USAID Supports 6000 Journalists, 700 Newsrooms, 300 ‘Civil Society Groups’ Worldwide.

February 6, 2025 — bunkerville

If one concedes that the intention of USAID is more than former Under Secretary Nuland handing out bread in Ukraine to save the starving, and more a front for the CIA, one will understand the enormity of the following story. We read that Politico, Bill Kristol and soon to be revealed many other media types are on the payroll of USAID. They would prefer to say they are receiving “Grants.” Now, buried in the Columbia Journalism Review, we find that was just the beginning of the revelation.

After a long winded diatribe of the nasty effects that Musk and Trump are unleashing on the world, we find buried in a story written by Jon Allsop. Here it is:

Columbia Journalism Review:

Journalists have been among those affected: according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the aid freeze appears to have put a hold on $268 million that was earmarked to fund “independent media and the free flow of information” this year. In the recent past, USAID had boasted of supporting more than six thousand journalists, around seven hundred independent newsrooms, and nearly three hundred media-focused civil society groups in thirty or so countries—and yet, RSF notes, the full impact of the freeze is hard to measure, since many recipients are “hesitant to draw attention for fear of coming under political attacks.

News outlets that have been exiled from Iran and Belarus did tell RSF, under the cover of anonymity, that the freeze has forced them to take drastic measures just to survive, while DataCameroon, an investigative site, said that it had to suspend projects linked to journalist safety and upcoming elections in the country. RSF also noted the harsh effect on journalism in Ukraine, where 90 percent of news organizations rely on USAID funding, some very heavily; writing last week, Olga Rudenko, the editor in chief of the Kyiv Independent (which has received USAID grants in the past but doesn’t currently), claimed that the freeze “has caused harm to independent Ukrainian journalism on par with the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of Russia’s full-scale war,” and could soon surpass both in severity if not reversed.

There have been reports, too, of concrete effects on journalism from Moldova, Cambodia, and Myanmar; writing in the Indian publication Scroll, Nandita Haksar, the coauthor of a new book on the prominent Burmese newsroom Mizzima, reported that the freeze has plunged that outlet into uncertainty exactly four years on from a brutal coup that forced Myanmar’s independent media into exile or underground. 

USAID’s website has been offline since Saturday, but a surviving post under the agency’s profile on Medium, from around a year ago, is telling of its approach toward funding journalism overseas. The article states that “supporting independent media has been part of USAID’s democracy and governance assistance efforts since the 1980s” and that the US government “is now the largest public donor to independent media development globally,” above a graphic featuring a quote from President Biden describing press freedom as “the bedrock of democracy” and an outline of recent initiatives aimed not only at steering grants to journalists around the world, but also at helping them sustain themselves commercially and defending them against nuisance lawsuits.

By now you have the drift. The closing paragraph sums up this dirty business:

Ultimately, much of the work that USAID and other donors have supported would simply cease without it, in countries where commercial revenue streams for journalism are restricted by war, authoritarianism, or simple market forces.

Well worth reading the whole thing here.

Now the deep state responds. Rallies are being organized, and soon we shall see demonstrations everywhere. For USAID is the biggest rock to be turned over, and Musk will find all the bodies literally that have been buried. It must be stopped.

See Bunks earlier post for background.

USAID a Front for the CIA and Regime Change

Accused of being involved in regime changes, a front for CIA operatives. It is opined that they took their bag of tricks and turned it inward on Americans, funding NGO’s, and organizations such as the Tides Foundation that took it upon themselves to take out Trump.

 

The best of the swamp.

Posted in media. Tags: , , , , . 29 Comments »

Washington Post Lays Off Dozens, Cuts Will Be Deep as Liberal Media Falters

January 8, 2025 — bunkerville

It couldn’t happen to a better paper. The chickens are coming home to roost. Alternative news sources are the route people are taking, and the old war horses of Progressive nonsense is coming to an end. Will Lewis, the publisher of The Post, said in a meeting last year that in 2023, The Post lost $77 million and had suffered a falloff in its digital audience since 2020. The Post has been in turmoil for much of Mr. Lewis’s tenure, which began a year ago.

Apparently those who work there think the paper works for them. It was reported Ann Telnaes, the newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist, stepped down last week after the opinions section rejected a cartoon depicting Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and owner of The Post, genuflecting toward a statue of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The coming layoffs follows over 200 laid off last year.

