Special to WorldTribune.com
This article was also published at Crisis Magazine
Conservatives and pro-life activists have bemoaned the mainstream media’s lack of coverage of the ongoing video exposé of Planned Parenthood’s efforts to harvest the body parts of aborted fetuses for money. An examination of the organization’s surprisingly close ties to major media corporations can help explain why leading disseminators of the news in the U.S. have shown so little interest in the controversy.
Some media outlets were so brazen in their support for Planned Parenthood that they were directly listed as donors on the sites of local affiliates. Before PP’s website was “down for maintenance” shortly after the group controversially claimed it was hacked by “extremists,” the local Washington, D.C. affiliate listed Gannett, the owners of USA Today and several other major newspapers, including the Detroit Free Press and theIndianapolis Star, and the Washington Post Co., former owners of the Washington Post for decades until Amazon.com owner Jeff Bezos bought the newspaper in 2013, as financial supporters.
As recently as 2014, the San Jose Mercury News and Yahoo, which runs the popular Yahoo News site, were listed as donors to Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo in Northern California.
Discover the Networks, a website run by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, lists the New York Times Company Foundation as a PP donor.
And while there is no evidence that new Washington Post owner Bezos is a personal donor, customers at his Amazon.com site can directly support an abortion clinic with a portion of their purchases via the Amazon Smile program.
Customers can also buy the “emergency contraception” known as Plan B, which can induce an abortion after conception, directly from the site.
These facts perhaps explain why The Washington Post, in its coverage of the furor over the first secret Planned Parenthood video, changed its headline from “organ harvesting” to the softer “fetal organs used for research,” as infowars.com reports.
Another upfront supporter of Planned Parenthood is Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of Bloomberg News owner and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The philanthropic group announced in March of 2014 that it was giving a staggering $50 million to strengthen “reproductive health rights in Burkina Faso, Nicaragua, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda,” the Da
ily Caller reports.
Beyond these overt acts of support, however, there lies a far more elaborate network of personal connections, business ties and charitable foundation links between Planned Parenthood and a stunning number of major media outlets, including all four of the major television networks.
The Ford Foundation has been a major supporter of abortion rights and Planned Parenthood for decades, with the data on its financial support of the organization running far too long to detail.
Random example: $2.5 million given to PP in 2013, according to Ford’s tax return (see page 523).
In fact, sitting on Ford’s Board of Trustees at this moment is none other than Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards.
The foundation has made a major effort to involve itself in U.S. media in recent years, even giving grants to the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post in 2012 as part of what it called “an investment in quality journalism.”
Ford also sponsored an NBC News report on “Poverty in America,” as foundation “Media Officer” Barbara Raab, a former “senior newswriter for NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams,” proudly reports on the group’s website.
An especially disturbing part of the foundation’s efforts to financially sponsor ostensibly neutral media outlets is the group’s hefty support for two minority journalist organizations.
The National Association of Black Journalists received $150,000 from Ford in 2013 for “media/content development,” while the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is listed as having received $100,000 in 2009.
Elsewhere on Ford’s website, an action plan to promote abortion rights in the United States by developing “national reproductive and sexual health policies and laws supported by regional and international standards” prominently features two prongs under the “Communications and Public Education” heading, a “National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health” and a “Black Women’s Health Imperative.”
Additionally, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s 2013 tax return shows only one group not directly associated with the organization’s usual business endeavors that received funds from the organization.
On page 64 is listed a $12,500 donation from PP to The National Association of Black Journalists, with the “purpose of grant or assistance” listed as “to support programs regarding reproductive health.”
Commenting on the 2013 grant from Ford, NABJ President Bob Butler said, “[w]e are grateful for the Ford Foundation’s continued support and excited to work together to make a positive impact on America’s newsrooms.”
Washington Times reporter Julia Duin noted the NABJ’s enduring silence over soaring abortion rates in the black community in a 2009 article, with no mention being made by the group even as “one out of every three black pregnancies” was ending in abortion.
Another organization with a long track record of supporting Planned Parenthood is the Rockefeller Foundation. Random example: a copy of the minutes of a 1965 meeting found among the foundation’s archives shows the group donated $150,000 to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. That’s in 1965 dollars.
The Rockefeller Foundation’s main claim to fame in the abortion realm in recent years is its successful efforts to get the abortion drug RU-486 exported to the U.S. and other nations from Chinese factories.
The Washington Post reported in 2000 that: With the help of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bangkok-based Concept Foundation, the [Hua Lian Pharmaceutical factory] has been working for three years to upgrade its equipment and retrain its staff to meet international standards in order to be permitted to export the drug.
The Concept Foundation was established by the World Health Organization and World Bank in 1989 to assist factories in developing countries to make medical products at low cost for Third World health agencies. The Rockefeller Foundation gave $2 million to the group in 1997 to help Hua Lian and China’s state family planning agency upgrade the factory.
A look at the boards and executive listings of major American media organizations shows Rockefeller Foundation personnel heavily embedded throughout:
Judith Rodin, president of the foundation, is on the Board of Directors of Comcast, which owns NBC.
Monica Lozana is on the Board of Directors at both Disney, which owns ABC, and theRockefeller Foundation.
Ellen Taus is the Chief Financial Officer and a member of the Board of Directors for Tribune Publishing, which owns the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant as part of its newspaper holdings.
Taus is also the Treasurer and CFO of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Jessica P. Einhorn is on the Board of Directors for Time Warner, which owns CNN.
She is also listed in a Bloomberg Business profile as a trustee at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a group not officially associated with the Rockefeller Foundation but sharing its longtime support for Planned Parenthood and abortion (see page 20 of its 1975 annual report for a random example).
See Complete Article at Crisis Magazine
Why no outrage over Planned Parenthood videos? Meet its Big Media interlocking directorate added by World Tribune on
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