Associated Press, founded in 1846, has been a staple of the news industry since then: old, large, mainstream, and respected.

But the decline of traditional media in the age of the internet — when six stories, even on a comparatively minor event, may be just a few clicks away — has been taking a toll. To survive, AP has been accepting cash from climate action groups for climate news coverage.

In 2022, the news service admitted,

NEW YORK (AP) — The Associated Press said Tuesday that it is assigning more than two dozen journalists across the world to cover climate issues, in the news organization’s largest single expansion paid for through philanthropic grants.

The announcement illustrates how philanthropy has swiftly become an important new funding source for journalism — at the AP and elsewhere — at a time when the industry’s financial outlook has been otherwise bleak…

“This far-reaching initiative will transform how we cover the climate story,” Pace said.

David Bauder, “Climate grant illustrates growth in philanthropy-funded news,” February 16, 2022

It certainly will change the way AP covers climate stories. For example, the article is illustrated by an image of a lone polar bear floating on a floe in the Arctic. But the actual polar bear story is rather more complex.

The $8 million in grants came from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Quadrivium, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation. AP would naturally have a sharply reduced incentive to cover news they don’t want.

It’s not just climate either

The story goes on to say that the practice of getting interest groups to fund AP’s coverage started about two decades ago, as the internet bit deeper: “It’s the most recent of a series of grants the AP has received since the mid-2010s to boost coverage in health and science, religion, water issues and philanthropy itself. Some 50 AP journalists have jobs funded through grants.”

Do most news consumers take account of the fact that “mainstream” news on these topics is often provided by interest groups that fund AP to get out a specific message? We know for sure that trust is way down.

Just recently, we learned from AP about a climate ruling, “Divided federal appeals court says Trump administration was wrong to terminate climate funds” (August 4, 2026). At the foot, we are told,

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

As Casey Luskin said this morning, dissecting another issue, “Formerly trusted sources are no longer necessarily trustworthy.”

Remember this story when Top People talk about the need to crack down on the internet in order to prevent us from getting false or biased information. In reality, the internet may be our only refuge from the official and once respectable sources.