Center for Media and Public Affairs

The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) is a U.S.-based tax-exempt nonprofit 501(c)(3) media watch organization. On its website, CMPA claims to be politically neutral: "The Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) is a nonpartisan research and educational organization which conducts scientific studies of the news and entertainment media. CMPA election studies have played a major role in the ongoing debate over improving the election process."

CMPA also runs the Statistical Assessment Service as a front organization.

History

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

Funding

In its 2005/2006 Annual return to the Internal Revenue Service, CMPA reported that for that year it had total revenue of $520,583 of which $325,000 was in contributions gifts and grants. (CMPA does not provide a breakdown on what percentage is from foundations versus other sources. However, Media Transparency found that data from the foundation's annual reports indicates that in that year CMPA received $100,000 from the Carthage Foundation and $10,000 from the Earhart Foundation]]. The origin of the $215,000 is unclear.)

In addition, CMPA received $117,389 was from "fees for services" which it described as being "revenue from research and media monitoring activities".

CMPA's IRS return reports that the group's revenue for the preceding four years was as follows:

• 2001/2002 $848,004
• 2002/2003 $1,455,239
• 2003/2004 $572,471
• 2004/2005 $513,188

Foundation funding

Media Transparency documents that between 1986 and 2005 CMPA received 55 grants totaling $2,960,916 (unadjusted for inflation). The data reveals that the overwhelming proportion of CMPA's funding comes from conservative foundations.

The funding information, covering 1986-2005, lists the following donors (note: all figures are unadjusted for inflation):

• Carthage Foundation, part of the Scaife Foundations - $512,000 from 8 donations
• the Earhart Foundation contributed $120,000 in six grants between 1999 and 2003;
• John M. Olin Foundation - $730,000 from 15 donations between 1986 and 2001;
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation - $250,000 nine grants over the period between 1989 and 1995;
• Sarah Scaife Foundation, part of the Scaife Foundations - $760,000 from 9 donations spanning the period between 1991 and 2003; and
• Smith Richardson Foundation - $416,916 from 3 donations between 1998 and 2001;

Thus, out of the total of $2,960,916 in foundation grants, nearly all of it ($2,668,916) came from just four sources: the John M. Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations. In other words, CMPA received 86% of its foundation funding from those four donors. Here is a sample of other right-wing causes funded by these 3 donors, as listed by their respective SourceWatch 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 [Lichter's] 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."

As at February 2008, the CMPA website contains no information about the Center's sources of funding.

Personnel

Office Bearers

• S. Robert Lichter, President,
• David Gergen, Director
• Nell Minow, Director
• Newton Minow
• Paul Mongerson
• Truman Anderson

Staff

• S. Robert Lichter - President. Until 2008 Robert Lichter was a paid contributor to the Fox News Channel; during the mid-1980's he held the DeWitt Wallace Chair in Mass Communication at the American Enterprise Institute; In addition, according to the CMPA website, he has taught at Princeton University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and George Mason University, and he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Politics and Psychology at Yale University, a Senior Research Fellow at Columbia University, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow at Smith College.

Attack on PBS in 1992

According to a Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) research memo, a 1992 study of PBS by the Center for Media and Public Affairs concluded: "On the social and political controversies addressed by PBS documentaries across a full year of programs, the balance of opinion tilted consistently in a liberal direction."

However, FAIR points out that the study excluded, on rather vague grounds, some of PBS's most conservative output. This included "talkshows such as William F. Buckley, Jr.'s Firing Line and Morton Kondracke's American Interests, news reports like the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and business programs like Louis Rukeyser's Wall $treet Week. The Center claims this is to ensure 'a group of programs that were similar in style and content, to maximize the comparability of judgments.'"

According to the FAIR memo, these shows were the ones "most often criticized for having a conservative slant - programming that takes up more of the PBS schedule than the documentaries that the Center's study is limited to. Firing Line and American Interests - programs underwritten by the Center's biggest funders--provided approximately 50 hours of programming a year between them."

Attack on Fahrenheit 9/11

In June 2004, the CMPA's media director, Matthew Felling, waded into the debate on Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 with the following comments: "Of course, this movie is going to be Michael Moore's version of what he thinks President Bush is up to and what he thinks his capabilities are," he said. "We already know that he does not think that he is really cut out for the job. So Michael Moore will pick out everything he can to support that argument and we can only hope that Americans are well-versed enough in the successes of the Bush administration that they can balance it out on their own."

Contact

Center for Media and Public Affairs
and Statistical Assessment Service
2100 L St NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC 20037
STATS line (202) 223 3193
CMPA line (202) 223 2942
Fax (202) 872 4014
Web: http://www.cmpa.com

Related SourceWatch resources

• Statistical Assessment Service
• S. Robert Lichter

External links

• Information on CMPA's funding sources at mediatransparency.org
• STATS website
• "Joe Conason's Journal", Salon.com, Dec. 18, 2002. Article questioning the neutrality of the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
• "Letter: A question of bias", Salon.com, Jan. 15, 2003. An exchange of views between Robert Lichter and Joe Conason about the CMPA's neutrality.
• FAIR Research Memo, "Study of Bias or Biased Study? The Lichter Method and the Attack on PBS Documentaries", May 14, 1992