The Freedom Forum was created in 1991 under the direction of Al Neuharth, former publisher of USA Today newspaper. Funding was provided by a foundation started by publisher Frank E. Gannett in 1935, called the Gannett Foundation. The foundation took on the name of The Freedom Forum in 1991.
The Freedom Forum describes itself as "a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people."
It runs the First Amendment Center and the Diversity Institute at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. It is also the creator of the Newseum, a museum dedicated to the history of news, which opened in 1997 in Rosslyn Va., and re-opened in 2008 in Washington, D.C..
Each year, the Freedom Forum gives out the Al Neuharth Award for Excellence in the Media. Past winners include Walter Cronkite (1989), Carl T. Rowan (1990), Helen Thomas (1991), Tom Brokaw (1992), Larry King (1993), Charles Kuralt of CBS (1994), Albert R. Hunt and Judy Woodruff (1995), Robert MacNeil (1996), Cokie Roberts (1997), Tim Russert and Louis D. Boccardi (1998), John Seigenthaler (1999), Jim Lehrer (2001), Tom Curley (2002), Don Hewitt of CBS (2004), Garrison Keillor (2005), Bob Schieffer of CBS (2006), John Quinn and Ken Paulson (2007), Charles Overby (2008) and Katie Couric (2009).
As of July 2011, Charles L. Overby serves as Chairman and CEO of the organization. On May 31, 2011, the organization announced that James C. Duff, the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, would join the organization as president and CEO.
Famous quotes containing the words freedom and/or forum:
“We must introduce a new balance in the relationship between the individual and the government—a balance that favors greater individual freedom and self-reliance.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“What is called eloquence in the forum is commonly found to be rhetoric in the study. The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd which inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)