Speeches

Ford Foundation President Speaks at the Paley Center for Media

Thank you for that introduction.

Let me start by saying what a great pleasure it is to be here today at the Paley Center. I remember coming to an early incarnation of this organization in the 1970’s and watching old television shows in dusty carrels. It’s remarkable how far this place has come in 40 years. This building is in its own way a metaphor, a daily reminder of the extraordinary power of radio and television to shape our culture, our understanding of the world and our lives.

For most Americans television and radio remains the most ubiquitous form of entertainment. But it is important to understand media as more than just entertainment. It has always had the power to inform and, in turn, promote and amplify social change. Visual images establish norms.

Five decades ago coverage of the civil rights movement and the brave imagery of ordinary Americans fighting for the realization of their most basic human rights sparked a revolution in our country, ending Jim Crow, ending American apartheid. Just a few months ago, we saw that imagery again, on CNN and Al Jazeera, or, since we are here at the Paley Center, on CBS. Young men and women in Cairo, Tunis, Benghazi and elsewhere took their fight for freedom to the streets of their cities. This is the era in which all of us have come of age—an era in which what we hear on our radios; see on our televisions or watch online help define our lives.

At the Ford Foundation, we’ve long understood how the extraordinary power of mass media can be harnessed for the greater public good. Back in the 1950s, as television was first becoming a fixture in our lives, Ford understood that with the power of broadcasting came the power to effect social change. It’s the reason why we put our full institutional support behind the advent of public broadcasting.

Since then, Ford has committed more than a half billion dollars to the infrastructure and programming that underpins our public broadcasting system. Just last week, we helped WNYC acquire stations in New Jersey. This vast investment has reaped returns for a generation of Americans, giving us Sesame Street, the American Experience and countless other programs, many of which were imitated. PBS provided the seed corn for networks like HGTV, Discovery and Animal Planet. PBS served not just to inform and educate. It served as the incubator for much of what we now know as cable programming.

Today, strong and resilient media outlets remain essential to Ford’s work on the frontlines of social justice. The right of every person to tell their story, acquire knowledge and participate in the decisions that shape their lives, remains essential to vibrant, democratic societies. We know that much of our philanthropic work would have little impact if not widely disseminated to large and influential audiences. That’s why we are the largest funder of news content focusing on issues of inequality. That’s why we are the leading funder of social justice documentary filmmaking through efforts like our JustFilms initiative, which supports courageous filmmakers and helps them reach a growing audience of engaged and socially conscious viewers. That’s why, today, 50 years into the work, we continue to provide funding to public broadcasting stalwarts like WNYC and NPR. It’s also why we have newer partners like ProPublica, which through investigative journalism is shining a bright light on our public institutions; and Radio Bilingue, the country's largest Spanish language public radio network.

I’ll also say that our media work goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the work at the foundation. Whether we are fighting for the rights of working families, so that no American who works hard every day, every week of the year goes home to a family living in poverty, or fighting for the rights of children to have a real school day rather than a five or six hour drop in, media is a priority at Ford.

Now, while we believe that traditional media outlets are in desperate need of strong support from the philanthropic community, we also know that there is no area where the need for added philanthropic engagement is greater than digital technology. Let me pause to say that I love traditional media. I start my day with the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times and end my day watching the evening news with my sons. As an aside, those boys may be the last teenagers in America to read the paper or watch the evening news. But, I have to say, my media isn’t the media of the future. The decline of newspapers has been ongoing for four generations. Thousands of newspapers shut down long before digital anything arrived. Afternoon newspapers vanished in the 80’s and cities like Detroit lost their morning dailies in the 90’s. We need to acknowledge the era we are now in is a digital era.

The Internet’s potential to inform and empower; to build online communities; and to unleash opportunities for social change is perhaps the most important story of this young century—and the research shows this era, this change, isn’t so bad. More people are consuming more news from more diverse sources than has ever been the case in the history of human kind. But this new era and that new opportunity for an informed populace depends on the Internet being free, open and accessible—a situation that too many of us in this room take for granted. We forget that for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged Americans the barriers to open access continue to rise.

A few months ago, the New York Times ran a telling story about the challenges facing many Americans in simply getting online. In the little town of Coffeeville, Alabama, the closest students get to using the Internet is a school computer that they only have access to a few hours a day. One resident who wanted to set up a meeting with an elected official had to drive 45 minutes to her daughter’s house just to use email, because the visit could not be arranged over the phone. These are the digital have-nots of our society; these are the Americans we don’t often see, but who are being left behind in our increasingly digital future. Their experience is a reminder that the ability of digital technology to serve as a tool for driving social justice—or even as the source of this generation’s newspaper or evening news—is not a certainty. This isn’t a theoretical issue. Access to digital technology is the difference between economic opportunity and economic isolation. Just think, for example, about how many jobs are advertised only online and require online applications.

So what are we doing at Ford?

Today, we are the largest funder of efforts to ensure that all Americans have equal and unfettered access to the Internet. We have committed to an investment of $50 million dollars over the next five years, working to make access to the Internet a right and to ensure that all people are equally and fairly protected when they are online. It is a big commitment on our part, but it is not nearly enough. The questions of Internet freedom and access remain among the most underfunded areas in philanthropy.

Our resources are allowing us to partner with organizations like Free Press, Public Knowledge and the Open Net Initiative, each of whom are promoting fair media policies that advance competition, openness, innovation and universal access. We are working with new networks of media justice organizations like the “MAG-Net” coalition, which connects the issues of access and openness to our other social justice priorities in immigration, education and civic engagement. These investments are informed by an old and enduring idea: that technological advances are the drivers of social change for today and tomorrow.

Like the innovators that led the first generation of public media at Ford in the last century, every one of us needs to be taking risks in new media development. We need to be thinking about new ventures that develop dynamic media environments; we need to be promoting content that engages more people; we need to partner with those who are ensuring open access to technology as a right not a privilege. Now is the time to foster a new generation of public-minded media pioneers. But this effort will only succeed if all of us understand that we need to engage in the struggle for Internet equity as relentlessly as our forbearers in the 1950’s and 1960’s struggled to create public media.

Thank you.

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Joshua Cinelli

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