The progressive Knight Foundation (KF) is providing training to journalists ahead of the 2024 general election on election related legal issues. KF announced in July that the organization would provide nearly $7 million for election news coverage “primarily in swing states.” It will also provide journalists with “explainers and training …from The Associated Press.” Resources can be found at the Knight Election Hub.
“One local news organization in each swing state will also receive a grant to serve as an ‘anchor,’ bolstering the distribution of election-related coverage with editorial partners in their state.” So far, most of KF’s grants in Arizona have gone to Arizona State University.
KF is putting on the training with the American Bar Association’s Task Force for American Democracy. The speakers for the first training session are mostly progressive activists in the area of law and elections. Heather Gerken (pictured above, left), dean of Yale Law School, clerked for former leftist Supreme Court Justice David Souter and worked as a senior advisor to President Barack Obama and on his reelection team. She writes extensively about democracy, and another article of hers was titled “Real State Power Means Getting in the Obama Care Game.”
Ben Ginsberg (pictured above, right) of the Hoover Institution, who has represented Republican political candidates, also has progressive leanings. He wrote an article for The Washington Post in 2020 criticizing Donald Trump for stating there was election fraud, and a follow-up piece shortly after stating that election fraud concerns were destroying the Republican Party. He co-chaired the Presidential Commission on Election Administration under Obama and testified before the Democrats’ J6 committee.
Bob Bauer (pictured above, middle) of New York University Law’s Legislative and Regulatory Process Clinic served as a senior advisor to Joe Biden, who he helped prepare to debate Trump, and White House counsel and campaign counsel to Obama, as well as co-chairing the Presidential Commission on Election Administration under Obama. He also served as general counsel to the Democratic National Committee.
David Becker of The Center for Election Innovation & Research co-authored a book with journalist Major Garrett titled The Big Truth, which argued that the 2020 election was the most secure in American history. He provides pro bono legal assistance to election officials who receive threats.
The seminar will be moderated by Poppy Harlow and Tracie Potts. Harlow co-hosted CNN This Morning with Don Lemon and Kaitlan Collins until recently. Potts is the executive director of the Eisenhower Institute. The Eisenhower Institute’s goals include promoting democracy, diversity, and inclusion. Potts stated on her website that she doesn’t inject her opinion into her journalism, but has written articles about COVID-19, Obamacare, and racism that reveal a partisan bent. Her likes on LinkedIn include progressive media figures Mike Brezinski and Arianna Huffington.
KF is the 49th largest foundation in the world, and “has consistently been the largest investor in journalism in the country.” Together with the MacArthur Foundation, KF is spending more than $500 million over the next five years on an initiative called Press Foward to fund local journalism.
MacArthur Foundation president John Palfrey said in April that the organization “will continue to support work that is fostering equity and inclusion.” Discussing the news media, he said, “There are many actors who seek to undermine American democracy, efforts to achieve racial equity, and work to address climate change.” Partners in the Press Forward venture include Democracy Fund, which “works with community organizations and leaders to build a free, fair, and equitable election system that centers racial justice.”
Previous projects of KF include a joint venture with Newsguard launching a “VaxFacts Campaign to Counter Hoaxes About COVID-19 Vaccines and Other Healthcare Misinformation.” It included a HealthGuard browser extension which rated websites on how allegedly “trustworthy” they were.
KF funds Newsguard, which provides a browser extension that scores news publishers on a scale of 0-100 based on criteria such as posting false or misleading content.
The browser extension is included by default in the mobile version of Edge. Newsguard partnered with the American Federation of Teachers to set up classrooms and libraries with the NewsGuard browser extension installed on their computers.
The Daily Wire, The Federalist, and the state of Texas sued the U.S. Department of State arguing that it does not have the authority to give a $25,000 grant to tools like NewsGuard that could “render disfavored press outlets unprofitable.” The case is proceeding, with the trial court judge rejecting the Biden administration’s motion to dismiss. House Republicans opened a probe into Newsguard in June.
The Capital Research Center investigated Newsguard and labeled it “just another left-wing propaganda outlet pretending to be arbiters of truth.” They found that “[o]n average, NewsGuard ranks left-leaning news sites 27 points higher than right-leaning news outlets.” Newsguard ranked conservative sites like The Federalist and Newsmax in its top 10 sites spreading misinformation.
X owner Elon Musk called for Newsguard to be disbanded last fall. Mike Benz, Executive Director of Foundation for Freedom Online, said NewsGuard has put news sites out of operability by placing them on a Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center blacklist.
PragerU, a conservative education organization, started a petition “to expose NewsGuard and its cronies for suppressing free speech” after NewsGuards’ poor rating of its site — which it highlights is not even a news site — contributes to damaging its reputation and costs it “hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of dollars.” The Tennessee Star Report, one of the sites within The Star News Network, has been throttled since 2018 due to “inaccurate characterizations of our solid, fact-based reporting,” publisher Michael Leahy posted on X.
Mike Davis, Founder and President of Article III Project, told The Arizona Sun Times, “The Knight Foundation’s new training program seems poised to reinforce the status quo rather than challenge it in a time where journalists are increasingly falling for leftist schemes. This initiative will push the same dangerous viewpoints that undercut our foundational principles, especially considering its ties to Newsguard, a program that does as much damage to free speech as anything online. It’s unlikely that these efforts will lead to meaningful change or truly address our immediate issues at hand.”
Other training KF offers to journalists includes Sunlight Search, which instructs them on how to conduct in-depth investigations on candidates, and using OpenSecrets to track the funding behind candidates and causes.
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Rachel Alexander is a reporter at The Arizona Sun Times and The Star News Network. Follow Rachel on X / Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Heather Gerkin” by Yale Law School; “Bob Bauer by NYU; and “Ben Ginsberg” is by Hoover Institute.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to include comment from Mike Davis.
