Press Foundation Launches Crowd-Source Fund Drive for Muckrakers

The Free Press Foundation has launched a crowd-funding
campaign to launch a fundraising drive for some muckraking online sites.

The sites are the WikiLeaks, the UpTake, MuckRock and
National Security Archive, as well as start-ups, all dedicated to
"aggressive, uncompromising journalism," says the foundation.

The foundation said the initiative was prompted by the
refusal of PayPal, Visa and MasterCard to process payments to the WikiLeaks
site after it published leaked State Department documents.

The campaign will bundle several groups and allow donors to
identify what percentage of their money goes to each.

The foundation's board includes Daniel Ellsberg, who was
sued by the U.S. government for leaking Vietnam-era classified documents that
came to be known as the Pentagon Papers.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.