Another trip down the USAID money trail reveals astonishingly intimate big-box media ties to a global progressive establishment enterprise funded by taxpayer dollars. It raises the question: How can active participants in a politically biased Swamp spending spree be trusted to objectively “report” on the Department of Government Efficiency’s efforts to turn the cash spigot off?
Here’s a devastating quote that should tell you all you need to know:
The International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) “has supported [the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project] as a partner on grants from the [George Soros] Open Society Foundations and the US Agency for International Development [USAID] that focus on investigative reporting, technology development, and regional capacity building."
This comes directly from the website of an organization that boasts of its multiple “partner networks” spanning the globe. “We are proud to be the premier journalism ‘network of networks,’” ICFJ declares. How ominous does that sound? This is what USAID and the US State Department have helped build.
Biden Media Buys?
“The Biden State Department initiated $19.1 million worth of new grants to nonprofits using the key words ‘journalist’ or ‘journalism,’” Parker Thayer at the Capital Research Center reported on Feb. 13. “A total of $6.2 million was awarded to the International Center for Journalists for a wide variety of programs. One $986,500 grant went toward combating ‘technology-facilitated gender-based violence’ against female reporters in India and Nepal.”
We’ll get to more flagrant examples of bias below. First, let’s see who joined USAID in propping up this Soros-affiliated global journalism entity.
NBC News Senior Vice President of Politics Carrie Budoff Brown chairs the Board of Directors for ICFJ. Politico's senior managing editor, Sudeep Reddy, is a board member.
A further glance at the board finds executives from the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Google, Hearst Newspapers, Meta (parent company of Facebook), The New York Times, and media conglomerate Scripps Howard.
A list of 2024 “Friends and Supporters” of ICFJ includes the above media names along with CBS News, CNN, Dow Jones/News Corp (Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal), and the Gannett Foundation (owners of USA Today and more than 200 US publications).
The (Bill) Gates Foundation is a top-tier donor. USAID and the US State Department are, of course, listed as supporting government agencies.
Cocktails Courtesy of Rupert Murdoch
Dow Jones/News Corp has been a repeat donor to ICFJ since at least 2018, the earliest year to have a detailed list on the group’s website. Why is Rupert Murdoch, the man who owns Dow Jones/News Corp and whose family controls Fox News, financially supporting the following in conjunction with Bill Gates, George Soros, and USAID?
“[President Donald] Trump has unleashed the worst hatred and has given force to racism and xenophobia,” Mexican reporter Carmen Aristegui stated in her address to the ICFJ as she accepted its 2016 Knight International Journalism Award. “He has opened the door to the worst demons. That is why the world is so frightened, and why we must use the tools of democracy and human rights to face the time that is approaching.”
Things haven’t gotten any better since then.
Look how cozy it all is. NBC News star anchor Kristen Welker hosted ICFJ’s 2024 awards gala. Mary Fitzgerald, director of Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and Dickens Olewe, program officer at the Gates Foundation, served as judges in selecting the awards alongside personnel from CBS News, CNN, The Miami Herald, the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth, Politico CEO Goli Sheikholeslami, and Reuters Executive Editor Simon Robinson.
Dow Jones/News Corp served as the official “Cocktail Reception Sponsor” for the evening. You can’t make this stuff up.
It’s a tight-knit network, and it’s been running together for years. In 2017, ICFJ Vice President of Programs Patrick Butler served as official “rapporteur” – designated reporter – for a United Nations Alliance of Civilizations Symposium on “Hate Speech against Migrants and Refugees in the Media.” Soros agent Giulia Lagana, senior policy analyst of European Union Migration and Asylum Policies at the Open Society European Policy Institute, sat on the panel.
The topic under discussion? “Media and the Rise of Populism.”
“We live in a post-truth world,” Lagana asserted. “We live in a world where 55% of the British population think that the government is lying to them about the number of migrants in the country.”
Imagine faithfully “reporting” such nonsense in your official UN-appointed role. It makes a fine metaphor for what the dominant US media outlets financially backing ICFJ do every day.
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