Reports have surfaced showing that the Associated Press (AP) received millions of dollars from “partnerships” with far-left organizations, especially relating to its coverage of race and the so-called “climate crisis.”
Chuck Ross of The Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday that the AP “last year announced a series of ‘partnerships’ to subsidize reporters covering climate change, race, and democracy. A review of the donor roster shows that the vast majority fund left-wing political causes,” while none is a supporter of conservative initiatives.
One of these organizations, Ross pointed out, is the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, which was co-founded by Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times, a high-profile advocate of Critical Race Theory (CRT).
Ross wrote that Hannah-Jones’ group “teamed up with filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s Heartland Foundation, for example, to foster ‘more inclusive storytelling’ at the Associated Press.”
Ross also pointed out that the AP’s “global investigations editor, Ron Nixon, serves on the Ida B. Wells Society’s board of directors.”
Hannah-Jones is best known for starting the 1619 Project, a controversial program of thought that views the history of the United States through the lens of critical race theory. According tot he 1619 Project, the American colonists sought independence from the British mainly in order to keep slavery legal.
Historians – including academics on the political left – have extensively debunked and repudiated this belief, along with the Project as a whole.
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Ross described several more groups that have financially contributed to the AP’s various “initiatives.”
The Associated Press is also taking nonprofit money to fund coverage of race and climate. The organization’s “democracy journalism initiative,” a division whose reporters cover “the intersection of race and voting,” is bankrolled by nonprofits such as the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation. That organization also funds Stacey Abrams’s New Georgia Project and the left-wing activist group Take Back the Court, which advocates for expanding the Supreme Court.
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The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation spent $2.5 million on the AP’s climate and education reporting verticals and sent $400,000 to its democracy journalism initiative. The foundation also funds Planned Parenthood and organizations such as Advocates for Youth, which promotes transgender ideology to kindergartners.
The AP takes in millions more from philanthropies—the Hewlett Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and others—to fund reporting on climate change, such as stories that this summer’s heat wave is due to global warming, that President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act boosted America’s “climate credibility,” and that climate activists have ramped up protests against the “emissions-spewing lifestyles of the ultrawealthy.”
The AP is one of the oldest continually operating news sources in the world. It was founded in New York City in the year 1846. On its website, it calls itself “the first private sector organization in the U.S. to operate on a national scale.”
The AP prides itself on being the “first to inform the world of many of history’s most important moments, from the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the bombing of Pearl Harbor to the fall of the Shah of Iran and the death of Pope John Paul.”
However, as Ross noted, its funding from “overly political actors” will “make it more challenging for the Associated Press to swat away accusations of political bias.”
“AllSides, a group that tracks media bias across the industry, last year changed its rating for the AP from ‘center’ to ‘leans left,’” Ross reported. “In doing so, they cited ‘an increase in “word choice bias” and “bias by omission of views” in its coverage.”’
A June report from CatholicVote revealed a list of seven terms the AP Stylebook recently instructed journalists not to use: “illegal immigrant,” “groomer,” “mutilation,” “pro-abortion,” “transgenderism,” “abortionist,” and “transsexual.”
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
