How The Associated Press could admit to being financed by eco-extremist donors and yet still claim to be neutral when it comes to its climate change reporting defies common sense.
The AP website lists as one of its “current philanthropic supporters” the “KR Foundation,” which boasts of how it’s “[s]upporting a rapid phase-out of fossil fuels.” The organization, which is based in Denmark, is financing the equivalent of roughly $300,000 USD to AP spread out between the years 2022 and 2024 for its Global Scholars Network.
The Washington Free Beacon, which first broke the news, noted that despite AP’s false veneer of transparency, “the news outlet added the KR Foundation to its list of current philanthropic supporters only this month, according to a Washington Free Beacon review of the AP website.”
MRC Business revealed in a 2023 analysis how AP’s multimillion-dollar funding from leftist special interest groups had effectively made it a propaganda arm of the climate change lobby.
If KR’s climate alarmist goal wasn’t telling enough, KR is also specifically leading an effort to drive U.S. banks out of fossil fuels. It particularly bemoaned how the rise of the “anti-ESG” movement was allegedly causing “many financial institutions to backpedal on their climate ambitions.” How dare Americans not want gargantuan asset managers forcing companies to adopt woke, leftist corporate policies.
But that’s not all. Consider this eco-charged rant from KR on its website:
We aim to reduce both supply and demand for fossil fuels by supporting organizations that challenge the ongoing financing of fossil fuels, challenge the social and political influence of the fossil fuel industry, and by supporting the transition to a sustainable economic paradigm.
AP has the audacity to prop itself up as an “independent” outlet in the business of “unbiased news” read by reportedly four billion people each day. Completely pathetic. The Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics clearly states that journalists should “Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived," but apparently that cardinal rule was lost on AP leadership.
The news of AP’s source of climate change activist cash comes after MRC Business’s May 2023 study of 64 stories between Feb. 15, 2022, and Feb. 15, 2023, which exposed how AP’s leftist donors have impacted the slant in its coverage of the eco-boogeyman. After receiving an $8 million grant from a consortium of left-wing organizations obsessed with climate change, AP’s coverage morphed into a hodgepodge of mind-numbing alarmism.
The outlet featured headlines like “New abnormal: Climate disaster damage ‘down’ to $268 billion,” which it published Dec. 9, 2022 and peppered its work with climate ideology buzzwords. MRC Business tallied climate alarmist and ESG-related terms in accordance with how many times each term appeared across the articles researched.
The term “Climate Change" itself appeared a whopping 212 times. “Warming” and “Global Warming” appeared 140 times collectively. “Extreme(s)” emerged 32 times and “Disaster(s)” and “Climate Disaster” appeared a collective 30 times.
AP used a couple of other terms to frame its climate reporting in a way favorable to the left’s narrative: “death sentence,” “net zero,” and “zero.” As a bonus, Free Beacon even pointed out a November 2023 piece that reeked of KR Foundation’s extremist views: “How did humans get to the brink of crashing climate?”
AP continues to make it clear that it isn’t a news outlet in as much as it is a de facto mouthpiece for the humanity-hating, climate fanatic movement.
Conservatives are under attack. Contact the Associated Press at 212-621-1500 and demand it quit acting like a mouthpiece for its eco-extremist donors.
