Free to Choose Media: Telling the Story of Freedom
By Anastasia Ealey
What comes to mind when you hear the name Milton Friedman? Maybe his name evokes thoughts of capitalism or free market economics. Or maybe thoughts of liberty and monetary policy.
Friedman is also well-known for his PBS television series and book titled “Free To Choose,” which address the “interrelationship of personal, political, and economic freedom.” Both the series and the book took off in the 1980s—and today, the Free to Choose legacy lives on in the Free To Choose Media organization, a non-profit public foundation that delves into the possibilities of “freedom and wealth creation through expert storytelling and high quality presentation.”
Friedman laid out a variety of reasons for using this method to present free market economics and the principles of liberty, but in the end the idea simply really appealed to him and his wife, Rose.
In their memoir, “Two Lucky People,” Rose wrote: “Milton and I have spent much of our life trying to persuade our fellow men and women of the dangers of an intrusive government and the key role that a free competitive economy plays in making a free society possible. Bringing these ideas to the large audience that a TV documentary could attract excited us.”
This desire to educate and make the unpleasant into a good story is not unlike a math teacher looking for ways to help his students learn their arithmetic. Free market economics is not so difficult to comprehend; it just requires a good explanation by a patient and willing teacher.
The Friedmans understood the need to overcome the barriers that lay between the general public and a proper understanding of freedom, economics, and politics.
Admittedly, this is no easy task when “the prevailing attitude is ‘don’t bother me with the details, I’d rather watch American Idol.’” However, as the PBS series and book alone have been translated into two dozen languages, and the book was one of the top non-fiction best-sellers of the 1980’s, it’s safe to say that the Friedmans have enjoyed some success in their endeavors. Their goal remains to translate the ideas of think tanks and “independent thinkers” into icons, symbols and stories that will stay alive in the memory of the public.
Free To Choose most recently achieved this in “The Ultimate Resource,” a documentary shot on location in Bangladesh, Peru, China, Estonia and Ghana. It focuses on five individual stories of common people accomplishing uncommon feats.
In Ghana, two parents in a poor fishing village are so desperate to educate their children that they spend as much of their meager income as they can towards building and running private schools to compete with the overcrowded public schools. This is a trend, Free To Choose reports, also occurring in India, China, and parts of Africa. Ghana is just one example of the sparks of freedom that are growing across the world—sparks that the Free To Choose Media organization wants to help further as much as they can through effective presentation.
Free To Choose Media, although relatively young, is making great strides in its purpose to not just educate, but also captivate, the general public on the ideals of freedom. We salute their good progress in story-telling in the name of freedom.
To learn more, visit Free to Choose Media’s website.
