$1.5 Million from Ford for Media Justice

The Funding Exchange’s Media Justice Fund announced that it has been awarded $1.5 million over two years by the Ford Foundation. The funds go to support grantmaking in the project’s National Office as well as a network of community foundations.

[Source: fex.org] The Media Justice Fund was founded on the belief that a more equitable distribution of media and communication technologies is a critical step toward social and economic justice. To that end, the Fund makes grants to nonprofit organizations that are working to reform media policies, establish community media infrastructures, and promote accountability by media corporations. A core focus is on supporting the activism and leadership of communities that are traditionally marginalized by mass media.

“Thanks to the Media Justice Fund, we now have the ability to communicate consistently with a sizeable portion of our membership, painstakingly built over more than a quarter century,” said Marlen Torres of Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste, a union of treeplanters and farmworkers dedicated to improving conditions for agricultural workers. A recent grant from the Fund helped the group to build a low-power FM radio station that reaches thousands of people within a five-mile radius of Woodburn, Oregon, and many more via the internet. Added Torres, “the station is a critical link to long-term consciousness-raising and education for immigrants and farmworkers.”

Read more at the program website. Listen to Hye-Jung Park, program officer for the Media Justice Fund, and Marlen Torres talk about the project during GFEM’s San Francisco media conference by going to GFEM Pictures + Words, scrolling down, clicking on the second audio link, and cueing it to 8:40 into the presentation.