2024-01-26 14:22:37
The Guardian: between grace and greed
The cream of media activism
The Firebreak*
Photo: Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash
My note: The Guardian is a major distributor of activist, if not overtly propagandist, articles; thus, Ms. Carey Gillam, who was for a long time the pen of the US Right to Know – megaphone and gun-tower for biobusinesses and predatory lawyers wanting to pick the pockets of Bayer/Monsanto, etc. – and is now rampant on The New Lede, there is his napkin ring. The Guardian is also a source for certain militant and/or lazy French media. Making the details known is almost a public health imperative.
The Firebreak recently published a memorial to traditional media, showing how the business model had changed, affecting the viability or objectivity of most major news organizations. One of the survival solutions was to transform the press groups into a kind of non-profit association, seeking donations to finance independent journalism.
In 2017, The Guardian created theguardian.org, a charitable wing to fund articles in The Guardian, modeled on NGO fundraising campaigns. Skeptics would say they are receiving donations in exchange for ink, which became evident following a public outcry when they requested and received a large donation from an animal rights-focused foundation, Open Philanthropy, in exchange multiple articles once morest breeding. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The Guardian has become an expert at selling its soul and its journalistic integrity to anyone who will write it a check. A quick glance at its website shows that 52 donations totaling at least $20,249,000 have been raised over the past five years. The average donation is around $400,000. Most of these donations were allocated to articles on the following themes:
Environmental justice and food security: $1,750,000;
Age of Extinction: $1,500,000;
Loss of biodiversity: $1,400,000;
Industrial breeding: $2,236,000;
Climate: $1,500,000;
Oceans and climate: $1,600,000;
Gun violence: $1,000,000.
Editor’s note: Since this article was published, The Guardian has removed the web page containing its funding. We therefore replaced the link with that of the Wayback Machine. While this is appalling behavior from a news organization that should be committed to transparency, given the nature of the Guardian’s policy, it is not a surprise.
Some of the foundations are seen as activist and view any grant to the Guardian as a way to advance their campaigns (such as the California Wellness Foundation). Some grants are of indefinite duration or imprecise. A curious case is that of the Leona and Harry Helmsley Charitable Trust (remember the queen of wickedness, abusive and tax evader, who left $12 million to her dog). This group gave the Guardian $1,500,000 for articles on non-communicable diseases, which I assume means tobacco, alcohol and processed foods.
But that’s only half the story, it seems. I found articles on the Guardian pages regarding Big Oil funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, which was not mentioned on their funding page, nor the contributions from the Ford Foundation and other groups, nor the whole of their Australian funding program…
It should be noted that this is not a handout kindly offered to a struggling media group striving to be a good social actor. Each donation follows an extensive application process during which The Guardian must demonstrate that it provides added value consistent with the foundation’s objectives. Getting a grant usually involves lots of congratulations from foundation board members.
How does it work? The foundation appears to suggest that Guardian editors apply for funding from theguardian.org to publish articles or carry out research:
The organization raises funds from individuals and foundations and directs them toward projects that advance public discourse and citizen participation on issues such as climate change, human rights, global development and inequality. The Guardian may apply for grants from theguardian.org for editorial projects that meet priorities set by theguardian.org’s board and are consistent with its charitable mission. This is why a number of the Guardian’s philanthropic partnerships are through grants to this organization.
But does that mean The Guardian can only cover stories for which funding is available? The Guardian receives a lot of money from foundations linked to biodiversity loss and climate change, which may explain why these topics dominate the news. He received no money to spill ink on the mining or chemical industries, so these issues appear to have been given a free pass.
Transparency issues also arise. The Guardian claimed in a large graphic that the Society for Environmental Journalists has paid out $680,000 since 2017. This made me raise an eyebrow, because the last time I attended an SEJ event, everyone paid for his own coffee. Elsewhere, hidden in unclear text, they acknowledged that this contribution came from the Fund for Environmental Journalism and that these costs were in fact covered by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
I am dizzy.
The best I can conclude is that the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation gave more than $110,000 a year to environmental journalists to write articles that The Guardian might then publish on their behalf. Assuming that $5,000 is a generous contribution for a freelancer, this would mean that at least 22 articles per year are sent to the Guardian without any cost or contribution from the media group (unless all the money is invested in a film by George Monbiot).
There is so much we don’t know here. Would an independent journalist be able to sell an idea to a foundation, get funding, then take it to the Guardian for a story? Could a foundation or trust itself reserve an item that would serve its interests? I noticed that the Extinction Rebellion movement quickly rose to prominence thanks to the active support and front-page coverage of the Guardian, whose journalist, George Monbiot, took a quasi-leadership role in this “ revolution” without a leader. Were these activities funded by foundations or was the journalist’s activism aimed in part at securing other funding opportunities?
How can these media mercenaries be considered journalists? How can The Guardian continue to be considered a journalistic entity when it only works on stories when activist interest groups hire (pay) it? And how does this affect their objectivity?
The Guardian says it is accepting the money so it can “continue to produce quality, independent journalism in the public interest”. I don’t really see how they can make this speech when $20 million earns interest.
This is not quality, independent journalism, and any reader who opens The Guardian is deluding themselves if they believe that.
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* Source : The Guardian: Between Grace and Greed – THE FIREBREAK
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#Guardian #grace #greed
