The lines are more blurred than ever in US journalism today, and things are only getting worse. Progressive money groups are attempting to utilize a ruse of “saving local news” to dress up their activist agenda as valued neutral public resource. And big-name media outlets – have you ever heard of a TV channel called Fox News by any chance? – are happily partnering with them.
In February, the Gates Foundation, flagship “philanthropy” of messianic globalist Bill Gates, revealed it had issued a $120,000 grant to an organization called Civic News Company to “provide general operating support” for its US program.
Civic News Company serves as a central umbrella for three “local news” ventures: Chalkbeat, Votebeat, and Healthbeat. CNC expanded in 2024, hiring veteran big-box media executives. Shani O. Hilton, a former managing editor at the Los Angeles Times and vice president at leftist online news site BuzzFeed News, was brought on as editor-in-chief while Andrew Golis, an ex-VP at progressive outlet Vox, was named chief operating officer.
The company is flush to the gills with cash, thanks to its high-dollar “philanthropic” friends.
$50 Mil From Murky George and $30 Mil From Bill
“Founded in 2014, the organization has raised over $80 million during its 10-year history, including $14.7 million in fiscal year 2024,” CNC stated in a July release. “Civic News Company has a team of 80, including a newsroom of 50, with local Chalkbeat bureaus covering education in New York City, Colorado, Memphis, Indianapolis, Chicago, Detroit, Newark, and Philadelphia; and a Votebeat presence covering election administration and voting in Arizona, Texas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Healthbeat will launch later this summer to cover public health in New York City and Atlanta.”
In other words, they’re on the grow.
Gates is not the only red-flag funding source for an ostensibly unbiased news organization to rely on. Ubiquitous progressive donor goliath Democracy Fund, run by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, and notorious George Soros dark money group New Venture Fund are listed as financial supporters of Votebeat.
We’re not kidding when we call it a Soros outfit: New Venture Fund “received $50,321,490” from the progressive globalist billionaire between 2016 and 2020, the Media Research Center reported in 2022.
The CNC’s Healthbeat platform operates “in partnership with KFF Health News.” KFF has received more than $30 million from the Gates Foundation since 2003. A list of other financial backers to this alleged health news site includes pharmacy chain behemoth Walgreens.
That would seem to be a troubling association for genuine health journalism practitioners, would it not? KFF has actually partnered with Walgreens for several years “to offer free rapid HIV testing in more than 550 Walgreens stores” on National HIV Testing Day.
Yet KFF still has the gall to assert that it is “a one-of-a-kind information organization” that brings together “substantial capabilities in policy research, polling, and journalism in one organization to meet the need for a trusted, independent source of information on national health issues – one with the scope and reach to be a counterweight to health care’s vested interests and a voice for people.”
Accepting corporate donations from Walgreens and partnering with it for campaigns held in stores throughout the country sure seems an odd way to tilt against those “vested interests” running amok in the health care system.
As always, connecting the dots in this thoroughly phony $80 million “news” venture uncovers all sorts of interesting chummy associations. The Gates Foundation, the hard leftist Ford Foundation, and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp are all listed together as donors to CNC’s Chalkbeat plank, which claims to be dedicated to reporting boosting “the effort to improve schools for all children.”
They Call It Journalism
Here’s a random news headline from Chalkbeat from Oct. 29, 2024, filed just before the Nov. 5 presidential election: “Trump’s deportation plan could separate millions of families, leaving schools to pick up the pieces.”
Is this “nonpartisan” local news in action? But you already knew what the content would be like as soon as we told you who was paying the bills. Laughably, The New York Times doesn’t believe readers can reach such elementary conclusions.
The Times runs a “Headway” initiative that has featured Civic News Company material. “How Teens Are Handling a Flood of Election Misinformation” was a feature article run under the Headway label on Nov. 1, just four days before Election Day. It was co-authored by Chalkbeat writers and Headway Public Square Editor Terry Parris Jr.
The loaded “reporting” is once again unsurprising. But a disclaimer slapped on at the end of the article fully captures the decrepit state of journalism ethics at the once-celebrated Gray Lady.
“The Headway initiative is funded through grants from the Ford Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF), with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors serving as a fiscal sponsor,” the disclaimer reads. “The Woodcock Foundation is a funder of Headway’s public square. Funders have no control over the selection, focus of stories or the editing process and do not review stories before publication. The Times retains full editorial control of the Headway initiative.”
We’re awash in Rockefeller and Ford Foundation money, but never fear: They have no say at all over any part of the journalism process. Never mind that the glaring slant of the entire piece we just published above this box happens to coincide perfectly with the Ford Foundation’s well-known ideological leanings.
“The Times will also work with the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network, which will provide consulting and training for the Headway team,” the paper announced in December 2020 when launching its “new journalism” initiative.
“Equity & Inclusion” is the second item listed under the “About Us” menu on the Solutions Journalism Network website. “As a journalism organization, we acknowledge that negative, reductive and denigrating coverage of communities outside the dominant majority – especially those of color – has caused immense harm to those communities and to society as a whole. We are taking action to help bring an end to reporting practices that perpetuate bias and stigma,” SJN states.
This is how silly The New York Times has become. And look who is piling into the clown car with them.
Along with the Gates, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations, financial supporters of Solutions Journalism Network include global investment powerhouse Goldman Sachs via its corporate Philanthropy Fund.
Bold new ways to journalize, brought to you by Goldman Sachs. And a staggeringly blind big-box media colossus wonders why nobody takes it seriously anymore.