Breitbart News reports:

The Washington Post will reportedly lay off dozens of its staffers in the next few days, the news coming after the publication caught flak for not endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris (D) during the presidential election that Donald Trump won in November.

In his article published on Status, Oliver Darcy wrote Sunday that “the layoffs are slated to hit the Jeff Bezos-owned and Will Lewis-led newspaper’s business division, I’m told. One person familiar with the matter said that the cuts will be deep, impacting many dozens of employees.”

Bezos has reportedly been shaking up the Post after it decided not to endorse Harris, according to Breitbart News.

Darcy continued:

The layoffs will surely deplete morale further inside the beleaguered newspaper, which has suffered a talent exodus over the last several weeks. As I reported earlier, star reporter Josh Dawsey will exit The Post for a job at The Wall Street Journal. His departure comes on the heels of other top staffers fleeing, including Matea Gold, Ashely Parker, Michael Scherer, Charles Lane, Tyler Pager, and Amanda Katz.

FOX News is reporting that the WaPo has even had to cut their ‘gender columnist’ if you can believe they had such a thing.

Back in 2017, Bunkerville posted the following:

Washington Post reporter attends top secret Soros meeting to advance agenda

Allegedly unbiased Washington Post reporter Janell Ross spoke at a top-secret meeting of liberal movers and shakers last week, where Democratic donors including billionaire George Soros outlined the future of their progressive agenda.

A Post spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon that Ross took part of the California event “without notifying her superiors that she would be attending.”

The Democracy Alliance, which hosted the event, bills itself as “the largest network of donors dedicated to building the progressive movement in the United States” on the group’s official website. The liberal group also claims to “play a leading role in fostering the infrastructure necessary to advance a progressive agenda” in the United States.

 

More of the swamp.

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Dishonest Journalism

June 5, 2023 — bunkerville

 

by Mustang

It’s been with us for a long time — and by using the phrase “a long time,” I mean from the country’s beginning.  And dishonest journalism has been rather nasty for the same amount of time.  It is even evil in its silence — when choosing not to report newsworthy material for political purposes.

 

 

In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) was a presidential candidate.  His two main political rivals at the time were President Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) and Governor Nelson Rockefeller (R-NY), a socialist.  In his acceptance of the Republican nomination, Goldwater said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” When The New York Times reported Goldwater’s speech, they misquoted him, saying, “Extremism is no vice.”

 

All the newsmakers of the time wasted no time attacking Goldwater.  Rockefeller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Roy Wilkins, head of the NAACP — all of whom predicted that a Goldwater presidency would spell the end of America.  President Johnson condemned Goldwater for using tactics of “fear and smear.”

“Daisy” Ad (1964

 

 

Most voters only know what The New York Times told them, echoed incessantly in the press and radio/television media.  It was a massive hit job and one that the NYT no doubt took great pride in accomplishing.  Except Goldwater never said, “Extremism is no vice.”  He said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

 

We cannot know how the United States might have evolved under a Goldwater presidency; we can only assess how well our country did under Lyndon Johnson, whose remarkably successful campaign advertisement focused on a little girl playing with flowers in an open field and being vaporized by an atomic explosion.  Mr. Johnson could not have labeled the ad in any other way than “fear and smear.”

 

There is considerable doubt that a Goldwater presidency would have taken our country to war in Vietnam.  There are several thoughts about this, but at the top of these, it is not likely that Mr. Goldwater would have told a lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident.  If anything, Goldwater would have likely followed Eisenhower’s policy of supporting South Vietnam materially while avoiding the introduction of ground troops.  This means that the United States would not have lost 58,000 dead Americans, an additional 303,000 wounded veterans, or a defeat at the hands of treacherous congressional Democrats.

 

President Johnson, an outlaw if ever there was one, was not Goldwater’s only adversary.  He was also a nemesis of Republicans in name only (RINOs) — men who attacked Goldwater for being a dangerous extremist.  Dr. King labeled him “as dangerous as Hitlerism,” but he was no such thing.  If anything, Goldwater’s actual statement probably falls somewhere between what we might expect from Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, Patrick Henry, or Thomas Paine.

