GOODY TWO SHOES: Freedom’s Just Another Word For … Whatever Al Neuharth Wants It To Mean
Gannett Blog editor Jim Hopkins brought his investigation into numerous seemingly improbable donations and grants by the Freedom Forum to The Stiletto’s attention. Launched by retired Gannett Chairman and CEO Al Neuharth in 1991 as “a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people” this largesse seems meant less to support the foundation’s “three priorities: the Newseum, the First Amendment and newsroom diversity” – as to “finance his own legacy,” as Hopkins puts it. Here are the most eyebrow-raising of them:
Dr. Rachel Fornes's Home At Last adoption agency in Cocoa Beach, Fla., seems like an unusual non-profit to be receiving grants from one of the world's biggest charitable foundations devoted to free speech and a free press. …
Public documents show Freedom Forum in Washington, D.C., made $65,700 in donations to Home At Last between 2000 and 2007. …
Fornes is the wife of Freedom Forum's multimillionaire founder, Al Neuharth.
The Home At Last grants are among hundreds of gifts Freedom Forum made in 2000-2007 to non-profits that seem to share little in common with the foundation's mission, a Gannett Blog review of more than 9,000 pages of IRS documents found. In other cases, money went to causes that appeared to benefit foundation officials more than the foundation itself. For example, Freedom Forum has given:
† $15,000 to the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, a leading political lobby.
† $34,500 to the United States Equestrian Team in Gladstone, N.J., to promote competitive horseback riding events.
† $23,000 to the 30-year-old Whale Museum, housed in a former Odd Fellows fraternal hall on an island near Seattle.
† $35,500 to the Montessori Parent Organization in Indian Harbour Beach, Fla.
† $46,500 to Holy Trinity Episcopal Academy in Melbourne, Fla.
† $5 million to the University of Mississippi for a journalism center not honoring Gannett or the foundation - but the foundation’s chairman and CEO, Charles Overby, an Ole Miss grad, and long-time Neuharth aide. …
Freedom Forum spent $88.7 million in 2007 on grants, salaries and other overhead. Its single biggest expenditure was a huge grant, $57.3 million, to the Newseum, according to the 2007 IRS report, which accountants finished only last month. At my request, Freedom Forum shipped a hard copy of the report to me by overnight mail; I received it this morning.
The foundation says its grants are awarded in areas "consistent with the mission of the Freedom Forum Inc. and its affiliates, including allowing grants to charitable institutions," according to the 2007 IRS report, known as a Form 990-PF.
Newseum spokesman Mike Fetters has thus far declined to answer questions about Freedom Forum's grants and donations or about the role of the trustees.
Considering how many journalists were jailed or killed in 2008 alone, one would think Freedom Forum would have better ways to spend its money than to fund abortion rights activists or whale museums.
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