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Ok, I am about to go off on rich donors who fund media and how they kinda hide it and why you should know. For four years, I have been a lone voice in my circles asking if all the big tech money and politically motivated donors are really a good thing for journalism.
Last night a reputable news nonprofit emailed me re: a correction in our year-old Index of who funds emerging nonprofits. So glad they did as I had the wrong link. So I spent two hours going through their funders to get the entry right. I've spent 4 yrs @Harvard researching this.
When Mercers or Koch fund media, everyone in my feed freaks out. So why aren't we more up in arms with the following? Isn't it the mechanism we should worry about unrelated to donors? Here is where I find issues, in no specific order:
Pierre Omidyar of eBay funds journalism. It never says his name but rather Democracy Fund or Luminate. Laurene Powell Jobs is Emerson Collective. George Soros funds Open Society Foundation, Open Society Institute, The Foundation to Promote Open Society. Some list all 3 as donors.
Google and Facebook donate under their names (Google News Initiative and Facebook Journalism Project) but they ALSO fund under a myriad of vehicles like Report for America, American Journalism Project, Lenfest Institute collaborations, Solutions Journalism, and more.
You may think, "isn't this great? Aren't these great funders? Isn't this good for journalism?" Well, sort of. Many are aligned with one party and also work together often to reshape our media landscape. Fine if you are a democrat but it does create mistrust in the system.
Why? Because many donors use names like Yellow Chair which you have to dig to find out is David Filo, cofounder of Yahoo. Or Omidyar example or Open Society. Much easier for us to know the buck stops at the Arnolds or Craig Newmark who use their names.
Here is where it can get super hard to track: Newsmatch is this great matching program for donation drives but Newsmatch is the same group discussed listed above thus far. Add in Reid Hoffman, cofounder of LinkedIn who also now funds lots of disinformation research and news orgs.
American Journalism Project (funded by most of those listed above) is now giving $1M plus to small nonprofit news to build tech and revenue plays in close partnership with a Google effort called News414.
News414 is a Google News Initiative project that uses text messages, social media, events, and other tools to provide critical information to underserved audiences. These are all great ideas! But if we are trying to build trust in news and journalism, we must know who funds.
It has taken me years to be able to explain this to you. I know it is not popular that I keep pressing these very generous donors and programs to be more transparent but there is something uncomfortable about it. Google and Facebook refuse to pay for news and instead donate.
By donating, they can control how the money is spent and it feels like they get their cake and eat it too. It is also weird how there is now this club of uber-wealthy tech bros funding media together. Clubs in journalism-- not good. Where it really starts to get biased is when...
the same group of funders and platforms fund these efforts: Votebeat, ProPublica's Electionland, Final Draft. Now these funded efforts are now listed as donors of the news orgs as well. It is circular.
It would be easier if there was a line item that said Google gave this. Facebook gave this. Soros gave this. Omidyar gave this. Hoffman gave this. Newmark gave this rather than this whole shell game of nonprofits funding nonprofits. You get my point. Why does this annoy me?
Journalism is about shedding light on the situation. Offering context. I like knowing that the buck stops at John and Linda Henry at the Globe. I can hold them to account. I like knowing that Bezos owns the Post and if he doesn't cover Amazon unions, we can all rail on him.
After four years of studying this space, I prefer a for-profit as it allows newsrooms to stay independent. I also have deep deep concerns about how much Google and Facebook have infiltrated nonprofits, newsrooms, and gov't. I am thinking about how I can help. But for now..
I would like you to have this thinking from me. If even a few of you have it, maybe we can start to solve it. I will add that Knight Foundation is also too cozy with them all. There. I have said it. You can't freak out about GOP funders when the above system is also taking hold.
Finally, I cannot believe Canada is allowing a new RJO status for nonprofit news (likely encouraged by Facebook and Google) where foreign funding can funnel unlimited amounts into Canadian newsrooms that have Registered Journalism Organization status. How is this a good idea?
Remember... most donors don't use their real names and many community foundations and collectives like Solutions Journalism, American Journalism Project, Tides Foundation and Report for America are funded by like-minded clubs. Maybe I am the only one who sees the hypocrisy.
For those new to my work, here are my indexes on who owns and funds the US and Canadian media. Apologies to those of you who have seen this 1000x. Emerging nonprofits in US (now over 300) https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-emerging-nonprofit-media-and-donors
Mainstream Media Ownership in US. (160) https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/index-us-mainstream-media-ownership
Mainstream and Nonprofit News Funding and Ownership in Canada (125) https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/futureofmedia/canadian-media-ownership
