Mainstream media puts a price tag on its credibility
Will Coggin
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The public’s opinion of the news media has never been lower. According to a recent Gallup-Knight Foundation survey, half of Americans believe news outlets try to mislead, misinform, or persuade the public.
And yet the media is determined to find ways to sink even lower. The latest trend is that of media outlets literally selling out reporting to activist groups.
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Instead of relying on traditional advertising and subscriptions for financial viability, some media outlets have sought out new funding sources at the expense of their journalistic integrity. Increasingly, news stories are funded by advocacy groups.
In 2022, a climate change advocacy non-profit called the 1Earth Fund appeared as a funder of over one hundred articles in Georgia and North Carolina media outlets. These stories covered several different categories of the climate change movement, including solar power, electric vehicles, and inclement weather events. 1Earth Fund provided the Wilmington Star-News — owned by the same parent company as USA Today — a $65,000 grant. Subsequently, the newspaper proceeded to write more than 60 climate-related articles.
Wilmington Star News isn’t the only newspaper that is “supported” by the 1Earth Fund. Sponsored article messages appeared on more than 22 Raleigh News and Observer articles, 19 Atlanta Journal-Constitution articles, and 42 Winston-Salem Journal pieces since the beginning of 2022.
The Guardian is another outlet that has embraced this questionable form of “journalism.”
A group called the Open Philanthropy Project has also jumped into the sponsorship game, too, giving The Guardian more than $860,000 to write articles attacking livestock farms and meat production. This makes sense when you consider the Open Philanthropy Project also funds anti-meat vegan advocacy groups.
Another Guardian article, this one about lab-grown meat, contained a small disclaimer that it was “supported by 11th Hour Project,” an environmental campaign funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. And the article funded by the 11th Hour Project coincidentally (or not) contains claims about how natural meat is supposedly bad for the environment.
As you would expect, the stories bought and paid for by these advocacy groups present one side of the argument. Objectivity takes a back seat, despite the news outlets’ insistence that they retain standards and objectivity.
This new scheme is part of a movement that has been building for quite some time in the news industry. Readers are no longer providing the revenue needed, and news outlets are exploring new sponsored content avenues that go well beyond traditional ads.
Newspapers have long taken ads. When something says “paid advertisement” or “sponsored by Company X,” it’s pretty easy to understand what’s going on. But sponsorship of reporting is different. It’s framed as objective reporting, yet the sponsors clearly have an agenda.
What’s the purpose of these sponsored articles? There’s an old saying that the news can’t tell you what to think, but it can control what you think about. Environmental activists want to make or keep people concerned about climate change, and so they fund a wave of reporting that otherwise wouldn’t exist. It’s an artificial echo chamber designed to subtly influence public opinion.
Part of the purpose may also be financial. The founder of the 1Earth Fund, for example, is also the chairman of a company that has made investments in solar energy.
Journalism Funding Partners, a group that facilitates “grants” to newsrooms, reports that between 2020 and 2021, funding of local newsrooms under its banner quadrupled to nearly $1 million. The organization expected to be funding between 15 and 20 climate reporters alone by the end of last year.
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Under the old model of mass subscriptions, newspapers would have to write stories people wanted to read. Now, they cater to whatever wealthy sponsors want to push. Whatever one thinks of this arrangement, it’s hard to argue the public is being better served. The way to change this is to support news media that are truly independent. Unless the incentives change, expect to see more sponsored journalism.
Will Coggin is managing director of ActivistFacts.com, which tracks and profiles activist groups. It is a project of the nonprofit Center for Organizational Research and Education.