The proponents of climate radicalism in government appear to have learned an important lesson: If you want favorable news coverage that supports your ideology, don’t leave it to chance — bankroll it yourself.
Emails obtained by the watchdog organization Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) suggest that the White House has been sponsoring journalists from other countries to write on topics related to “climate change.”
The emails, which PPT shared with Fox News, show conversations by administration officials regarding a foreign “reporting tour” held last year. The correspondence goes back to March 2021, when top officials at the State Department discussed a plan to use U.S. taxpayer money to allow foreign journalists to “have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change.”
One notable exchange involved the office of John Kerry, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (SPEC), and the Office of Global Change (EGC). The officials involved in the exchange said the proposal was “great” and “fantastic.”
“Jean Foschetti at the FPC [Foreign Press Center] mentioned this to me about a week ago,” wrote one official in March 2021. “Sounds like a great reporting tour idea; basically, the FPC will sponsor multiple foreign reporters to have experiences that educate them on reporting on climate change. Can EGC and SPEC take a look and clear?”
The official’s name was redacted, as was the name of another who responded to the above praise with a remark that read, “Thanks for sharing.… I think this sounds like a fantastic FPC (virtual) reporting tour and I’m looking forward to the stories that will come out of this.”
The reporting tour that formed the subject of the emails was held in May of last year over the course of two weeks. Per the State Department, the event was conducted to “promote the Administration’s goal of prioritizing the fight against climate change through global efforts to reduce emissions.”
The department’s website further contends that the aim of the reporting tour was to “enable journalists to remotely develop their reporting about the United States’ renewed approach to addressing the climate crisis and its innovation and research, particularly in the areas of reducing emissions and renewable energy.”
The State Department did make the event’s existence public at the time, albeit with little fanfare. What it did not disclose in public was that it was all put together with taxpayer money.
This fact was not lost on PPT. In a statement to Fox News, the watchdog’s director, Michael Chamberlain, said: “The American public may be shocked but, unfortunately, not surprised to learn their taxpayer funds are being used to promote climate alarmism around the world. The State Department should come clean about which foreign publications, articles, and authors they are forcing American taxpayers to fund.”
He added, “However, one thing Protect the Public’s Trust has learned from this FOIA request is that transparency is not one of State’s strengths. The more that is revealed the more it becomes clear why the American public’s trust in its government continues its rapid collapse.”
FPC is part of the Bureau of Global Public Affairs, which is itself a part of the State Department. Global Public Affairs was started in the 1940s. Per FPC’s website, its mission is to “deepen global understanding of U.S. policy, society, culture, and values through engagement with foreign media.”
The agency, like much of Biden’s government apparatus, has been used to further climate alarmism. As Fox News notes of the administration’s approach to environmentalism:
Meanwhile, since President Biden took office, the State Department has boosted its diplomatic efforts related to climate change. Among Biden’s first actions in January 2021 was to appoint Kerry to be the SPEC, a State Department role that gives Kerry a seat on the president’s Cabinet and National Security Council, but didn’t require a Senate confirmation process.
Since then, Kerry has traveled across the world, attending high-profile climate summits and diplomatic engagements in an effort to push a global transition from fossil fuels to green energy alternatives. His office is largely comprised of officials who formerly worked in large environmental organizations and has an estimated $13.9 million annual budget.
Further, the State Department contacted the outlet to push back at PPT’s accusations, arguing that while it did pay for program expenses for the reporting tour, it did not directly pay journalists or commission stories.
“For decades, Foreign Press Center reporting tours have supported fact-based reporting on U.S. foreign policy topics by providing international journalists direct access to authoritative information sources,” a department spokesperson told Fox, adding that “FPC reporting tours do not pay reporters, they do not pay for stories to be commissioned, and they do not fund the media organizations that participate in them.”
But it should come as no surprise that the White House is directly influencing journalists to literally produce fake news at home or abroad. The recent Twitter Files have made clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that the mainstream media, be it traditional or social, is nothing more than government propaganda.
