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Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press

American nonprofit publishing organization

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 30, 2025
Entity authorityQ30325293
Source-derived summary

Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP) is an American nonprofit publishing organization that was founded in Washington, D.C. in 1972. The organization works to increase media democracy and strengthen independent media.

Basic information

WIFP was founded in 1972 by Donna Allen in Washington, DC. She was an economist, historian, and civil rights activist. The organization conducted seven conferences at the National Press Club in the 1970s and 1980s on "Planning a National and International Communications System for Women". WIFP held two international satellite teleconferences from the 1975 UN World Conference of Women, in Copenhagen in 1980 ("Dateline Copenhagen: A Woman's View") and Nairobi in 1985 ("Dateline Nairobi - Woman's View"). These were each four hours if international interactions between women. During the 1980 conference, women gathered in six US cities and several female delegates from other countries called in from the Second U.N. World Conference in Copenhagen. Five years later in Nairobi, groups of women came together similarly to in Copenhagen but with the addition of more countries and their delegates. As of 2017, WIFP became a member of Corporate Reform Coalition, which is a group of organizations and individuals who join together to address the influence of corporate America on the country's elections through shareholder protection.

Publications

When the Institute was founded, it immediately launched the periodical Media Report to Women with the subhead "What Women Are Doing and Thinking About the Communications Media." It was edited the first fifteen years by Donna Allen.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press” is american nonprofit publishing organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Women's, Institute and Freedom, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1972, 1975, 1980, 1985—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Women's, Institute and Freedom is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american nonprofit publishing organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q30325293. VIAF identifies the subject as 123157733. The Library of Congress control number is n80133491. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972, 1975, 1980 and 1985.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press primary sources, Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press archive and Women's research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.