An Interview with Helen Brunner, Founding Director, Media Democracy Fund

A Q&A with Helen Brunner, founding director of the Media Democracy Fund and an advisor to the Quixote Foundation.

She recently was awarded the Council on Foundations' 2016 Robert Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking for her efforts to protect the public's basic rights in the digital age and to secure universal access to a free and open Internet. Central to that work was funding and organizing the successful campaign to preserve network neutrality that culminated in the Federal Communications Commission's 2015 decision to prohibit broadband providers from blocking or "throttling" — intentionally slowing — the flow of legal content or services and from offering "fast lanes" for a fee. She speaks about the role of philanthropy in the ongoing debates over freedom of expression, data privacy, and the impact of social media on civic discourse.