Liberal Foundations Prop-Up Climate Crisis Narratives via “News” Organizations
With the media’s credibility on serious matters collapsing, one publication is now worried that the press is facing an….”extinction level event”.
A little over one year ago, I reported that a report alleged that the Associated Press took millions of dollars in donations and used it to fund its “climate crisis” coverage.
The Associated Press took $8 million in donations to fund climate coverage in 2022, with the news cooperative and several other major media publications engaged in dubious claims about climate change, according to a new, exclusive year-end report.
The “Climate Fact Check 2022” report, presented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), the Heartland Institute, the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), and the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), stated that “climate alarmists” and members of the media engaged in claims about the relationship between manmade emissions and natural disasters, claims that clashed with “reality and science.”
In February, the Associated Press admitted that they would assign more than 24 journalists across the globe to cover “climate issues” after receiving more than $8 million over three years from various organizations.
Now, an analysis of funding initiatives led by some of America’s biggest private foundations indicates that progressive activist entities are funding this training for “climate journalists” at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Southern California.
RealClearPolitics has published an in-depth analysis, which shows an astonishing and near-perfect adherence to the climate narratives.
The organization Covering Climate Now is a major driver of climate-related news, reportedly encompassing “More than 500 news and media outlets [that] partner with the organization, which represents an audience of 2 billion people in 57 countries. Its partners include big names like ABC News, CBS News, Reuters, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald, and The San Francisco Chronicle.”
NBC News and Bloomberg are also partners, and just recently, Portland’s KGW News was added as a partner.
Covering Climate Now was founded by the Columbia Journalism Review – an initiative of Ivy League Columbia University’s journalism school – in partnership with the far-left publication The Nation. Who funds it? Actions@EBMF, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Michaux Family Foundation, One Earth Fund, Park Foundation, Rockefeller Family & Associates, Rockefeller Family Fund, Schumann Media Center, Taylor Family Charitable Fund, and Wayne Crookes. Notably, Rockefeller money was also behind the AP climate journalism initiative.
Since Covering Climate Now and Columbia’s initiative was put in place, ABC, CBS, and Reuters have run a flurry of climate change-focused stories that seem designed to draw in non-climate hawks and amplify their concern about the issue by focusing on subjects of interest to extremely “average” news consumers, such as food, children’s mental health … even Christmas trees.
…Covering Climate Now has also touted partner pieces arguing that “massive programmes of green public investment would be the most cost-effective way both to revive virus-hit economies and strike a decisive blow against climate change,” talking up fracking’s alleged endangering of seniors sheltering in place during COVID, and Americans’ purported responsibility for Amazon rainforest deforestation – featuring Leonardo DiCaprio (because why not).
And while lavish funding by climate moralists may seem daunting, there is a reason for good hope. As I have already noted, the tides have shifted against Climate Crisis/Global Warming hysteria. I believe it will join all the other apocalypse agents sooner rather than later.
This trend aligns with another: Massive layoffs in the media. When your analysis is bought and paid for by another entity, your credibility comes into question, and people stop going to you for information.
The likely outcome, an “extinction level event”, is a worry for The New Yorker (hardly a bastion of conservative thinking.)
A report that tracked layoffs in the industry in 2023 recorded twenty-six hundred and eighty-one in broadcast, print, and digital news media. NBC News, Vox Media, Vice News, Business Insider, Spotify, theSkimm, FiveThirtyEight, The Athletic, and Condé Nast—the publisher of The New Yorker—all made significant layoffs. BuzzFeed News closed, as did Gawker.
The Washington Post, which lost about a hundred million dollars last year, offered buyouts to two hundred and forty employees. In just the first month of 2024, Condé Nast laid off a significant number of Pitchfork’s staff and folded the outlet into GQ; the Los Angeles Times laid off at least a hundred and fifteen workers (their union called it “the big one”); Time cut fifteen per cent of its union-represented editorial staff; the Wall Street Journal slashed positions at its D.C. bureau; and Sports Illustrated, which had been weathering a scandal for publishing A.I.-generated stories, laid off much of its staff as well.
One journalist recently cancelled a networking phone call with me, writing, “I’ve decided to officially take my career in a different direction.” There wasn’t much I could say to counter that conclusion; it was perfectly logical.
Trust in the press has reached a low not seen since 2016. As more information, such as the funding by agenda-driven groups, leaks out….expect the trust level to hit Mariana Trench depths by the end of 2024.
