The Real News

The Real News was founded in 2007 and "is a non-profit news and documentary network focused on providing independent and uncompromising journalism. Our staff, in collaboration with courageous journalists around the globe, will investigate, report and debate stories on the critical issues our times." 

The Real News program is a project of Independent World Television (IWT). 

The Real News: International Founding Committee The Real News: Journalist Advisory Committee

Funding
Their website notes that they "are member supported and do not accept advertising, government or corporate funding." That said although their website does not acknowledge it they do receive ample funding from foundations.

Writing in January 2007 in the Ryerson Review of Journalism, Shereen Dindar notes that "IWT has already raised $5 million from several foundations, charitable trusts, individuals and unions, including the Canadian Auto Workers Union, the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. The plan now is to use the network's website to attract 250,000 individual donors to contribute $10 a month. Jay and company estimate they will need $30 million a year to sustain broadcasting in the long-term, but only $4 million for the first year." 

Board
Accessed May 2010:


 * Paul Jay
 * Mary Cornish
 * Al Rosen
 * Sashi Kumar
 * Robert Lang
 * David Ostriker
 * Michael Ratner
 * Jonathan Schell
 * Makani Themba-Nixon
 * Richard Warburton

Directors (2008)
Source
 * Paul Jay – (Canada) Founding Member 2003, Chair and CEO, Creator and Executive Producer of CBC Newsworld’s debate program counterSpin. Award-winning documentary filmmaker and founding Chair of Hot Docs!, the Canadian International Documentary Film Festival.
 * Afsan Chowdhury – (Bangladesh) Member Oct. 2006, is the Director of Advocacy and Human Rights at BRAC. He spent years working in the fields of media advocacy, health rights, communication and social mobilization, AIDS management, gender and protection, child rights, and disaster management. He was Contributing Producer for a number of BBC World Service series, and is an author of four novels
 * Mary Cornish – (Canada) Member Sept. 2006, is a senior partner in a leading Canadian public interest law firm and Adjunct Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. She is recognized nationally and internationally as an expert in the fields of human rights and labour law, pay and employment equity, social protection, judicial reform and alternative dispute resolution issues.
 * Laura Flanders – (USA), Air America radio host and journalist. She is the author of Real Majority, Media Minority: The Cost of Sidelining Women in Reporting. Flanders was the Founding Director of the Women’s Desk at the media-watch group FAIR.
 * Bronya Galef – (USA) Member August 2006, is actively involved in education and the arts both locally and nationally. Chair of the Galef Institute: an educational nonprofit whose primary goal is to work with educators in public schools, schools of education, and other organizations to improve student achievement by strengthening the teaching profession.
 * Mike Greene – (Canada) Member December 2006, is a chartered accountant who has had wide ranging experience in a number of different financial and operating areas from serving as the CFO of a large ($2+ billion revenue) TSE listed conglomerate to being Executive Vice President of an international trading group.
 * Earl Katz – (USA) Member August 2006, is an activist/documentary producer... He is Executive Director of Public Interest Pictures, and President of Creative Philanthropy and consults to the nonprofit sector through his company, Creative Philanthropy. He has worked with hundreds of nonprofit organizations.
 * Sashi Kumar – (India), Journalist, national television anchor, producer and entrepreneur. Pioneered India's first regional language satellite TV channel, Asianet (which began telecast in the Malayalam language in 1992) and the first state wide cable TV network in the south Indian state of Kerala. He is the Founder- Chairman of Media Development Foundation.
 * Robert Lang – (Canadian) Member Sept. 2006, is founder and president of Toronto-based Kensington Communications, a television production company with an established international reputation for documentary specials and innovative series. He is a founding member of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus, and an honorary board member for Maison Emmanuel, a community north of Montreal for young people with mental and physical disabilities.
 * David Ostriker – (Canada), was Head of Business Affairs for counterSpin, on CBC Newsworld. Ostriker served on the executive committee of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television and is a past Chair of the Canadian Independent Film Caucus.
 * Michael Ratner – (USA), President of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York. Taught at Yale Law School, lectured at Columbia Law School and was President of the National Lawyers Guild.
 * Jonathan Schell – (USA), Writer and journalist, Peace and Disarmament Correspondent for The Nation magazine, a fellow at the Nation Institute, visiting lecturer at the Yale Law School, was a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine from 1967 to 1987, author of The Fate of the Earth, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
 * Jake Scudamore – (Canada) Member Oct. 2006, has distinguished himself as an award-winning board member while serving on several public, private, fiduciary and advisory boards. Founding Partner of Scudamore & Associates Inc., one of Canada’s leading strategic planning, business development, operating efficiencies and marketing consulting firms.
 * Makani Themba-Nixon – (USA), Executive Director of the Praxis Project, a non-profit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health equity and justice. A published author, Makani was previously Director of the Transnational Racial Justice Initiative (TRJI) and staffer for the California State Legislature.

When last check in March 2008, Jake Scudamore had been replaced by Richard Warburton.

Criticism of The Real News

 * Michael Barker, "Who Funds the Progressive Media?", Center for Research on Globalization, July 7, 2008. (Article was removed from their website the same day, but has been linked to by the editor of Open Media Boston.)
 * Kim Petersen, "Independent Media as Mouthpiece for Centers of Power: Proffering Mass Murder as Attention Getting", Dissident Voice, May 28, 2010. (Also see comments under Paul Jay article)

Contact

 * Web: http://www.therealnews.com

External Resources

 * Shereen Dindar, "Heard the independent news?", Ryerson Review of Journalism, January 8, 2007.