end of 2012.”

NAHJ’s current president, Brandon Benavides, is the executive producer of the Good Morning San Antonio corporate media show of the Graham Media Group’s KSAT-12 television station in Texas. The Graham Media Group is a subsidiary of Graham Holdings, whose corporate board includes former Washington Post Company corporate media conglomerate CEO Donald Graham, former Washington Post newspaper CEO Katharine Weymouth, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, former General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner, former Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy, former Delaware Governor Jack Markel and a former vice-president for government affairs, Larry Thompson, of PepsiCo ( a U.S. corporation that also gave a contribution of $50,000 to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in June 2011). Besides owning the corporate media television station that employs the NAHJ’s current president, Graham Holdings also owns the Slate Group corporate media firm that publishes both the Slate online magazine and Foreign Policy magazine.

After receiving a $1 million grant from the Robert R. McCormick Tribune/Robert R. McCormick Foundation in 2004, the NAHJ also was later given a $100,000 grant by the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in 2010, according to the foundation website’s grants data base.

The New York Daily News mainstream newspaper that former National Association of Hispanic Journalists [NAHJ] president Gonzalez began working for, eight years before Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation funds were used to launch the “parallel left” Democracy Now! daily news show that he co-hosted, had been owned by the Chicago-based Tribune corporate media conglomerate since--in imitation of British press baron Lord Northcliffe’s London Daily Mirror tabloid newspaper--the Chicago Tribune newspaper firm began publishing the tabloid newspaper in 1919. The newspaper remained linked to the Chicago Tribune until it was sold by the Tribune Company for $295 million [equal to over $543 million in 2018] to British global media baron Robert Maxwell in 1991; prior to the New York Daily News  being subsequently purchased in 1993 for around $36 million [equal to around $63 million in 2018]  by the neo-con real estate dealmaker and owner of U.S. News and World Report magazine, Mort Zuckerman--an opponent of full national self-determination rights for the Palestinian people and the U.S. anti-war movement’s Palestinian solidarity activism.

Between 1919 and his death in 1946, day-to-day management of the Chicago Tribune’s New York Daily News tabloid subsidiary was handled by Joseph “Captain” Patterson from his Manhattan office building; while his cousin, Robert “Colonel” McCormick—with whom Patterson had jointly managed the Chicago Tribune between 1914 and his 1919 move to New York City—continued, in an autocratic way, to manage the day-to-day operations of the Tribune in Chicago until McCormick died in 1955.

During the 27 years when Patterson managed the Chicago Tribune newspaper tabloid subsidiary, that Democracy Now!’s future co-host began working  for after 1987, the Chicago Tribune first entered the U.S. radio broadcasting world. As John Tebbel recalled in his 1947 book, An American Dynasty:

“One of the astute moves that Colonel McCormick made in building his empire was to get in on the ground floor of radio, at a time when most publishers scoffed at the idea that it could ever be a serious rival of the newspaper….As early as 1921…he began the negotiations which ended in June 1924 with the purchase of WDAP, then Chicago’s most powerful station. Less than a month later the station had its call letters changed to WGN, meaning of course, `World’s Greatest Newspaper’…In 1934…WGN joined WOR, Newark, WLW, Cincinnati, and WXYZ, Detroit, in a network which expanded in time to the powerful 268-station…Mutual Broadcasting System. The Colonel owns 24 percent of Mutual stock, and W.E. MacFarlane, Tribune business manager, was president of the chain for several years…”

Around the time New York Daily News founder Patterson died, the value of the Chicago Tribune media empire, which he and McCormick had inherited, was worth about $100 million [equal to about $1.1 billion in 2018] and the Chicago Tribune’s newspaper chain, along with William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper chain and Roy Howard’s Scripps-Howard newspaper chain, was regarded by many people in the USA as a dangerous corporate media propaganda tool of the U.S power elite’s right-wing faction. As George Seldes observed in his 1943 book, Fact and Fascism:

“If the reader thinks of our chain newspaper owners, Hearst, Howard, Patterson and McCormick, as merely four of America’s 15,000 publishers, he fails to see the danger to America from an anti-democratic, anti-American press. These four publishers put out one fourth of all the newspapers sold daily on our streets, they own forty of the 200 big city papers which make American public opinion, they run not only the three biggest newspaper chains in the country, but two of the three big news services which supply news to a majority of America’s dailies, and because they have always been anti-labor, anti-labor, and anti-democratic…they constitute what I believe is the greatest force hostile to the general welfare of the common people of America…They are animated by nothing above their pocketbooks...”

