Although the Golden Globes hosts were uninterested in pot-shots against the Trump administration this year, the group behind the Globes did announce $2 million in giveaways to the press.
“The freedom of expression that makes possible your work as creators and our work as journalists is under siege, which is why our mission to establish cultural ties has never been more important,” Hollywood Foreign Press Association President Meher Tatna said during the Jan. 6, Golden Globes broadcast. According to Tatna, the choice to donate to journalism groups was unanimous among HFPA members.
The HFPA selected two recipients for $1 million grants: the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and InsideClimate News (ICN). ICN is a liberal journalism group focused entirely on pushing an environmental and climate agenda.
When she mentioned ICN Tatna said it “covers the defining global issue of our time.”
ICN is a non-profit that generates biased, agenda-driven news about climate change. It is published by public relations professional David Sassoon, who wrote in 2007, that the world was in the “final decades of the fossil fuel era and witnessing the last stand of the rich and powerful owners of a dying economic system.” He was already “doing what I can to help usher in the clean energy economy,” and you can bet that continued with his work at ICN.
The non-profit was also at the heart of legal attacks on ExxonMobil and joined the left-wing chorus in 2016, against Trump’s potential choice to head the EPA. It rejoiced when Rhode Island became the first state to sue oil companies over climate change.
Donors to ICN included liberal foundations The Rockefeller Brothers Fund (through third parties Lost Light Preservation Projects and Public Interest Projects), the Grantham Foundation, Marisla Foundation and Park Foundation.
In 2018, the HFPA also donated to journalism with $1 million grants to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists.
