About That ‘Independent’ Media…

This post was originally published on this site

I linked to this story in my previous article on elections in Ukraine, but I think it deserves a full post all by itself. 

The Free Press has a piece on Internews and its influence on the coverage of the war in Ukraine that really deserves attention, going into deeper depth on USAID’s control of the flow of information both within Ukraine and from Ukraine to the United States. 

I have written a few times about Internews, which has sucked up about half a billion dollars in USAID money to fund “independent” journalism around the world, making that journalism as “independent” as a PR flack at a White House podium. It is good to see that The Free Press did a deeper dive into how the US government has been shaping the propaganda coming out of the war. 

USAID funded the vast majority of ‘independent’ media in Ukraine. What American taxpayers don’t realize is that their money went to suppressing the truth.

Wild reporting here by @TanyaLukyanova_ in @thefp:https://t.co/7zp7WQguWE

— Bari Weiss (@bariweiss) February 19, 2025

Americans have a reverence for the idea of a free press, and with good reason. Free and independent media–hopefully many sources with a wide variety of opinions driving them–give us the best hope for piecing together a reasonably accurate view of the world, the actors in it, and what they are doing. Never trust a single source, even if they are committed to being honest. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to most “news” stories these days, especially on issues of importance, there are fewer “news” sources than you think. The Associated Press filters most news, with most of the stories on any one topic or another actually being rewrites of an AP story. 

Everything you read or see coming out of Gaza was likely reported to you either by an Israeli military outfit or by Hamas. “Independent” journalists embedded in Gaza are simply Hamas shills. The Associated Press shared offices with Hamas in Gaza for years. Seriously. 

And Ukraine? If you are reading it, Internews likely provided the news, and Internews is USAID, or at least was. 

Rather, according to Oksana Romaniuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information, a press freedom group, nine out of 10 media outlets in Ukraine “survive thanks to grants” from the West.

The primary funder of these outlets is an NGO called Internews. In 2024, they provided “comprehensive support” for 536 media outlets in Ukraine, per their annual report, and trained over 5,000 journalists. Some Ukrainian publications rely on Internews for 80 percent of their funding.

And where does Internews get its money? Until last week, when the spigot was turned off, it came primarily from USAID, to the tune of $473 million since 2008.

Internews says that its mission is to “train journalists, advance internet freedom, and help media outlets become financially sustainable—so that everyone has trustworthy information to make informed decisions and hold power to account.” As of 2023, it claims to have “trained” over 9,000 journalists, aided 4,291 media outlets, and reached 778 million people around the world with its broadcasts. Its ties to USAID go beyond grants: Its CEO Jeanne Bourgault spent six years at USAID and is married to a USAID adviser, Ray S. Jennings. (Internews did not respond to a request for an interview.)

Since the news is filtered through Internews, things like this happen:

The camera was rolling when chaos erupted. It was January 21, 2024, and an independent Ukrainian journalist named Ostap Stakhiv was livestreaming a call with Vasyl Pleskach, a man claiming he was being illegally detained by Ukraine’s infamous military conscription unit, the TCC. The agency has been accused of kidnapping men from the street and forcing them to the front lines. Those who resist have sometimes been tortured—and in several well-documented cases—killed.

In the middle of the interview, Stakhiv called the police to see if they would free Pleskach from the clutches of the TCC. Just then, with the police still on the line, a burly figure entered Vasyl’s frame, walked over to Pleskach, and struck him hard in the face. His phone tumbled to the ground, landing sideways, but still recording. “They’re beating him right now,” Stakhiv told the police, as Vasyl’s picture went haywire. “People are watching it live. They’re beating him as we speak. Go to my YouTube channel and see it for yourself.” Off-screen, Pleskach’s screams were audible for another minute before the line was disconnected.

None of Ukraine’s media outlets covered the beating, but about a month later, a Ukrainian media outlet, Babel, ran an article about Stakhiv. Its headline? “Ostap Stakhiv—a Failed Politician and Antivaxxer—Created a Vast Anti-Conscription Network.” It accused the journalist of obstructing Ukraine’s mobilization efforts, pushing Kremlin narratives, and undermining trust in the military. (Babel did not respond to a request for an interview from The Free Press.)

Other Ukrainian outlets, including Detector Media and Bihus Info, chimed in with similar stories—some even containing identical phrasing. “Whole paragraphs were copied word for word,” Jean Novoseltsev, another independent journalist in Ukraine, told The Free Press. “You can tell they were sent the same memo.” (Detector Media and Bithus Info did not respond to an email requesting an interview.)

Sooo…A non-USAID-funded journalist is reporting about kidnap and torture squads, gets kidnapped and beaten himself, ultimately gets arrested for talking about kidnappings, beatings, and torturing, and USAID-funded journalists coordinate to smear him. 

That, my friends, is what your tax dollars have been funding as “independent” journalism. 

Some USAID-funded publications, now pleading for donations after the Trump administration suspended the Internews/USAID grants they had relied on, insist they operated independently. Yet, the experience of Astra, an independent outlet in Russia, where Internews also hands out media grants, suggests otherwise.

When Astra applied for Internews funding, it was told the grant required an “Internews-appointed editor.” Astra’s editor-in-chief, Anastasia Chumakova, was stunned.

“Why on earth would foundations edit texts, and why do independent media agree to it? Are you sure the word ‘independent’ goes with this?” she wrote on Telegram.

There is nothing wrong, in principle, with taking the Realpolitik view that the US and Russia are in a Great Power conflict and that Ukraine is just one battlefield among many. If you want to argue that the world is zero-sum and if we didn’t own Ukraine, then Russia would, and hence supporting all this skull duggery is necessary, be my guest. 

But if you buy the propaganda that Internews is selling you that Zelenskyy represents Truth, Justice, and the American way and Putin is Hitler, you have been sold a bill of goods. Putin is indeed a horrible guy, but he presents as much danger to Germany or the UK as Mynamar does. Short of using nukes, their vulnerability to him is entirely based on their need for his oil, not a fear of his tanks. Paris will not be overrun by aging T-62s. Putin can’t even get air superiority over Ukraine, which is remarkable. 

Putin is a very bad guy. Zelenskyy is simply an American satrap, and Ukraine is an American money-laundering operation. It saddens me that this is so, but it pretty obviously is. USAID has been funding a propaganda campaign aimed not just at Ukrainians but at the entire world to prop it up. 

Democratic countries don’t hire goon squads to kidnap, torture, and murder people and shanghai people to become cannon fodder. So USAID/Internews calls “fake news” on what really happens in Ukraine in order to keep support for the war high. 

That may be Realpolitik, but it isn’t “independent journalism.”