Corporate Media Baron Robert R. McCormick: Foundation inherited his Tribune stock

After Robert “Colonel” McCormick died in 1955, leaving an estate of around $55 million [equal to over $507 million in 2018], the McCormick Charitable Trust/Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation was established; and the McCormick  Patterson Trust—which then controlled the Tribune Company and its New York Daily News subsidiary—was placed under the control of this newly-established foundation for the next two decades, until the Tribune Company was reorganized in 1975. Then, in the early 1980s, the Tribune Company corporate media conglomerate was again re-organized; and in 1983 Tribune Company stock began to be sold to investors other than Tribune Company executives, members of the McCormick-Patterson dynasty or the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

According to a May 16, 2008 Chicago Tribune article, “at one time,” the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation “was the largest shareholder” of the Tribune media conglomerate. But three years after the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation gave its $1 million grant to the National Association of Hispanic Journalists [NAHJ] in 2004, to expand the “parity project” that Democracy Now! co-host Gonzalez created during his 2002 to 2004 term as NAHJ president, the foundation “sold all its shares” of Tribune media conglomerate stock “as the part of Tribune Co.’s process of going private, which was completed in late 2007;” and in 2008 the foundation’s board of trustees voted to drop “Tribune” from its name and just call itself the “Robert R. McCormick Foundation.” Yet despite the name change, according to the same article, in 2008 “neither its governance nor operation” was “to change as a result” of the name change; and “the foundation’s board always has consisted of current and former Tribune Co. executives.”

The foundation may no longer have owned stock in the Tribune corporate media conglomerate after 2008. But in 2018 the Robert R. McCormick Foundation board chairman, former Tribune Company Chairman/CEO and current Northwestern University Trustee Dennis FitzSimons, still sat on the board of directors of corporate media firms like Time Inc. and Nexstar Media Group/Media General Incorporated, according to the foundation’s website; and in 2016, the over $1.2 billion in Robert R. McCormick Foundation assets included investments in hedge funds ($411.4 million), private equity funds ($164 million), international equity funds ($124.5 million), domestic equity funds ($63.1 million) and publicly-traded corporate stocks and bonds ($180.3 million), from which $35.5 million in investment income was obtained in 2016, according to the foundation’s 2016 Form 990 financial filing.

The same Form 990 financial filing also revealed that the “non-profit” Robert R. McCormick Foundation paid former Tribune Company Chairman/CEO and current Northwestern University Trustee FitzSimons an annual compensation of $61,900 for working just 5 hours a week as the foundation’s board chair in 2016; and, for working just 4 hours a week, the four other members of the Robert R. MCormick Foundation board of directors each received an annual compensation of $55,000 in 2016.  In addition, the Robert R. McCormick Foundation’s president/CEO, a former Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune corporate media ceo named David Hiller, received a total annual compensation of $550,000 in 2016; and at least 12 other executives of the same “non-profit” foundation also were paid total annual compensations that were well above $150,000 in 2016.

Not surprisingly, the university on whose board of trustees the Robert R. McCormick Foundation board chair sits, tax-exempt Northwestern University, also, in 2016, received 8 “charitable” grants, totalling $2.1 million from the “non-profit” Robert R. McCormick Foundation which previously gave a $1 million grant in 2004 to the NAHJ organization that Democracy Now!’s longtime co-host headed between 2002 and 2004. (end of part 7)

In The Pay of Foundations: How U.S. power elite foundations fund a `parallel left' media network--Part 5

NY Daily News Owner Mort Zuckerman: Paid Democracy Now! Co-Host's Salary

In The Pay of Foundations—Part 5

How U.S. power elite and liberal establishment foundations fund a “parallel left” media network of left media journalists and gatekeepers.

By the early 1990s, the producer at Pacifica’s WBAI radio station in Manhattan who had produced the stations’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. According to the former Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio journalist who was program director at WBAI between 1989-1994, Andrew Phillips, he “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’s Low Library, Goodman joined with a columnist of neo-con real estate developer Mort Zuckerman’s New York Daily News non-alternative, mainstream daily newspaper, Juan Gonzalez, to produce and co-host the new Democracy Now! daily radio news show that the Pacifica network launched in early February 1996—with the $25,000 in grant money Pacifica obtained from the Carnegie Corporation of New York foundation in 1996.

Prior to being appointed Secretary of State by Bill Clinton in the early 1990s, former Carnegie Corporation of New York 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 U.S. federal government posts during the first term of the Clinton administration. Another early 1990s Carnegie Corporation of New York trustee, then-Goldman Sachs co-chair Robert Rubin, was appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary by Clinton in 1995, a year before the Carnegie Corporation of New York grant to launch Democracy Now! was given to Pacifica.

According to the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s 1995 Annual Report, a $200,000 [equal to over $329,000 in 2018] grant was given between 1994 and 1995 to the WNYC Foundation on whose board sat then-Carnegie Corporation of New York trustee Wilma Tisch; and 5 grants, totalling $2.7 million [equal to over $4.4 million in 2018], were given during the same period to Stanford University, whose then-provost was Carnegie Corporation of New York trustee Condoleezza Rica and whose university board of trustees included then-Carnegie Corporation of New York trustee Henry Muller.

Yet since 1996, Democracy Now! listeners and viewers have not been provided with much specific information about the role the Carnegie Corporation of New York 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 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 twenty 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!.

But 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] 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 Sept. 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….”


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)