For the Associated Press, once a venerable wire service, the decline into irrelevancy has been a slow but steady slog decades in the making. But if you want the CliffsNotes version of how to destroy a 178-year-old news titan in one easy step, here’s a quote from today’s woke AP orbit that will serve nicely.
“When covering controversial or sensitive issues, it’s standard journalism practice to seek out opposing views to provide ‘balance’ to a story,” a style guide produced by NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists states. “However, there are times when ‘balance’ doesn’t further understanding of the issues or the story.”
The scare quotes around the word balance convey how infinitely removed strident progressive activism is from professional journalism. As Liberty Nation News noted in 2022, Jeff McMillan, the member of the AP’s official stylebook team who authored a bizarre AP “Explainer” article defending Drag Queen Story Hour events for children, sat on the board of directors for NLGJA.
After the Binge
America’s dominant media nexus lies shattered today at the feet of President-Elect Donald Trump. But it is not Trump who smashed it into atoms. That was the work of a clear majority of the American people who not only rejected but completely tuned out dire big-box news warnings that the election of Trump would spell “the end of democracy.” Trump went on to win the popular vote outright, leaving leading media brands to grapple with their undeniable unimportance.
Examples of unalloyed AP bias against Trump abound. On September 8, an AP headline read: “Trump threatens to jail adversaries in escalating rhetoric ahead of pivotal debate.” The article text was typical of the Associated Press template: Pepper Trump with negative descriptors throughout.
The supposedly straight news piece refers to Trump as leaning into “familiar grievances,” “maligning” the Democrat-led House January 6 Committee, and utilizing “dark and ominous language” in denouncing Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris at a campaign rally.
None of this loaded jargon resonated with the American people. And now, the reckoning is about to hit AP. The wire service on Nov. 18 announced “it would begin offering buyouts and lay off selected employees, part of a plan to reduce the news outlet’s staff by about 8% and accelerate a transition to a digital-first organization.”
“The move is part of what is expected to be a dispiriting end-of-year period in the news industry, which is beset by business woes that go back years. The end of a busy presidential-election cycle was also expected to accelerate reorganization plans,” the gloom-filled second paragraph reads.
It indeed has been a disastrous year for AP, which is dependent on newspapers and other media outfits purchasing its service. Major newspaper chains Gannett and McClatchy, which together own more than 230 news outlets, both terminated their contracts with the Associated Press in 2024. Gannett’s relationship with AP had lasted more than a century.
The two formerly impressive newspaper chains have themselves fallen on hard times. “Gannett’s workforce shrank 47% between 2020 and 2023 because of layoffs and attrition, according to the NewsGuild,” AP reported in March. “The company also hasn’t earned a full-year profit since 2018, according to data provided by FactSet. Since then, it has lost $1.03 billion.”
McClatchy, meanwhile, spiraled into bankruptcy auction in 2020, where it was purchased by a hedge fund and cut to the bone. AP was among the trimmed fat to fall onto an empty newsroom floor.
AP Sells Out, But That Won’t Move Product
As with so many struggling newspapers, the beleaguered wire service is searching for a sugar daddy to fill the growing revenue gaps. “The AP has diversified its revenue stream in recent years, including accepting philanthropic funding, but is still hurt by the news industry’s overall woes,” the Nov. 18 article relates.
This may provide a quick infusion of desperately needed immediate funding, but it only further corrodes whatever remains of the wire service’s diminished reputation.
In December 2023, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation bestowed a $1,829,815 grant on the Associated Press “to deepen AP’s reporting on Africa, and to amplify the work of scientists and experts innovating in the areas of global health and development.”
There used to be a word for this in the music record industry: payola.
The Associated Press pitches itself to potential customers as a journalism dynamo able to span the globe. But how worthwhile is that reporting when it has been purchased in advance by those making the news? Bill Gates is heavily involved in vaccine development and other controversial health initiatives in Africa. AP cannot effectively cover “global health and development” in Africa without reporting on Bill Gates – who gave them $1.8 million.
AP has similarly compromised itself with another leading globalist entity. The Rockefeller Foundation is featured among its “philanthropic supporters.” Global warming activist group Climate and Land Alliance is also a listed donor. AP is especially committed to that issue. It has a special “hub” covering climate change, featuring tabs such as “Indigenous Peoples And Climate” and “Climate Migration.”
This is how you make yourself irrelevant to tens of millions of Americans.
For AP, it ultimately comes down to a simple question: What are you offering that I can’t get somewhere else? For cash-strapped dominant media outlets already battered by the downfall of the establishment press, the answer is simple: nothing. They are all quite capable themselves of writing hysterical anti-Trump screeds dressed up as “news” and repeating statist progressive shibboleths.
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