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 news and entertainment media. CMPA's goal is to provide an empirical basis for ongoing debates over media coverage and impact through well-documented, timely, and readable studies.

CMPA also runs the Statistical Assessment Service, described on the front page of its Web site as a sister organization, which is considered 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".

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 1986-2009, 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 $130,000 in seven grants between 1999 and 2009;
 * 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 - $1,035,000 from 9 donations spanning the period between 1991 and 2009; and
 * Smith Richardson Foundation - $416,916 from 3 donations between 1998 and 2001;

Thus, out of the total of $3,323,416 in foundation grants, nearly all of it ($2,693,916) came from just four sources: the John M. Olin, Scaife, and Smith Richardson foundations. In other words, CMPA received 81% 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 November 2010, the CMPA website contains no information about the Center's sources of funding.

Total Recent Funding
In its 2008 Annual return to the Internal Revenue Service, CMPA reported that for that year it had total revenue of $479,390 which came in the form of contributions gifts and grants, except for $3,237.

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


 * 2004: $174,459
 * 2005: $393,396
 * 2006: $424,387
 * 2007: $393,846
 * 2008: $479,390

CMPA’s 2008 ElectionNewsWatch Project
On February 1, 2008, CMPA issued a news release lauding the election coverage of Fox News. A CMPA concluded "FOX stands out for having the heaviest and most issue-oriented election coverage. ...  FOX was also twice as substantive as the broadcast networks. Almost one-third of all stories on FOX (30%) dealt with policy issues, nearly double the proportion (16%) on the networks. FOX also carried less coverage of the horse race and candidate tactics than any of broadcast networks."

"Conservative-Funded Study: Fox News Gives Most Balanced Coverage"
The Huffington Post reported in December of 2007 that "A study released this month by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University found that Fox News Channel's evening coverage was more "balanced" than that of the broadcast networks." Yet, one only had to look at the money behind the study to see that the "results" were tainted from the start.

Criticism of 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."

Criticism of 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."

Office Bearers
As of 2011, the board consisted of:
 * President: S. Robert Lichter
 * Chairman: Truman Anderson
 * Director: Dodie McCracken
 * Director: Nell Minow
 * Director: Paul Mongerson
 * Director: Heather C. Dahl
 * Director: Dannielle Struppa
 * Director Emeritus: David Gergen
 * Director Emeritus: Newton Minow

Staff

 * S. Robert Lichter - President. Robert Lichter is 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.

Former Staff

 * Linda S. Lichter, Vice President (died January 2009).

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