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Nonprofit Overview
Causes: Civil Rights
Mission: The Free Press Action Fund fights for your rights to connect and communicate. For more information and to offer a review, see the profile of our allied organization, Free Press at: http://greatnonprofits.org/users/profile/326792
Founded in 2002, the Free Press Action Fund (FPAF), a 501(c)4, is the only national, member-driven lobbying organization in the United States dedicated exclusively to media and technology policy in the public interest. We provide the public with a voice in Washington and local statehouses, and to provide policymakers with a pro-consumer analysis of the issues.
We're working to create a world where people have the information and opportunities they need to tell their own stories, hold leaders accountable, and participate in policymaking. We fight to save the free and open Internet, curb runaway media consolidation, protect press freedom, and ensure diverse voices are represented in our media.
The Free Press Action Fund works alongside Free Press, which conducts the broader education, organizing, communications and research activities related to media policy reform.
Our strategies:
- Monitor/analyze federal and state policy; identify legislative goals and threats.
- Cultivate relationships with members of Congress, the FCC and their respective staff.
- Advise Free Press campaign, communications and field staff on policy-related issues.
- Build coalitions of political allies.
- Speak at Congressional staff briefings, industry events, think-tank conferences, and university symposia.
- Lobby in the public interest on specific legislative proposals and FCC procedures.
- Testify before key Congressional committees on specific policy proposals.
Results: The Free Press Action Fund and its complementary 501(c)3 organization, Free Press, have built the essential infrastructure for the national media reform movement. Until Free Press began educating and organizing people, policymakers had heard little from the public about the failing U.S. media system. Today, with a base of 900,000 activists, Free Press is recognized as the leader and primary convener of this steadily growing movement.
Among our top accomplishments: •Net Neutrality: On Feb. 26, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission voted to protect real Net Neutrality and in favor of reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. This moment was 10 years in the making and marks the biggest public policy victory in FCC history and the biggest win ever for the media reform movement.
•Spying and Surveillance: In February 2014, Free Press helped organize “The Day We Fight Back,” an online action protesting mass surveillance. Five thousand websites participated, and, in one day, we drove 89,000 calls and 555,000 emails to leaders in Washington.
•Community Broadband: Free Press has worked for years to overturn laws that prohibit local communities from building affordable, high-speed broadband networks. In February 2015, the FCC voted to pre-empt restrictions in Tennessee and North Carolina that ban the expansion of existing community broadband networks. President Obama also endorsed the rights of municipalities to build their own broadband networks last year, and new legislation was introduced in Congress to overturn state bans.
•Mega-Mergers: Free Press was a leading voice of opposition to the failed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger. In May 2014, we organized a protest outside Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia in which hundreds participated and hand-delivered more than 400,000 petitions opposing the merger. Under heightened public scrutiny, review of the merger intensified and delayed a decision. In April 2015, Comcast
•The 2011 defeat of the proposed merger of AT&T with T-Mobile, an anti-competitive deal that would have resulted in higher prices for consumers.
•Media Consolidation: In March 2014, the FCC moved to roll back media consolidation for the first time in decades, closing a loophole that TV broadcasters had been exploiting to evade long-standing limits on how many stations one owner could control in a single market. Free Press research and advocacy helped prompt the FCC’s decision.
•Low-Power FM Radio: In 2014, we saw the fruits of years of work when thousands of new LPFM stations were licensed.
Free Press Action Fund is committed to advocating for media that reflect the values of access, democracy, diversity, equality, freedom and openness. And we're just getting started!