AP’s Shift to the Left Coincides With Support From Leftist Donors

Much has been made of the Associated Press getting the boot from the White House. It’s even sparked a protracted legal battle between AP and the Trump administration.

The AP’s sudden difficulty getting access to the president has been a long time coming as the news organization has drifted strongly to the left in recent years.

What’s equally important to note is the recent shift in AP’s funding model, which increasingly relies on donations from, in many cases, far-left advocacy organizations.

Take for instance, a recent AP story on the budget reconciliation bill making its way through Congress and the inclusion of a $5 billion school voucher program.

The story is framed with the assumption that school choice policies are harmful.

The AP reporter called the inclusion of school choice policies in the bill an “unprecedented effort to use public money to pay for private education” and presented a somewhat lopsided case why choice in general is bad.

One of the sources of commentary criticizing the bill in the piece is Sasha Pudelski, advocacy director for the School Superintendents Association, a government employee union, and co-chair of NoVouchers.org.

This kind of subtle bias isn’t surprising.

What’s curious is a footnote at the bottom of the article: “The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.”

If you click on the link that leads to AP’s list of supporters, you’ll find that their “funded coverage areas” receive money from almost entirely left-leaning or outright leftist organizations.

The Daily Signal contacted AP about this but they did not respond.

AP isn’t just drifting to the left, they are now funding their journalism with outright advocacy groups. That’s certainly their prerogative, but it hardly suggests they are strictly objective or unbiased in their reporting.

In February, the Wall Street Journal published an editorial, “Following the Money, the Associated Press Moves Left.” The author, Ira Stoll, noted how in an AP investigation into how tech companies have “supported Israel’s wars,” there was a disclaimer at the bottom.

“The Associated Press receives financial assistance from the Omidyar Network.”

The Omidyar Network is an investment firm created by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, who has funded many left-wing and anti-Israel causes.

Stoll noted, as I explained above, how this sort of funding is a departure from how AP received funding in the past.

“The news-gathering cooperative was once funded largely by dues from member newspapers,” Stoll wrote. “Now it increasingly relies on handouts from left-leaning charities. Yet it insists its journalism is ‘independent’ and ‘nonpartisan.’”

As Stoll argued, AP’s reporting certainly seems to be in line with the desires of its financial backers.

“The Omidyar Network’s grant to the AP is ostensibly to expand coverage of artificial intelligence, but somehow the funds paid for reporters to scrutinize Microsoft’s and Google’s use by the Israeli government,” he wrote. “The AP had a hard-earned reputation for nonpartisanship. It’s sad to see that reputation rented to Omidyar and ruined for what appears to be a quarter-million-dollar grant.”

According to Stoll, AP denied being influenced by the funding and said in a statement that, “each foundation goes through a thorough standards review to ensure its commitment to editorial independence” and that “AP retains complete editorial control over its journalism.”

Others have reported on the surge in AP funding from advocacy groups too.

For instance, Dan Gainor at the New York Post covered AP’s support coming from climate change activist groups. In 2022 it received $8 million from a group of philanthropy organizations dedicated to climate activism.

“The five climate partners include left-wing groups such as the Rockefeller Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation and Quadrivium,” Gainor wrote. “Walton and Quadrivium both fund the radical, eco-leftist Environmental Defense Fund. The pressure group pushes everything from massive pollution regulations to Biden’s Build Back Better plan, which it calls ‘a long-overdue step to address environmental injustice.’”

That’s not all.

According to a Washington Free Beacon report in early 2024, AP received a substantial amount of money from the Danish KR Foundation, which seeks a “rapid phase-out of fossil fuels,” and wants to transform journalists into “community activists on climate change.”

The Free Beacon found that KR Foundation “gave the equivalent of $300,000, to the Associated Press in December 2022, according to the charity’s annual report.”

In fairness, AP posted this donor information right on their website. It was attached to the interesting headline, “Climate grant illustrates growth in philanthropy-funded news.”

Again, it’s certainly AP’s right to have this as a business model. But if they have entire branches of their reporting operation funded by left-leaning groups, it does make one question whether this is journalism or just paid for advocacy.