"Non-Partisan" CMPA Director labels DNC "pointless" and a "non-event"

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=597&e=3&u=/nm/20040801/tv_nm/television_convention_dc

Viewership Steady for Dems' 'Pointless' Convention

Network executives say that broadcast television is no longer the place for the wall-to-wall convention coverage it once specialized in; both broadcast and cablers say that in any event, there's barely any news to come out of the convention. The presidential and vice presidential candidates were known long before the Democrats arrived in Boston; the platforms were hammered out in advance, too.

Where's the news, more than a few journalists and other observers asked.

"You can't give a whole lot of news coverage to a non-news event," said Matthew T. Felling, a media critic at the non-partisan Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. "These conventions are straddling the line between pointless and anachronistic. They're a function of a generation ago or more."

But to some observers, the arguments against campaign coverage, particularly on the broadcast networks, miss the point. They say that the November election is the most important in a generation, and that broadcast journalism as a whole isn't thinking about how critical its coverage is to the national debate.

[booley]

1. I remember seeing a clip from Chris Mathews

and company calling Sharpton's speech "grating like nails on a chalkboard" and uninspiring..as the crowd gave him a standing ovation.

I really wish we could get these "non-partisan" pundits a translater since when they use a lot of words, they don't seem to have the same definitiosn that the rest of use.

[pnorman]

2. Here's a little more on that "non-partisan" outfit:

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History
The Center for Media and Public Affairs was founded in the mid 1980s by S. Robert Lichter and Linda Lichter <2>. According to Salon.com, "the seed money for center was solicited by the likes of Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson" <3>.


Funding
CMPA's claim to be 'non-partisan' is undermined by an analysis of its sources of funding. Information provided by mediatransparency.org <4> reveals that the overwhelming proportion of CMPA's funding comes from conservative foundations. The funding information, covering 1986-2002, lists the following donors:


Carthage Foundation, part of the Scaife Foundations - $267,000 from 5 donations
Earhart Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation - $730,000 from 15 donations
Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
Sarah Scaife Foundation, part of the Scaife Foundations - $760,000 from 9 donations
Smith Richardson Foundation - $416,916 from 3 donations
Thus, out of the total of $2,523,916, nearly all of it ($2,173,916) came from just three sources: the John M. Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations. In other words, CMPA received 86% of its funding from those 3 donors. Here is a sample of other right-wing causes funded by these 3 donors, as listed by their respective Disinfopedia articles:


John M. Olin Foundation - American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century
Scaife Foundations - American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation
Smith Richardson Foundation - American Enterprise Institute, Hudson Institute
According to Salon journalist Joe Conason, the availability of this information does not indicate an openness on the part of the Center for Media and Public Affairs. In a Jan 2003 exchange of views with Lichter, Conason said "The IRS form 990 returns filed by center redacts the names of all the individuals and organizations that contribute to it, thereby concealing them from public scrutiny. But the watchdogs at Media Transparency have collated the 990 returns filed by the conservative foundations, which disclose their contributions to Lichter's outfit." <5>

As at August 2004, the CMPA website contains no information about the
Center's sources of funding.
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http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml? title=Center_for_Media_and_Public_Affairs (you'll have to copy/paste that link)
Read the rest of the article.

pnorman