GREAT MOMENTS IN BACKSCRATCHING: News outlets push pro-union stories while taking undisclosed cash from organized labor.
A trio of liberal publications has raked in hundreds of thousands of dollars from teachers unions over the past couple of years, a fact that is not disclosed in their positive coverage of those same unions.
The New Republic, American Prospect, and Courier Newsroom have collectively accepted $905,000 since 2022 from the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, according to the unions’ financial disclosures. After accepting funds from the two largest teachers unions in the nation, each of these outlets went on to publish pieces painting them in a positive light without disclosing the funding arrangement.
For instance, Courier Newsroom, which runs a dark money-funded network of left-leaning publications operating out of 11 swing states, received $500,000 from the NEA and $35,000 from the AFT between 2022 and 2024. Following the donations, Courier’s outlets in Arizona, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Texas all published stories portraying the NEA favorably.
Cardinal & Pine, Courier’s North Carolina outpost, published a video on its website in March of NEA President Rebecca Pringle explaining the importance of teaching schoolchildren that the United States is systematically racist. The article accompanying the video makes no mention that the NEA had wired half a million dollars to Courier in just a few years.
I was about to add a “Randi Weingarten smiles” tag to end the post, but how could we tell? She’s pictured wearing both a mask, and ironically enough, a “Back to School for All” t-shirt in the middle of the Washington Examiner’s story.