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Today’s “news,”
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Good riddance. If they were doing actual journalism that’d be one thing, but they chose to be propagandists.
All these laid-off bullshit artists can just “learn to code.”
When Israel gets nuked along with Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Lebanon the manmade change will be true.
When you have to “instruct” the journalists on what to say, can it be called “reporting” anymore?
Journalism majors are already at the dead bottom of the academic ladder, along with sociology, PoliSci, gender/race studies etc., and need constant “fortification” about what to believe, since they just rote repeat the talking points on the news and look even more foolish and robotic.
Indoctrination of alleged reporters with falsities and agitprop is no way to run a news medium.
The only extinction event I want to see is for the Marxist infiltration of our and other societies, restoring the free market and free thinking.
We just need to call them for what they are: Paid Info-mmercials. They are trying sell you a product that you don’t need at a price you can’t afford. And by funding big education, they are just manufacturing talking heads to spin the product so that you will fall for it.
Journalists are excelling in marketing 101 – they are just selling the “sizzle.” Edward Bernays is smiling!
If the Media is facing financial difficulties now, when the economy is reasonably good, what is going to happen when there is a deep recession or a big credit event? It really could be an extinction level event.
The “Year without a summer” in 1816 resulting from the 1815 eruption of Mt. Tambora is an interesting subject to ponder. Interestingly, many local farmers believe that the past year’s wildfire smoke cover protected their crops from the sun during 1 1/2 months without rain during the growing season. Magoo Biden is our Savior 😉
One enormous hole in the “climate crisis” argument is the fact that the people of our ruling class continue to live as they always have. It’s not just that they’re hypocrites; there’s nothing new about that. It’s that they’re not behaving as though they believe we’re in a crisis. Their credibility suffers as a result.
That is the same way we knew that “covid” was a complete fabrication. If it had been real, the elitists would have been the first ones to cower in their bunkers and not emerge for at least a decade.
The legacy media would collapse overnight if group photos of their staff were publicly broadcast.
My old hometown paper, the Orange County Register, used to be a conservative/libertarian publication. But it’s been bought and sold and gone broke a few times now, and a few years ago they announced they were all in on man made climate change. Virtually every article that has anything related to weather includes little toss-ins like “fueled by climate change”, “climate change is causing…”, “that’s climate change”, etc. These statements are just added in to what purports to be a news story, reinforcing The Narrative™ almost subliminally. Yet just two days ago, they ran an article titled “ Why California can’t predict winter weather”. So we’re supposed to accept that The Science™ can predict global climate out decades but they can’t predict next week’s weather. Not. Buying. It.
The restrictions on Natural Gas development and export have raised the cost of Natural Gas to the point where most countries no longer produce Nitrogen Fertilizer with it. The price of fertilizer had doubled or even quadrupled in Asia and Africa. NetZero Starvation is coming. And, they will blame if on Climate Change.
The only hope for many starving nations is that the increase in CO2 levels works as a natural fertilizer for their plants.
Isn’t it amazing. Until the recent pedophile administration’s war on natural gas, it was essentially free as a waste product of our petroleum extraction. Natural gas cost literally the cost of maintaining the pipelines until the eco-fascists got involved.
Natural gas production has gone up year on year
Journalists helped environmentalist activists and lawyers (RFK Jr.) kill hundreds of thousands of blue collar jobs. Timber, steel, mining etc., and now they’re squeaking like trapped rats as their “industry” gets hollowed out by the dozens.
One hundred here, twenty five there. It may add up to 1200 jobs!
its an industry to change america …fundamentally
so when the gop keeps caving to lefty agenda
you get americas failures piling up
We are expecting too much of our current generation of journalists. No American even pretends to believe that highly-paid Hollywood actors write their own lines; why do we assume their hometown wannabe analogs do?
Yes, it’s a scam and a well-funded scam at that. Unfortunately you can’t find anyone that will tell the truth, even for money.
This just shows again what the real problem is – the Left has essentially all the money.
Anthropogenic Climate Change is the current media’s big lie. They have been pushing the Overton window for two decades because they see this as the best way to control populations by using weather which can be scary. NPR started using the narrative that every weather event is caused by Climate Change even when it’s just normal weather. All of the dissenting scientists are silenced and called fossil fuel shills…. when it’s the left that is actually pushing an agenda. The late great Rush Limbaugh once said the Marxists of the 1960’s had become watermelons. Green on the outside but still red inside.
AP, the best “journalists” that money can buy.