Group Launched to Support WikiLeaks, Transparency Journalism Reports Incredible Success

A foundation dedicated to promoting and funding transparency journalism, which launched on December 16, has concluded its first round of funding for organizations. It has enjoyed incredible success and found there are a lot of people who want to support this kind of an organization.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) raised nearly $200,000 for four different organizations, including WikiLeaks, which it collected donations to support because the media organization faces a banking blockade that makes it difficult for it to directly accept funds from supporters.

According to Trevor Timm, a co-founder of FPF, $82,000 was donated to WikiLeaks. Three other organizations—The Uptake, a media group that encourages democracy and transparency; MuckRock News, an organization that makes it easy for individuals and organizations to submit FOIA requests, the National Security Archive, an investigative journalism center that maintains a library of declassified government documents. Each received approximately $15,500, $16,000 and $18,000 in donations respectively.

The average donation has been around $100. Donors have also chosen to donate over $40,000 to the foundation itself, which Timm told Firedoglake will go toward handing out prizes or grants at the end of the year that can be used to fund organizations engaged in innovative transparency journalism projects.

FPF is co-founded by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, John Perry Barlow, a former lyricist for the Grateful Dead who co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Rainey Reitman, a founder and steering committee member for the Bradley Manning Support Network. Also on the Board of Directors is writer Glenn Greenwald, actor John Cusack, Journalism and Public Media Campaign Director at Free Press, Josh Stearns, documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Xeni Jardin, founding partner and co-editor of Boing Boing.

The goal of FPF is to not only make it possible for WikiLeaks to remain operational but to also inspire new WikiLeaks-like organizations to form and resist government and corporate pressures that currently constrain journalism. The foundation bundled organizations for about a month and a half and made it possible for individuals to split their donation among four organizations.

more here: http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/02/04/group-launched-to-support-wikileaks-transparency-journalism-reports-incredible-success/