Biden Admin Taps Liberal Journalism Institute To Teach Reporters How To Be ‘Balanced and Bias-Free’

The Biden administration has chosen a liberal journalism institute, which had previously produced a “blacklist” of conservative entities, to train reporters on how to produce “unbiased and balanced” news.

The Poynter Institute conducted the training program with reporters as part of a contract with the US Agency for Global Media, according to a federal spending database. The agency, which oversees Voice of America and other government news outlets, paid Poynter $23,500 for the program that lasted until March 31.

However, the agency may need training itself, as Republicans have accused it of distorting stories about Iran and engaging in partisan advocacy favouring the current President, Joe Biden.

Nevertheless, Poynter might not have been the best option to teach reporters about unbiased and balanced reporting. While the organization portrays itself as “non-partisan”, its largest donors are wealthy Democratic donors, including Pierre Omidyar, Craig Newmark, Bill Gates, LGBT activist Tim Gill (whose spouse is Biden’s ambassador to Switzerland), and George Soros.

Furthermore, Poynter released a “blacklist” of conservative news organizations, such as the Washington Free Beacon, in 2019, which it labeled “unreliable.” The list called “UnNews” was later retracted due to severe criticism. PolitiFact, Poynter’s fact-checking site, frequently exhibits a pro-liberal and anti-conservative leaning. A Free Beacon analysis revealed that, of the fact-checks performed by PolitiFact on politicians, 62 out of 86 were aimed at Republicans. Moreover, the site has retracted a multitude of fact-checks, such as one in 2020 claiming that the coronavirus unleashed from a lab leak in Wuhan, China, was “inaccurate and ridiculous”.

In September 2020, Poynter executive Kelly McBride was a part of a tabletop exercise conducted by the liberal Aspen Institute to plan how journalists, social media executives, and others would handle hypothetical “hack and dump” situations with First Son Hunter Biden’s emails. The working group instructed participants to scrutinize any documents related to Biden with suspicion, and to consult with other news organizations and government officials before publishing stories based on the information.

Poynter seemed to follow the advice given, applauding news organizations for disregarding emails from Biden’s abandoned laptop that appeared in October 2020. One Poynter author bragged, “Hardly any media outlets, except for conservative ones, are giving the story any credence at all,”. McBride, a working group participant, is the head of Poynter’s Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership; Newmark, a major donor to Joe Biden, contributed $5 million to Poynter and millions more to the Aspen Institute.

The US government’s contract with Poynter comes at a time when there is greater scrutiny over its expanding network of think tanks and watchdog groups, which seek to track disinformation. Many organizations in the network receive federal funds and have a track record of labeling conservative views as misinformation.

The State Department has authorized payments for organizations such as the Global Disinformation Index, which advised firms to withdraw advertising from conservative sites according to a report by the Washington Examiner.

These organizations, including Poynter, have also urged social media companies to crack down on disinformation, raising the possibility that this may lead to censorship of unpopular opinions. This pressure campaign has been lucrative for Poynter, which urged Facebook to permanently ban former President Donald Trump in 2021 over his comments about the 2020 election.

Last year, Poynter requested that YouTube increase its moderation of misinformation, alleging that the platform is being “weaponized by deceitful actors to manipulate and exploit others”. In response, YouTube and its parent company Google provided a $13.2 million grant to the International Fact-Checking Network of Poynter to aid users in recognizing misinformation.

The International Fact-Checking Network, which has received funding from the State Department, accomplished a similar feat with Facebook. After offering to “interact with you about how your editors could spot and debunk fake claims,” Facebook joined with the Network and Politifact to offer misinformation analysis. Facebook now heavily relies on PolitiFact, a Poynter subsidiary, to fact-check news stories on its site.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media had hired Poynter previously to train reporters, paying the company $20,100 in July 2021 to conduct four balanced and unbiased training sessions. The State Department has paid Poynter $360,000 over the years to train journalists in Japan, Thailand, Turkey, and India.

Both Poynter and the U.S. Agency for Global Media have so far declined to comment.