 

Mr. Goldwater also told us, “Any government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have.” He told us that Johnson’s Great Society would fail, and it did.  We could not afford a trillion-dollar welfare state in 1964, and we can’t afford such expenditures now.  American voters weren’t listening in 1964 and aren’t listening as we approach elections in 2024.

 

In this context, one wonders if we should turn to The New York Times and demand an apology for participating in the disaster that America has become.  We might demand an apology, but I don’t think we would get one.  The NYT only publishes garbage; they don’t make people consume it.

 

The bane of the Goldwater campaign was dishonest journalism, but it was a boon to every Democratic contender, including Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.  Voters need to know this.  The press is not trustworthy. 

 

Posted in media. Tags: , , , , . 18 Comments »

The Sad Saga of the Media

August 12, 2017 — bunkerville

Ours is a diseased media – Guest post by Mustang who also spins some great tales at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar

You know, if this wasn’t pathetic, it might make you laugh aloud. Recently, the New York Times claimed to have leaked a ‘secret’ gloom and doom climate change report; one that President Trump was trying to keep away from the public. Included in the article was the ever-present sniping at anyone who hasn’t swallowed the Gore lies and distortions. Now …um … the British scientist who completed this report wonders, how could the New York Times leak a report that was available to the public since the study went through the review process?

Is this an example of shoddy journalism, a careless attempt at fake news, or is it the very best example of leftist humor?

I would love to be able to peek under the covers, wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t you love to know who and what are behind these slapdash attempts to smear President Trump and/or his administration? Don’t you love all my conspiracy theories, noting of course that if people are out to get you, then you aren’t paranoid?

Why would the NYT (ostensibly responsible to profit-motivated stockholders) waste ink and space on such a dumb article/accusation as this? Particularly one so easily debunked. I think the answer is that it doesn’t matter. Someone is paying them to do it. I have no idea what the costs are of doing this, but I do know that a full-page advertisement in the NYT costs $150,000 (if done in black and white) —and you know, that is such a paltry sum of money to someone like Georgie Soros, or any number of other communist rats.

What I would love to see happen is someone from the Washington Examiner or New York Post do an expose on the behind-the-scenes antics of the American left. Tell us what happened, who is paying for it, and then let us be done with this mish-mash about how journalists on the left are really looking out for America’s best interests.

It is long past the time for Americans to begin holding the news media responsible for their nonsense. Why have we allowed the NYT to get away with such things as: plagiarism, failure to print the truth about famine in the Ukraine, or the Duke University Lacrosse fiasco, or delayed publication of the NSA’s warrantless surveillance of the American people?

I think it’s a market-share game that results on the print media preying upon its readers. As a case in point, the NYT printed stories on fashion news that was actually promoting its advertisers. Admittedly, no one has ever accused the New York Times of honesty.

I believe the NYT already knows that the number of people who read their rag is but a small percentage of the overall population (estimated between 650,000 to just over one million —in a city of just under 9 million inhabitants), but those who do read it are addicted to leftism and they’ll keep coming back for more —no matter how dishonest the stories are. Similarly, CNN and MSNBC pander to a peculiar audience, which is to say people sufficiently stupid to buy into communist social policy, and as equally senseless in buying products offered by their advertisers.

Well, to summarize, these are the millions of Americans who have long warmed to the idea of forgiving women who flush their babies down toilets. The way I see it, they are beyond redemption. Finally, in speaking about journalists, my good friend “Kid” put up a video the other day. In the video, a Russia’s foreign minister enters the press room and prepares to answer questions. Before he takes his seat, however, American [ita non sit vox designativa] Reporter Andrea Mitchell begins to screech out questions. Perturbed, the foreign minister asked if her behavior was an example of her up-bringing. Good for him!

The video caused me to look more closely at Mitchell. My conclusion is that she is woefully unqualified to do the job for which she is being paid. She has a degree in English Literature, and while this may confirm her literacy, she is still as dumb as a box of rocks. If you wanted to get someone to respond to questions, and if those answers were ever to end up as a headline, then wouldn’t you want to approach that person with politeness? This incident, by the way, makes me wonder if the Russian foreign minister ever again allowed Mitchell back into the press gallery.

I hope not.

Posted in Liberal Loonies. Tags: , , , . 18 Comments »