Free Press (advocacy group)
Free Press is a United States advocacy group that is part of the media reform or media democracy movement. The group is a major supporter of net neutrality.
History, organization, and activities
Free Press is a 501(c)(3) organization. Free Press Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) organization and is the group's advocacy arm.Free Press was co-founded in 2003 by media scholar Robert W. McChesney, progressive journalist John Nichols, and activist Josh Silver.
It is part of the broader "media reform movement", and has described its work in these terms. This movement promotes ideas of "media localism" and opposes media consolidation. Like other organizations that are part of the same movement, Free Press is concerned with issues such as Federal Communications Commission regulations, "as well as Congressional funding for public broadcasting and the malfeasance of corporate media."
Free Press led the Save the Internet coalition, which advocated for net neutrality. The coalition consisted of individuals, nonprofits, and companies, ranging from advocacy groups to consumer groups to Silicon Valley companies including Google and Microsoft.
Free Press organized six National Conferences for Media Reform from 2003 to 2013.
In July 2025, Free Press released the Media Capitulation Index, a ranking of the independence of the 35 largest media companies in the United States. The release of the index was accompanied by a report, "A More Perfect Media: Saving America's Fourth Estate from Billionaires, Broligarchy and Trump", which calls for a number of measures to embolden large media firms to act in the interests of democracy and against authoritarianism. The report explains the chicken ranking system used by the index.