Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting

Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), founded in 1986, is a left-wing group that works against and documents alleged bias in the media and erroneous reporting.

First published in 1987, Extra!, FAIR's bimonthly magazine, features claims of current media bias, censorship, and effects of media consolidation. Covering a variety of issues, FAIR addresses news coverage that it finds biased with rebuttals. FAIR also produces CounterSpin, a half-hour radio program hosted by Janine Jackson, Steve Rendall, and Peter Hart. It broadcasts nationally on over 130 radio stations and is available in MP3 and RealAudio format on the web.

In May 2002, Jeff Cohen, FAIR's founder, left the organization to work as a producer on Phil Donahue's short-lived liberal talk show on MSNBC.

FAIR covers much of the same ground as Accuracy in Media, a right-wing media watchdog.

FAIR's Funding

Around 30 percent of FAIR's funding comes from foundation grants, including grants from establishment foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation and the Ford Foundation.

In 1991, FAIR was given a $20,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation "for general support." And then in 1992, annual grants to FAIR started to pour in from the MacArthur Foundation offices in Chicago. In an early 1997 interview, the program officer who was then responsible for the MacArthur Foundation's media program, Patricia Boero, told 'Aquarian/Downtown' magazine: "MacArthur is funding Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. And in '96, they received $75,000 towards the cost of operations. We've been funding it since 1992, at approximately the same level. It was slightly higher a few years ago, when the media budget was a little bigger." Boero also told 'Aquarian/Downtown' in 1997 that one reason the MacArthur Foundation began funding FAIR was that FAIR was already being funded by other foundations such as Rockefeller Foundation

Later in 1997, more MacArthur Foundation money was given by a MacArthur "genius grant" program, which was then headed by Catharine Stimpson, a member of both the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) board and The Nation magazine's Nation Institute Board. A dancer who was the partner of one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's CounterSpin radio show was given a $290,000 individual grant by the MacArthur Foundation program which Nation Institute and PBS board member Stimpson directed. Since 1997, FAIR has continued to receive grants from the MacArthur Foundation. In 1998 it was given an additional grant of $150,000 by the MacArthur Foundation. And in 2000, another MacArthur Foundation contribution of $125,000 was given to FAIR.

Another establishment foundation, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation, also began subsidizing FAIR's alternative media work in the early 1990s. In 1995, for instance, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave FAIR a $150,000 grant "to support promotion of the book, 'The Way Things Aren't', which was co-authored by CounterSpin co-host/producer Steve Rendall. And in 1996, an additional grant of $15,000 from the Schumann Foundation (whose president, Public Affairs TV Inc. Executive Director Bill Moyers, was President Lyndon Johnson's press secretary in the 1960s) was given to FAIR. Since 1996, FAIR has continued to receive grants from Moyers' Schumann Foundation, including a post-2000 grant of between $50,000 and $100,000. In addition, one of the co-hosts/producers of FAIR's CounterSpin show, Janine Jackson, sits on the board of a group, Citizens for Independent Broadcasting (CIPB). In 2002, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave the Center for Social Studies Education a $200,000 grant "for continued support for activities of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB)."

The executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy [IPA]/MAKING CONTACT alternative media group, Norman Solomon, was listed on FAIR's 1997 form 990 as being the president of FAIR and has been a FAIR associate in recent years. Like FAIR, former FAIR President Solomon's Institute for Public Accuracy, whose annual income is $267,000, has been subsidized by Bill Moyers' Schumann Foundation. In 1997, Moyers' Schumann Foundation gave a $100,000 grant to Solomon's IPA/International Media project "for effort to hold think tanks to high standards of accuracy."

In addition to being supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Schumann Foundation in the 1990s, FAIR also began receiving grants from the Ford Foundation in the mid-1990s. As the Working Assets Radio web site noted in 2001: "As the founder of the Women's Desk at the media watchdog FAIR, Working Assets Radio producer-host Laura Flanders received a $200,000 grant from the Ford Foundation for a collaborative project to combat racism and sexism in the news. The resulting book, Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting, was published to rave reviews by Common Courage Press in 1997." Besides the Ford Foundation's $200,000 grant to FAIR in 1996 or 1997 to help subsidize the alternative media work of its Women's Desk, an additional grant of $150,000 from the Ford Foundation was given to FAIR in 1997 or 1998. And in 2001, another $150,000 grant was given to FAIR by the Ford Foundation for "general support to monitor and analyze the performance of the news media in the United States."

External links

• FAIR's Official Site