Democracy Has Prevailed.

December 20, 2009

Stumbled Over This...

I stumbled over this while writing my previous blogpost.

Mediamatters says this of our own Allegheny Institute for Public Policy:
Founded in 1995, the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy is closely connected to conservative billionaire Richard Melon Scaife. The Institute is guided by the principles of free enterprise, property rights, civil society and individual freedom that are the bedrock upon which this nation was founded.
I read that and I thought, "How closely?" So I looked at Mediamatters' funding page for the Institute.

The page shows $ 4,596,700 in just 7 donors from 1995. Three of those donors are foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife (Sarah Scaife, Carthage and Allegheny Foundations). Those three foundations have given $3,996,000 to the Allegheny Institute since 1995.

If all these numbers are correct, then that means that about 87% of the money granted to the Allegheny Institute came directly from foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife.

So yea, I think that constitutes "closely connected."

So when we read in the pages of the Tribune-Review something like:
[Jake] Haulk is president of the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy, the Mt. Lebanon think tank whose defense of taxpayer interests over the years has often put it at odds with labor unions.
We should all remember that over the last 14 years, the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy got a full 87% of it's grant money from none other than Richard Mellon Scaife, owner and publisher of the Pittsburgh-Tribune Review.

3 comments:

Social Justice NPC Anti-Paladin™ said...

Citing the Soros funded, Acorn defenders, democrat hacks at Media Matters
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7150

Reminds me of this
http://twitter.com/MelissaTweets/status/5482652647
Think Progress, a billionaire-funded astroturf machine calls AFP a "billionaire funded astroturf machine." This is fun!

EdHeath said...

Are you citing a news paper opinion piece that used Media Matters as a source and did not reveal connections between the newspaper's publisher and Media Matters, HTTP? I understand, the right does not like Media Matters, but Dayvoe's point (as I understand it) is that the Tribune Review is using research from organizations funded by Richard Scaife and then not acknowledging the connection. It's a fairly narrow point, but considering your stance on the degree to which humans are causing global warming, I suspect you don't care much about facts anyway.

Dayvoe said...

Ed;

Yes, of course HTTT missed the point. Or more likely he understands the point and is looking to change the subject.

Wouldn't be the first time.

In any event, it's a conflict of interest for a media outlet not to disclose its financial ties to the sources of information it's using.