Biden Picks Conservative Blacklister to Train Media

A liberal journalism institute that once promoted a "blacklist" against conservative media during the Trump administration has received government funds to train "balanced and bias-free" journalists.

But, as the The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday, the Poynter Institute is funded by the likes of liberal globalist billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates, and Tim Gill, an LGBT activist whose husband is Biden's ambassador to Switzerland.

The "balance and bias-free" training was contracted through the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which paid Poynter $23,500 through March 31, according to a federal spending database.

Poynter has been denounced by Republicans as having been favorable to President Joe Biden, while receiving funding from his administration.

Also, during the Trump administration in 2019, Poynter "blacklisted" conservative media, including the Free Beacon, as "unreliable." Poynter's fact-checker PolitiFact is decidedly pro-liberal and anti-conservative, as Free Beacon reported its fact-checks targeted Republicans 62 of 86 times.

Notably, PolitiFact fact-checks get fact-checked and retracted, like its claim the Wuhan lab leak claims were "inaccurate and ridiculous."

Also, months before the public revelations of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020, Poynter executive Kelly McBride engaged in a curious exercise with the liberal Aspen Institute about how to handle a allegedly hypothetical "hack and dump" of Hunter Biden emails, according to the Free Beacon.

The exercise stressed to media to be skeptical of such reporting.

Poynter then followed the advice during subsequent release of Hunter Biden emails, coincidentally.

"Hardly any media outlets, except for conservative ones, are giving the story any credence at all," a Poynter writer boasted, promoting censorship of true information that was unfavorable to Biden's 2020 presidential campaign.

McBride is chair of Poynter's Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership, and Newmark was a major Biden donor who gave $5 million to Poynter and millions more to the Aspen Institute, according to the report.

There are other curious incidents of handling millions between anti-Trump operatives and Big Tech giants, including YouTube and its parent Google/Alphabet giving $13.2 million to Poynter's International Fact-Checking Network to root out alleged "disinformation."

Poynter called on YouTube last year to moderate content, claiming it is "weaponized by unscrupulous actors to manipulate and exploit others."

The "balanced and bias" training by the U.S. Agency for Global Media also paid $20,100 to Poynter in July 2021, and the State Department has paid Poynter $360,000 over a number of years to train journalists in Japan, Thailand, Turkey, and India, the Free Beacon reported.