Special to WorldTribune.com, May 30, 2024
Corporate WATCH
Commentary by Joe Schaeffer @Schaeff55Major big-box media executives are directly connected with an ongoing effort to transform their profession into a vehicle for social change brought about by working with “government, corporate, and nonprofit” entities to control information.
On May 1, the Associated Press reported results of a media poll which got significant national play:
Even as many Americans say they learn about the 2024 election campaign from national news outlets, a disquieting poll reveals some serious trust issues.
About half of Americans, 53%, say they are extremely or very concerned that news organizations will report inaccuracies or misinformation during the election. Some 42% express worry that news outlets will use generative artificial intelligence to create stories, according to a poll from the American Press Institute and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
“The level of engagement is good,” Michael Bolden, CEO of the American Press Institute, AP’s polling partner here. “The thing that’s most concerning is that they’re not sure they can actually trust the information.”That positive engagement level can be explained by the dominant hold “national news outlets” continue to enjoy over modern mass communications platforms, even in the Age of the Internet. It’s a lot easier to get readers to your big-brand news site when Google or Facebook won’t include smaller competitors in search engine results.
The trust problem is also no mystery. Establishment-favored news outlets have become echo chambers for the establishment instead of independent reporters. Things have so evolved that not only are these large-scale media outlets favored by the establishment... they are increasingly being funded by them.
“The American Press Institute also receives funding from individuals and philanthropic foundations that support our mission,” API states on a “Financials” page on its website. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Lenfest Institute for Journalism are listed as prominent financial backers.
World Tribune has reported on Knight and Lenfest:
The Lenfest Institute states that it “is funded by a major $40 million gift from the late cable giant, Gerry Lenfest, and it has also received funding from the Knight Foundation, Facebook, and Google.”
The Knight Foundation is a frequent collaborator of notorious leftist “philanthropic” powerhouse organizations such as the Ford Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations.
API also discloses that it has received funding over the years from Google, The Boston Globe, The New York Times and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Gee, why aren’t we trusted?Related: Standards for the American Free Press
The American Press Institute is a project of the News/Media Alliance, a “nonprofit organization headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area” that represents “over 2,200 diverse publishers in the United States – from the largest groups and international outlets to hyperlocal sources, from digital-only and digital-first to print. Our members are trusted and respected providers of quality journalism.” Its Board of Directors lists top executives, including several CEOs, from a vast array of powerful big-brand media outlets:
- Boston Globe
- Conde Nast
- Dallas Morning News
- Deseret News
- Gannett
- The Guardian
- McClatchy
- Minneapolis Star Tribune
- New York Times
- News Corp – Rupert Murdoch media empire (Fox News, New York Post, Wall Street Journal)
- Philadelphia Inquirer
- Tampa Bay Times
- Tribune Publishing – owners of Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel and Hartford Courant
- Washington Post
- Vox Media
Daniel Green leads a team that creates integrated campaigns and content to advance the foundation’s policy, advocacy, and communications objectives....
Dan began his career as a journalist, spending 17 years with ABC News, working in the southern Africa bureau and then as a producer and senior producer at “Nightline.”
He’s an acknowledged agent for Bill Gates’s “objectives” and he’s hashing out the new “ethical terrain” of journalism! Green’s API essay openly states what those objectives are:Many argue that the missions of journalism and philanthropic organizations are not dissimilar. The idea of journalism as a service could bring the two even closer. If journalism advocates for the community it serves (as Jarvis contends) and foundations advocate for positive change on specific problems within those same communities, there is likely genuine alignment.
In a sense, journalism has always strived to change society.
In another essay in the same American Press Institute series, Alan Rusbridger, who served as “editor in chief of The Guardian for 20 years until May 2015,” celebrates receiving support from Gates and George Soros to support globalist ventures:[W]e soon started a conversation with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation about creating a Global Development Hub so that we could build on the expertise and experience we’d garnered in Uganda and elsewhere to provide special focus on the Millennium Development Goals — the eight targets set in 2000 by the United Nations Millennium Declaration with the aim of improving the lives of the world’s poorest people by 2015. After a trial period the Gates Foundation agreed a $5.7 million grant to last for six years....
Other partnerships have followed. A grant from the Open Society Foundation[s] has helped support The Guardian’s New East Network, our Sudan coverage and the Tehran Bureau.
This is the new journalism that is now omnipresent in 2024. This is the real substance behind the AP “media trust” article that garnered so much attention in early May. In addition to its API alliance, the Associated Press has partnered with “nonpartisan research organization” NORC at the University of Chicago on its election coverage. The Associated Press is truly coming out and saying it. Government, corporations and big philanthropy are uniting to control information in the name of “democracy”:Today, government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world partner with NORC to transform increasingly complex information into useful knowledge.
By pairing the research rigor of NORC at the University of Chicago with the journalistic independence and global media reach of The Associated Press, The AP-NORC Center gathers, analyzes, and disseminates data with unmatched speed, precision, and clarity. We inform public policy debates as they are taking place and contribute to the informed electorate every democracy needs to function properly.
Lines are not being blurred here. They are being utterly obliterated. The “research rigor” of NORC has surprisingly discovered that all this tainted journalism is perfectly fine. From 2023:A new study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago in partnership with Media Impact Funders and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism that examines the role of philanthropy in American journalism found strong growth in support for nonprofit news over the past five years, an increase in funding to for-profit newsrooms, and a growing focus on communities of color.
At the same time, the study reveals the need for more newsrooms to disclose donors and adopt clear conflict-of-interest policies to protect editorial independence and public trust.
The report inadvertently highlights the growing menace of Big Philanthropy control over the dominant press:More than half of funders say their journalism grantmaking has increased in the last five years. A third report funding journalism for the first time during that same period. And most nonprofit and for-profit news outlets in the survey say they have seen increases in philanthropic funding.
Funders identify top priorities in their grantmaking. More than 70% say they currently make grants to increase local journalism or reporting on a specific topic. More than 50% say they make grants to help journalists increase community engagement, produce overall investigative reporting, or support news organizations with fundraising and business sustainability.
In a growing trend, 38% say they have provided philanthropic support to a for-profit news organization in the last five years.
The measure of how beyond ludicrous NORC, and by extension, the Associated Press, are in discussing media ethics and “potential conflicts of interest” is illustrated by NORC's partner in the 2023 report, Media Impact Funders. In 2024, Media Impact Funders produced another new report on the subject. You can't make something this comical up:This report, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is a targeted snapshot of the state of global journalism funding today.
The report echoed many of the findings from the NORC 2023 report:Nearly three quarters (74%) of foundations reported an increase in journalism funding within their foundations over the past five years....
Collectively, the 25 funders in our dataset gave $1.1 billion dollars to journalism grantees from 2018-2022, and $5.4 billion to media grantees in total.
Who are these 25 crucial funders? Among the names:- Bill Gates
- Ford Foundation
- Rockefeller Foundation
- George Soros
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