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Group aids reporting that exposes secrecy
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (SF's leading newspaper)
Posted: December 24th, 2012
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Group-aids-reporting-...
A group of journalists, activists and celebrities has formed the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a nonprofit that will crowdsource funding for journalism that exposes secrecy and corruption in government and corporations. The impetus for the group dates to 2010, when whistle-blowing outfit WikiLeaks released thousands of pages of cables sent to and from U.S. State Department officials. Soon after, at the urging of the federal government, companies such as Bank of America, PayPal and Visa blocked donations to WikiLeaks, strangling the organization's finances. Freedom of the Press Foundation co-founder Daniel Ellsberg - who released the infamous 1971 Pentagon Papers - said the foundation's goal is to give organizations like WikiLeaks financial independence. "We don't think that what the public needs to know should be determined by the executive branch of the government," Ellsberg says. "We hope that it will be impossible for the government to bring pressure to bear to close down important journalistic institutions. That's a threat to all of journalism." Not only will the organization function as a financial lifeline to WikiLeaks, it will bring publicity to other organizations investigating government activities. The group has started by providing tools to fund four groups: WikiLeaks, government transparency advocates MuckRock News, military investigators the National Security Archive, and general investigative journalism outfit the UpTake. Supporters can go to its website (www.pressfreedomfoundation.org) and donate - anonymously - to any of the organizations.
Note: For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on government secrecy, click here.
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